Following and in connection with cave burial, the subject of mummifying
or embalming the dead may be taken up, as most specimens of the kind
have generally been found in such repositories.
It might be both interesting and instructive to search out and discuss
the causes which have led many nations or tribes to adopt certain
processes with a view to prevent that return to dust which all flesh
must sooner or later experience, but the necessarily limited scope of
this work precludes more than a brief mention of certain theories
advanced by writers of note, and which relate to the ancient Egyptians.
Possibly at the time the Indians of America sought to preserve their
dead from decomposition, some such ideas may have animated them, but on
this point no definite information has been procured. In the final
volume an effort will be made to trace out the origin of mummification
among the Indians and aborigines of this continent.
The Egyptians embalmed, according to Cassien, because during the time of
the annual inundation no interments could take place, but it is more
than likely that this hypothesis is entirely fanciful. It is said by
others they believed that so long as the body was preserved from
corruption the soul remained in it. Herodotus states that it was to
prevent bodies from becoming a prey to animal voracity. “They did not
inter them,” says he, “for fear of their being eaten by worms; nor did
they burn, considering fire as a ferocious beast, devouring everything
which it touched.” According to Diodorus of Sicily, embalmment
originated in filial piety and respect. De Maillet, however, in his
tenth letter on Egypt, attributes it entirely to a religious belief,
insisted upon by the wise men and priests, who taught their disciples
that after a certain number of cycles, of perhaps thirty or forty
thousand years, the entire universe became as it was at birth, and the
souls of the dead returned into the same bodies in which they had lived,
provided that the body remained free from corruption, and that
sacrifices were freely offered as oblations to the manes of the
deceased. Considering the great care taken to preserve the dead, and the
ponderously solid nature of the Egyptian tombs, it is not surprising
that this theory has obtained many believers. M. Gannal believes
embalmment to have been suggested by the affectionate sentiments of our
nature--a desire to preserve as long as possible the mortal remains of
loved ones; but MM. Volney and Pariset think it was intended to obviate,
in hot climates especially, danger from pestilence, being primarily a
cheap and simple process, elegance and luxury coming later; and the
Count de Caylus states the idea of embalmment was derived from the
finding of desiccated bodies which the burning sands of Egypt had
hardened and preserved. Many other suppositions have arisen, but it is
thought the few given above are sufficient to serve as an introduction
to embalmment in North America.
From the statements of the older writers on North American Indians, it
appears that mummifying was resorted to, among certain tribes of
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida, especially for people of
distinction, the process in Virginia for the kings, according to
Beverly,[29] being as follows:
The _Indians_ are religious in preserving the Corpses of their Kings
and Rulers after Death, which they order in the following manner:
First, they neatly flay off the Skin as entire as they can, slitting
it only in the Back; then they pick all the Flesh off from the Bones
as clean as possible, leaving the Sinews fastned to the Bones, that
they may preserve the Joints together; then they dry the Bones in
the Sun, and put them into the Skin again, which in the mean time
has been kept from drying or shrinking; when the Bones are placed
right in the Skin, they nicely fill up the Vacuities, with a very
fine white Sand. After this they sew up the Skin again, and the Body
looks as if the Flesh had not been removed. They take care to keep
the Skin from shrinking, by the help of a little Oil or Grease,
which saves it also from Corruption. The Skin being thus prepar’d,
they lay it in an apartment for that purpose, upon a large Shelf
rais’d above the Floor. This Shelf is spread with Mats, for the
Corpse to rest easy on, and skreened with the same, to keep it from
the Dust. The Flesh they lay upon Hurdles in the Sun to dry, and
when it is thoroughly dried, it is sewed up in a Basket, and set at
the Feet of the Corpse, to which it belongs. In this place also they
set up a _Quioccos_, or Idol, which they believe will be a Guard to
the Corpse. Here Night and Day one or the other of the Priests must
give his Attendance, to take care of the dead Bodies. So great an
Honour and Veneration have these ignorant and unpolisht People for
their Princes even after they are dead.
It should be added that, in the writer’s opinion, this account and
others like it are somewhat apocryphal, and it has been copied and
recopied a score of times.
According to Pinkerton,[30] who took the account from Smith’s Virginia,
the Werowance of Virginia preserved their dead as follows:
In their Temples they have his [their chief God, the Devil’s] image
euill favouredly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines
of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin, in such manner as the
deformitie may well suit with such a God. By him is commonly the
sepulchre of their Kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then
dried upon hurdles till they be very dry, and so about the most of
their ioynts and necke they hang bracelets, or chaines of copper,
pearle, and such like, as they use to wear. Their inwards they
stuffe with copper beads, hatchets, and such trash. Then lappe they
them very carefully in white skins, and so rowle them in mats for
their winding-sheets. And in the Tombe, which is an arch made of
mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kind of wealth
their Kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These temples
and bodies are kept by their Priests.
For their ordinary burials, they dig a deepe hole in the earth with
sharpe stakes, and the corpse being lapped in skins and mats with
their Jewels they lay them upon stickes in the ground, and so cover
them with earth. The buriale ended, the women being painted all
their faces with blacke cole and oyle doe sit twenty-foure houres in
the houses mourning and lamenting by turnes with such yelling and
howling as may expresse their great passions. * * *
Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods there are three
great houses filled with images of their Kings and devils and the
tombes of their predecessors. Those houses are near sixty feet in
length, built harbourwise after their building. This place they
count so holey as that but the priests and Kings dare come into
them; nor the savages dare not go up the river in boates by it, but
that they solemnly cast some piece of copper, white beads or pocones
into the river for feare their Okee should be offended and revenged
of them.
They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteeme
quiyough-cosughs, when they are deade doe goe beyond the mountains
towards the setting of the sun, and ever remain there in form of
their Okee, with their bedes paynted rede with oyle and pocones,
finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets,
copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their
predecessors. But the common people they suppose shall not live
after deth, but rot in their graves like dede dogges.
This is substantially the same account as has been given on a former
page, the verbiage differing slightly, and the remark regarding
truthfulness will apply to it as well as to the other.
Figure 1 may again be referred to as an example of the dead-house
described.
The Congaree or Santee Indians of South Carolina, according to Lawson,
used a process of partial embalmment, as will be seen from the subjoined
extract from Schoolcraft;[31] but instead of laying away the remains in
caves, placed them in boxes supported above the ground by crotched
sticks.
The manner of their interment is thus: A mole or pyramid of earth is
raised, the mould thereof being worked very smooth and even,
sometimes higher or lower according to the dignity of the person
whose monument it is. On the top thereof is an umbrella, made
ridgeways, like the roof of a house. This in supported by nine
stakes or small posts, the grave being about 6 to 8 feet in length
and 4 feet in breadth, about which is hung gourds, feathers, and
other such like trophies, placed there by the dead man’s relations
in respect to him in the grave. The other parts of the funeral rites
are thus: As soon as the party is dead they lay the corpse upon a
piece of bark in the sun, seasoning or embalming it with a small
root beaten to powder, which looks as red as vermillion; the same is
mixed with bear’s oil to beautify the hair. After the carcass has
laid a day or two in the sun they remove it and lay it upon crotches
cut on purpose for the support thereof from the earth; then they
anoint it all over with the aforementioned ingredients of the powder
of this root and bear’s oil. When it is so done they cover it over
very exactly with the bark or pine of the cypress tree to prevent
any rain to fall upon it, sweeping the ground very clean all about
it. Some of his nearest of kin brings all the temporal estate he was
possessed of at his death, as guns, bows and arrows, beads,
feathers, match-coat, &c. This relation is the chief mourner, being
clad in moss, with a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty for
three or four days, his face being black with the smoke of pitch
pine mixed with bear’s oil. All the while he tells the dead man’s
relations and the rest of the spectators who that dead person was,
and of the great feats performed in his lifetime, all that he speaks
tending to the praise of the defunct. As soon as the flesh grows
mellow and will cleave from the bone they get it off and burn it,
making the bones very clean, then anoint them with the ingredients
aforesaid, wrapping up the skull (very carefully) in a cloth
artificially woven of opossum’s hair. The bones they carefully
preserve in a wooden box, every year oiling and cleansing them. By
these means they preserve them for many ages, that you may see an
Indian in possession of the bones of his grandfather or some of his
relations of a longer antiquity. They have other sorts of tombs, as
when an Indian is slain in that very place they make a heap of
stones (or sticks where stones are not to be found); to this
memorial every Indian that passes by adds a stone to augment the
heap in respect to the deceased hero. The Indians make a roof of
light wood or pitch-pine over the graves of the more distinguished,
covering it with bark and then with earth, leaving the body thus in
a subterranean vault until the flesh quits the bones. The bones are
then taken up, cleaned, jointed, clad in white-dressed deerskins,
and laid away in the _Quiogozon_, which is the royal tomb or
burial-place of their kings and war-captains, being a more
magnificent cabin reared at the public expense. This Quiogozon is an
object of veneration, in which the writer says he has known the
king, old men, and conjurers to spend several days with their idols
and dead kings, and into which he could never gain admittance.
Another class of mummies are those which have been found in the
saltpetre and other caves of Kentucky, and it is still a matter of doubt
with archæologists whether any special pains were taken to preserve
these bodies, many believing that the impregnation of the soil with
certain minerals would account for the condition in which the specimens
were found. Charles Wilkins[32] thus describes one:
* * * An exsiccated body of a female[33] * * * was found at the
depth of about 10 feet from the surface of the cave bedded in clay
strongly impregnated with nitre, placed in a sitting posture,
incased in broad stones standing on their edges, with a flat atone
covering the whole. It was enveloped in coarse clothes, * * * the
whole wrapped in deer-skins, the hair of which was shaved off in the
manner in which the Indians prepare them for market. Enclosed in the
stone coffin were the working utensils, beads, feathers, and other
ornaments of dress which belonged to her.