In certain islands of the Polynesian group there was observed at the

approaching dissolution of a man of any importance a rite terribly

fantastic and cruel. As soon as the dying man’s relatives were

made acquainted with the impending calamity, they straightway and

deliberately proceeded to act the part of raving mad men. “Not only,”

says Ellis, “did they wail in the loudest and most affecting manner,

but they tore their hair, rent their garments, and cut themselves

with knives or with shark’s teeth in the most shocking manner. The

instrument usually employed was a small cane about four inches long,

with five or six shark’s teeth fixed in on opposite sides. With one of

these instruments every female provided herself after marriage, and on

occasions of death it was unsparingly used.

“With some this was not sufficient: they prepared a sharp instrument,

something like a plumber’s mallet, about five or six inches long,

rounded at one end for a handle, and armed with two or three rows of

shark’s teeth fixed in the wood at the other. With this, on the death

of a relative or friend, they cut themselves unmercifully, striking

the head, temples, cheeks, and breast, till the blood flowed profusely

from the wounds. At the same time they uttered the most deafening

and agonizing cries; and the distortion of their countenances, their

torn and dishevelled air, the mingled tears and blood that covered

their bodies, their wild gestures and unruly conduct, often gave them

a frightful and almost inhuman appearance. I have often conversed

with these people on their reasons for this strange procedure, and

have asked them if it was not exceeding painful to cut themselves as

they were accustomed to do. They have always answered that it was

very painful in some parts of the face, that the upper lip or the

space between the upper lip and the nostrils was the most tender, and

a stroke there was always attended with the greatest pain.... The

females on these occasions sometimes put on a kind of short apron of

a particular sort of cloth, which they held up with one hand, while

they cut themselves with the other. In this apron they caught the blood

that flowed from these grief-inflicted wounds until it was almost

saturated. It was then dried in the sun and given to the nearest

surviving relations, as a proof of the affection of the donor, and was

preserved by the bereaved family as a token of the estimation in which

the departed had been held.

“I am not prepared to say that the same enormities were practised here

as in the Sandwich Islands at these times, but on the death of a king

or principal chief, the scenes exhibited in and around the house were

in appearance demoniacal. The relatives and members of the household

began; the other chiefs of the island and their relatives came to

sympathize with the survivors, and on reaching the place joined in the

infuriated conduct of the bereaved. The tenantry of the chiefs came

also, and giving themselves to all the savage infatuation which the

conduct of their associates, or the influence of their superstitious

belief inspired, they not only tore their hair and lacerated their

bodies till they were covered with blood, but often fought with clubs

and stones till murder followed.”

As soon as an individual of the islands above alluded to died, a

ceremony known as “tahna tertera” was performed, with a view of

discovering the cause of death. In order to effect this the priest took

his canoe, and paddled slowly along on the sea near the house where the

body was lying, to watch the passage of the spirit, which they supposed

would fly upon him with the emblem of the cause for which the person

died. If he had been cursed by the gods, the spirit would appear with

a flame, fire being the agent employed in the incantations of the

sorcerers; if killed by the bribe of some enemy given to the gods, the

spirit would appear with a red feather, an emblem signifying that evil

spirits had entered his food. After a short time the tahna or priest

returned to the house of the deceased, and told the survivors the cause

of his death, and received his fee, the amount of which was regulated

by the circumstances of the parties. To avert mischief from the dead

man’s relations, the priest now performed certain secret ceremonies,

and in a day or two he again made his appearance with a cheerful

countenance, to assure them that they need no longer go in fear,

received another fee, and took his departure.

The bodies of the chiefs and persons of rank and affluence were

embalmed. The art of embalming, generally thought to indicate a high

degree of civilization, appears to have been known and practised among

the Polynesians from a very remote period, and however simple the

process, it was thoroughly successful. The intestines, brain, etc.,

were removed, and the body fixed in a sitting posture, and exposed to

the direct rays of the sun. The inside was, after a while, filled with

shreds of native cloth, saturated with perfumed oil, with which the

exterior was plentifully and vigorously anointed. This, together with

the heat of the sun and the dryness of the atmosphere, favoured the

preservation of the body.

Under the influence of these causes, in the course of a few weeks the

muscles were dried up, and the whole body appeared as if covered with a

kind of parchment. It was then clothed, and fixed in a sitting posture;

a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and

flowers daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to

attend the body. In this state it was kept many months, when the body

was buried, and the skull preserved by the family.

In commencing the process of embalming, and placing the body on the

bier, another priest was employed, who was called the _tahna lure

tiapapau_, or “corpse-praying priest.” His office was singular. When

the house for the dead had been erected, and the corpse placed upon the

bier, the priest ordered a hole to be dug near the foot of it. Over

this hole the priest prayed to the god by whom it was supposed the

spirit of the deceased had been required. The purport of his prayer

was, that all the dead man’s sins, and especially that for which his

soul had been called away, might be deposited there; that they might

not attach in any degree to the survivors; and that the anger of the

god might be appeased. After the prayer, the priest, addressing the

deceased, exclaimed, “With you let the guilt now remain.” Then a pillar

of wood was planted in the “sin-hole,” and the earth filled in. Then

the priest, taking a number of small slips of plantain leaf-stalk,

approached the body, and laid some under the arms, and strewed some on

the breast, saying, “There are your family; there are your children,

there is your wife, there is your father, and there is your mother.

Be contented in the world of spirits. Look not towards those you have

left in the world.” And--or so thought the benighted creatures among

whom this singular rite was performed--the dead man’s spirit being

hoodwinked into the belief that the chief of his relations were no

longer inhabitants of the world, ceased to trouble itself further about

mundane affairs, and never appeared in ghostly shape at the midnight

couches of living men.

All who were employed in the embalming, which was called _muri_,

were during the process carefully avoided by every person, as the

guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was supposed in

some degree to attach to such as touched the body. They did not feed

themselves, lest the food defiled by the touch of their polluted

hands should cause their death, but were fed by others. As soon as

the ceremony of depositing the sin in the hole was over, all who had

touched the dead man or his garments fled precipitately into the

sea, where for a long time they bathed, and came away leaving their

contaminated clothes behind them. At the conclusion of their ablutions

they dived, and brought from the sea-bed some bits of coral. Bearing

these in their hands, their first journey was to the sin-hole of the

defunct, at which the bits of coral were cast, with the adjuration,

“With you may all pollution be!”

On the death of Finow, King of Tonga, Mr. Mariner informs us, the

chiefs and grand company invited to take part in his funeral obsequies,

seated themselves, habited in mats, waiting for the body of the

deceased king to be brought forth. The mourners (who are always women),

consisting of the female relations, widows, mistresses, and servants

of the deceased, and such other females of some rank who chose out of

respect to officiate on such an occasion, were assembled in the house

and seated round the corpse, which still lay out on the blades of

gnatoo. They were all habited in large old ragged mats--the more ragged

the more fit for the occasion, as being more emblematical of a spirit

broken down, or, as it were, torn to pieces by grief. Their appearance

was calculated to excite pity and sorrow in the heart of anyone,

whether accustomed or not to such a scene; their eyes were swollen

with the last night’s frequent flood of grief, and still weeping

genuine tears of regret; the upper part of their cheeks perfectly

black, and swollen so that they could hardly see, with the constant

blows they had inflicted on themselves with their fists.

Among the chiefs and matabooles who were seated on the marly, all those

who were particularly attached to the late king or to his cause evinced

their sorrow by a conduct usual indeed among these people at the death

of a relation, or of a great chief (unless it be that of Tooitonga, or

any of his family), but which to us may well appear barbarous in the

extreme; that is to say, the custom of cutting and wounding themselves

with clubs, stones, knives, or sharp shells; one at a time, or two or

three together, running into the middle of the circle formed by the

spectators to give these proofs of their extreme sorrow for the death,

and great respect for the memory of their departed friend.

The sentiments expressed by these victims of popular superstition

were to the following purpose. “Finow, I know well your mind; you

have departed to Bolotoo, and left your people under suspicion that I

or some of those about you are unfaithful; but where is the proof of

infidelity? where is a single instance of disrespect?” Then inflicting

violent blows and deep cuts in the head with a club, stone, or knife,

would again exclaim at intervals, “Is this not a proof of my fidelity?

does this not evince loyalty and attachment to the memory of the

departed warrior?” Then perhaps two or three would run on and endeavour

to seize the same club, saying with a furious tone of voice, “Behold

the land is torn with strife, it is smitten to pieces, it is split by

revolts; how my blood boils; let us haste and die! I no longer wish to

live: your death, Finow, shall be mine. But why did I wish hitherto to

live? it was for you alone; it was in your service and defence only

that I wished to breathe; but now, alas! the country is ruined. Peace

and happiness are at an end; your death has insured ours: henceforth

war and destruction alone can prosper.” These speeches were accompanied

with a wild and frantic agitation of the body, whilst the parties cut

and bruised their heads every two or three words with the knife or club

they held in their hands. Others, somewhat more calm and moderate in

their grief, would parade up and down with rather a wild and agitated

step, spinning and whirling the club about, striking themselves with

the edge of it two or three times violently upon the top or back of

the head, and then suddenly stopping and looking stedfastly at the

instrument spattered with blood, exclaim, “Alas! my club, who could

have said that you would have done this kind office for me, and have

enabled me thus to evince a testimony of my respect for Finow? Never,

no never, can you again tear open the brains of his enemies. Alas! what

a great and mighty warrior has fallen! Oh, Finow, cease to suspect my

loyalty; be convinced of my fidelity! But what absurdity am I talking!

if I had appeared treacherous in your sight, I should have met the

fate of those numerous warriors who have fallen victims to your just

revenge. But do not think, Finow, that I reproach you; no, I wish only

to convince you of my innocence, for who that has thoughts of harming

his chiefs shall grow white headed like me (an expression used by some

of the old men). O cruel gods to deprive us of our father, of our only

hope, for whom alone we wished to live. We have indeed other chiefs,

but they are only chiefs in rank, and not like you, alas! great and

mighty in war.”

Such were their sentiments and conduct on this mournful occasion. Some,

more violent than others, cut their heads to the skull with such strong

and frequent blows, that they caused themselves to reel, producing

afterwards a temporary loss of reason. It is difficult to say to what

length this extravagance would have been carried, particularly by one

old man, if the prince had not ordered Mr. Mariner to go up and take

away the club from him, as well as two others that were engaged at the

same time. It is customary on such occasions, when a man takes a club

from another, to use it himself in the same way about his own head;

but Mr. Mariner, being a foreigner, was not expected to do this; he

therefore went up and, after some hesitation and struggle, secured the

clubs one after another, and returned with them to his seat, when,

after a while, they were taken by others, who used them in like manner.

After these savage expressions of sorrow had been continued for nearly

three hours, the prince gave orders that the body of his father should

be taken to Felletoa to be buried. In the first place, a bale of gnatoo

was put on a kind of hurdle, and the body laid on the bale; the prince

then ordered that, as his father was the first who introduced guns

in the wars of Tonga, the two carronades should be loaded and fired

twice before the procession set out, and twice after it had passed

out of the marly; he gave directions also that the body of Finow’s

daughter, lately deceased, should be taken out in the model of a canoe,

and carried after the body of her father; that during his life, as he

wished always to have her body in his neighbourhood, she might now at

length be buried with him.

Matters being thus arranged, Mr. Mariner loaded the guns and fired four

times with blank cartridge. The procession then went forward, and in

the course of two hours arrived at Felletoa, where the body was laid in

a house on the marly at some distance from the grave, till another and

smaller house could be brought close to it; and this was done in course

of an hour. The post being taken up, the four pieces which compose the

building (a kind of shed in a pyramidal form, the eaves reaching within

four feet of the ground) were brought by a sufficient number of men,

and put together at the place where it was wanted. This being done, the

body was brought on the same hurdle or hand-barrow to the newly-erected

building (if it may be so termed); and then being taken off the hurdle,

it was laid within, on the bale of gnatoo, and the house was hung round

with black gnatoo, reaching from the eaves to the ground.

The women, who were all assembled and seated round the body, began a

most dismal lamentation. In the mean time a number of people, whose

business it is to prepare graves, were digging the place of interment

under the direction of a mataboole, whose office is to superintend

such affairs. Having dug about ten feet, they came to the large stone

covering a vault; a rope was fastened double round one end of the

stone, which always remains a little raised for the purpose, and was

raised by the main strength of 150 or 200 men, pulling at the two ends

of the rope towards the opposite edge of the grave till it was brought

up on end. The body being oiled with sandal-wood oil, and then wrapped

in mats, was handed down on a large bale of gnatoo into the grave; the

bale of gnatoo was then, as is customary, taken by the before-mentioned

mataboole as his perquisite. Next, the body of his daughter, in the

model of a canoe, was let down in like manner, and placed by his side.

The great stone was then lowered down with a loud shout. Immediately

certain matabooles and warriors ran like men frantic round about the

place of sepulture, exclaiming, “Alas! how great is our loss! Finow,

you are departed: witness this proof of our love and loyalty!” At the

same time they cut and bruised their own heads with clubs, knives,

axes, etc.

The whole company now formed themselves into a single line, the women

first, and afterwards the men, but without any particular order as to

rank, and proceeded towards the back of the island for the purpose of

getting a quantity of sand in small baskets.

They sang loudly the whole way, as a signal to all who might be in the

road or adjacent fields to hide themselves as quickly as possible, for

it is sacrilegious for any body to be seen abroad by the procession

during this part of the ceremony; and if any man had unfortunately

made his appearance, he would undoubtedly have been pursued by one

of the party, and soon dispatched with the club. So strictly is this

attended to, that nobody in Mr. Mariner’s time recollected a breach

of a law so well known. Even if a common man was to be buried, and

Finow himself was to be upon the road, or in the neighbourhood of the

procession whilst going to get sand at the back of the island, he would

immediately hide himself; not that they would knock out the king’s

brains on such an occasion, but it would be thought sacrilegious and

unlucky, the gods of Bolotoo being supposed to be present at the time.

The chiefs are particularly careful not to infringe upon sacred laws,

lest they should set an example of disobedience to the people. The song

on this occasion, which is very short, is sung first by the men and

then by the women, and so on alternately; and intimates (though Mr.

Mariner has forgotten the exact words) that the _fala_ (which is

the name of this part of the ceremony) is coming, and that every body

must get out of the way.

When they arrived at the back of the island, where anybody may be

present, they proceeded to make a small basket of the leaves of the

cocoa-nut tree, holding about two quarts, and to fill it with sand;

this being done, each of the men carried two upon a stick across the

shoulder, one at each end: while the women only carried one, pressed

in general against the left hip, or rather upon it, by the hand of the

same side, and supported by the hand of the opposite side, brought

backwards across the loins, which they consider the easiest mode for

women to carry small burdens; they then proceeded back the same way,

and with ceremony, to the grave. By this time the grave above the vault

was nearly filled with the earth lately dug out, the remaining small

space being left to be filled by the sand, which is always more than

enough for the purpose. It is considered a great embellishment to a

grave to have it thus covered, and is thought to appear very well from

a distance, where the mound of clean sand may be seen; besides which

it is the custom, and nobody can explain the reason why--which is the

case with several of their customs. This being done, all the baskets

in which the sand was brought, as well as the remaining quantity of

earth not used in filling up the grave, are thrown into the hole out of

which the earth was originally dug. During the whole of this time the

company was seated, still clothed in mats, and their necks strung with

the leaves of the ifi tree; after this they arose and went to their

respective habitations, where they shaved their heads, and burnt their

cheeks with a small lighted roll of tápa, by applying it once upon

each cheek bone; after which, the place was rubbed with the astringent

berry of the matchi, which occasioned it to bleed, and with the blood

they smeared about the wound in a circular form, to about two inches in

diameter, giving themselves a very unseemly appearance.

They repeat this friction with the berry every day, making the wound

bleed afresh; and the men in the meantime neglect to shave and to

oil themselves during the day: they do it, however, at night, for

the comfort which this operation affords. After having, in the first

place, burnt their cheeks and shaved their heads, they built for

themselves small temporary huts for their own accommodation during the

time of mourning, which lasts twenty days. Early in the morning of the

twentieth day, all the relations of the deceased chief, together with

those who formed his household, and also the women who were tabooed by

having touched his dead body whilst oiling and preparing it, went to

the back of the island (without any particular order or ceremony) to

procure a number of flat pebbles, principally white, but a few black,

for which they made baskets on the spot to carry them in, as before

mentioned, when they went to procure sand. With these they returned to

the grave, strewed inside of the house with the white ones, as also the

outside, as a decoration to it; the black pebbles they strewed only

upon the white ones which covered the ground directly over the body.

After this the house over the tomb was closed up at both ends with a

reed fencing, reaching from the eaves to the ground; and at the front

and back with a sort of basket-work made of the young branches of the

cocoa-nut tree, split and interwoven in a very curious and ornamental

way, which remains till the next burial, when they are taken down,

and after the conclusion of the ceremony new ones are put up in like

manner. A large quantity of provisions was now sent to the marly by

the chiefs of the different districts of the island, ready prepared

and cooked, as also a considerable quantity prepared by Finow’s own

household: among these provisions was a good supply of cava root. After

the chiefs, matabooles, and others were assembled, the provisions and

cava were served out in the usual way. During this time no speech

was made, nor did any particular occurrence take place. The company

afterwards repaired each to his respective house, and got ready for a

grand wrestling-match and entertainment of dancing the Mée too Buggi

(literally, “the dance, standing up with paddles”).

[Illustration: Funeral Obsequies of King Finow.]

During the intervals of the dances, several matabooles, warriors,

and others, indulged in bruising and cutting their heads with clubs,

axes, etc., as proofs of their fidelity to the late chief; among

them two boys, one about twelve, the other about fourteen years of

age (sons of matabooles), made themselves very conspicuous in this

kind of self-infliction; the youngest in particular, whose father was

killed in the service of the late chief, dining the great revolution

at Tonga, after having given his head two or three hard knocks, ran

up to the grave in a fit of enthusiasm, and dashing his club with

all his force to the ground, exclaimed, “Finow! why should I attempt

thus to express my love and fidelity towards you? My wish is that the

gods of Bolotoo permit me to live long enough to prove my fidelity to

your son.” He then again raised his club, and running about bruised

and cut his little head in so many places, that he was covered with

streams of blood. This demonstration on the part of the young hero

was thought very highly of by every one present, though, according

to custom, nothing at that time was said in his praise; agreeable to

their maxim, that praise raises a man’s opinions of his own merit too

high, and fills him with self-conceit. The late Finow’s fishermen now

advanced forward to show their love for their deceased master in the

usual way, though instead of a club or axe, each bore the paddle of

a canoe, with which they beat and bruised their heads at intervals,

making similar exclamations to those so often related. In one respect,

however, they were somewhat singular, that is, in having three arrows

stuck through each cheek in a slanting direction, so that while their

points came quite through the cheek into the mouth, the other ends went

over their shoulders, and were kept in that situation by another arrow,

the point of which was tied to the ends of the arrows passing over

one shoulder, and the other end to those of the arrows passing over

the other shoulder, so as to form a triangle; and with this horrible

equipment they walked round the grave, beating their heads and faces as

before stated with the paddles, or pinching up the skin of the breast

and sticking a spear quite through: all this to show their love and

affection for the deceased chief.

After these exhibitions of cruelty were over, this day’s ceremony

(which altogether lasted about six hours) was finished by a grand

wrestling match, which being ended, every one retired to his respective

house or occupation; and thus terminated the ceremony of burying the

King of the Tonga Islands.

The Sandwich Islanders observe a number of singular ceremonies on the

death of their kings and chiefs, and have been till very recently

accustomed to make these events occasions for the practice of almost

every enormity and vice.

“The people here,” writes Mr. Mariner, “had followed only one fashion

in cutting their hair, but we have seen it polled in every imaginable

form; sometimes a small round place only is made bald just on the

crown, which causes them to look like Romish priests; at other times

the whole head is shaved or cropped close, except round the edge,

where, for about half an inch in breadth, the hair hangs down its usual

length. Some make their heads bald on one side, and leave the hair

twelve or eighteen inches long on the other. Occasionally they cut

out a patch in the shape of a horse-shoe, either behind or above the

forehead; and sometimes we have seen a number of curved furrows cut

from ear to ear, or from the forehead to the neck. When a chief who

had lost a relative or friend had his own hair cut after any particular

pattern, his followers and dependants usually imitated it in cutting

theirs. Not to cut or shave off the hair indicates want of respect

towards the deceased and the surviving friends; but to have it cut

close in any form is enough. Each one usually follows his own taste,

which produces the endless variety in which this ornamental appendage

of the head is worn by the natives during a season of mourning.

“Another custom, almost as universal on these occasions, was that of

knocking out some of the front teeth, practised by both sexes, though

perhaps most extensively by the men. When a chief died, those most

anxious to show their respect for him or his family, would be the first

to knock out with a stone one of their front teeth. The chiefs related

to the deceased, or on terms of friendship with him, were expected

thus to exhibit their attachment; and when they had done so, their

attendants and tenants felt themselves, by the influence of custom,

obliged to follow their example. Sometimes a man broke out his own

tooth with a stone; more frequently, however, it was done by another,

who fixed one end of a piece of stick or hard wood against the tooth,

and struck the other end with a stone till it was broken off. When any

of the men deferred this operation, the women often performed it for

them while they were asleep. More than one tooth was seldom destroyed

at one time; but the mutilation being repeated on the decease of every

chief of rank or authority, there are few men to be seen who had

arrived at maturity before the introduction of Christianity to the

islands with an entire set of teeth; and many by this custom have lost

the front teeth on both the upper and lower jaw, which, aside from

other inconveniences, causes a great defect in their speech. Some,

however, have dared to be singular, and though they must have seen many

deaths, have parted with but few of their teeth.

“Cutting one or both ears was formerly practised on these occasions,

but as we never saw more than one or two old men thus disfigured, the

custom appears to have been discontinued.

“Another badge of mourning, assumed principally by the chiefs, is that

of tatooing a black spot or line on the tongue, in the same manner as

other parts of their bodies are tatooed.

“The Sandwich islanders have also another custom almost peculiar to

themselves, viz., singing at the death of their chiefs, something in

the manner of the ancient Peruvians. I have been peculiarly affected

more than once on witnessing this ceremony.

“A day or two after the decease of Keeaumoku, governor of Maui, and the

elder brother of Kuakina, governor of Hawaii, I was sitting with the

surviving relatives, who were weeping around the couch on which the

corpse was lying, when a middle-aged woman came in at the other end of

the large house, and, having proceeded about half way towards the spot

where the body lay, began to sing in a plaintive tone, accompanying

her song with affecting gesticulations, such as wringing her hands,

grasping her hair, and beating her breasts. I wrote down her monody as

she repeated it. She described in a feeling manner the benevolence of

the deceased, and her own consequent loss. One passage was as follows:--

“‘Alas! alas! dead is my chief!

Dead is my lord and my friend!

My friend in the season of famine,

My friend in the time of drought,

My friend in my poverty,

My friend in the rain and the wind,

My friend in the heat and the sun,

My friend in the cold from the mountain,

My friend in the storm,

My friend in the calm,

My friend in the eight seas.

Alas! alas! gone is my friend,

And no more will return!’

“Other exhibitions of a similar kind I witnessed at Mani. After the

death of Keopuolani we frequently saw the inhabitants of a whole

district that had belonged to her coming to weep on account of her

death. They walked in profound silence, either in single file or two or

three abreast, the old people leading the van and the children bringing

up the rear. They were not covered with ashes, but almost literally

clothed in sackcloth. No ornament, or even decent piece of cloth, was

seen on any one. Dressed only in old fishing nets, dirty and torn

pieces of matting, or tattered garments, and these sometimes tied on

their bodies with pieces of old canoe ropes, they appeared the most

abject and wretched of human beings I ever saw. When they were within

a few hundred yards of the house where the corpse was lying they began

to lament and wail. The crowds of mourners around the house opened a

passage for them to approach it, and then one or two of their number

came forward and, standing a little before the rest, began a song or

recitation, showing her birth, rank, honours, and virtues, brandishing

a staff or piece of sugar-cane, and accompanying their recitation with

attitudes and gestures, expressive of the most frantic grief. When they

had finished they sat down and mingled with the thronging multitudes in

their loud and ceaseless wailing.”

Though these ceremonies were so popular, and almost universal, on the

decease of their chiefs, they do not appear to have been practised

by the common people among themselves. The wife did not knock out

her teeth on the death of her husband, nor the son his when he lost

his father or mother, neither did parents thus express their grief

when bereaved of an only child. Sometimes they cut their hair, but in

general only indulged in lamentations and weeping for several days.

Ellis, the Polynesian traveller, makes mention of a singular building

seen by him in Hawaii, called the _Hare o Keave_ (the House of

Keave), a sacred depository of the bones of departed kings and princes,

probably erected for the reception of the bones of the king whose name

it bears, and who reigned in Hawaii about eight generations back. It

is, or was when Mr. Ellis saw it, a compact building, twenty-four feet

by sixteen, constructed with the most durable timber, and thatched

with _ti_ leaves, standing on a bed of lava that runs out a

considerable distance into the sea. It is surrounded by a strong

fence or paling, leaving an area in the front and at each end about

twenty-four feet wide. The pavement is of smooth fragments of lava,

laid down with considerable skill. Several rudely-carved male and

female images of wood were placed on the outside of the enclosure,

some on low pedestals under the shade of an adjacent tree, others on

high posts on the jutting rocks that hung over the edge of the water.

“A number stood on the fence at unequal distances all round; but the

principal assemblage of these frightful representatives of their former

deities was at the south-east end of the enclosed space, where, forming

a semi-circle, twelve of them stood in grim array, as if perpetual

guardians of the mighty dead reposing in his house adjoining. A pile of

stones was neatly laid up in the form of a crescent, about three feet

wide and two feet higher than the pavement, and in this pile the images

were fixed. They stood on small pedestals three or four feet high,

though some were placed on pillars eight or ten feet in height, and

curiously carved. The principal idol stood in the centre, the others on

either hand, the most powerful being placed nearest to him; he was not

so large as some of the others, but distinguished by the variety and

superior carvings of his body, and especially of his head. Once they

had evidently been clothed, but now they appeared in the most indigent

nakedness. A few tattered shreds round the neck of one that stood on

the left hand side of the door, rotted by the rain and bleached by

the sun, were all that remained of numerous and gaudy garments with

which their votaries had formerly arrayed them. A large pile of broken

calabashes and cocoa-nut shells lay in the centre, and a considerable

heap of dried and partly rotten wreaths of flowers, branches and

shrubs, and bushes and fragments of tapa (the accumulated offerings of

former days), formed an unsightly mound immediately before each of the

images. The horrid stare of these idols, the tattered garments upon

some of them, and the heaps of rotting offerings before them, seemed

to us no improper emblems of the system they were designed to support,

distinguished alike by its cruelty, folly, and wretchedness.”

Mr. Ellis endeavoured to gain admission to the inside of the house,

but was told it was _tabu roa_ (strictly prohibited), and that

nothing but a direct order from the king or high priest could open

the door. However, by pushing one of the boards across the doorway

a little on one side, he looked in, and saw many large images, some

of wood very much carved, and others of red feathers, with distended

mouths, large rows of sharks’ teeth, and pearl-shell eyes. He also saw

several bundles, apparently of human bones, cleaned carefully, tied up

with cinet made of cocoa-nut fibres, and placed in different parts of

the house, together with some rich shawls and other valuable articles,

probably worn by those to whom the bones belonged, as the wearing

apparel and other personal property of the chiefs is generally buried

with them. When he had gratified his curiosity, and had taken a drawing

of the building and some of its appendages, he proceeded to examine

other remarkable objects of the place.

Adjoining the _Hare o Keave_ to the southward, he found a _Pahio

tabu_ (sacred enclosure) of considerable extent, and was informed by

his guide that it was one of the _Pohonuas_ of Hawaii, of which he

had often heard the chiefs and others speak. There are only two on the

island--the one which he was then examining, and another at Waipio on

the north-east part of the island, in the district of Kohala.

These _Pohonuas_ were the Hawaiian _cities of refuge_, and

afforded an inviolable sanctuary to the guilty fugitive, who, when

flying from the avenging spear, was so favoured as to enter their

precincts. They had several wide entrances, some on the side next the

sea, the others facing the mountains. Hither the manslayer, the man who

had broken a _tabu_, or failed in the observance of its rigid

requirements, the thief, and even the murderer, fled from his incensed

pursuers, and was secure. To whomsoever he belonged, and from whatever

part he came, he was equally certain of admittance, though liable to

be pursued even to the gates of the enclosure. Happily for him, those

gates were perpetually open; and, as soon as the fugitive had entered,

he repaired to the presence of the idol, and made a short ejaculatory

address, expressive of his obligations to him in reaching the place

with security. Whenever war was proclaimed, and during the period of

actual hostilities, a white flag was unfurled on the top of a tall

spear at each end of the enclosure; and until the conclusion of peace

waved the symbol of hope to those who, vanquished in fight, might flee

thither for protection. It was fixed a short distance from the walls

on the outside, and to the spot on which this banner was unfurled

the victorious warrior might chase his routed foes, but here he must

himself fall back; beyond it he must not advance one step, on pain of

forfeiting his life; the priests and their adherents would immediately

put to death any one who should have the temerity to follow or molest

those who were once within the pale of the _pahio tabu_, and,

as they expressed it, under the shade or protection of the spirit of

Keave, the tutelar deity of the place.

In one part of the enclosure, houses were formerly erected for the

priests, and others for the refugees, who, after a certain period, or

at the cessation of war, were dismissed by the priests, and returned

unmolested to their dwellings and families, no one venturing to injure

those who, when they fled to the gods, had been by them protected. Mr.

Ellis could not learn the length of time it was necessary for them to

remain in the _Pohonuas_, but it did not appear to be more than

two or three days. After that they either attached themselves to the

service of the priests, or returned to their homes.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A Samoan inquest--Carrying a body about--Embalming in

Samoa--Samoan grave fires--Catching a spirit--New Zealand

burial customs--The Sexton in Borneo--Dayak funerals--Funeral

customs of the Sea Dayaks--Tombs in the air--Exorcising the

evil spirit--Cruel treatment of widows--The “village of the

dead”--The place of skulls--Praying to the dead--Ojibbeway

mourners--Disposing of the property of the dead--A Chippewa

ghost story--An invisible presence--A spirited ghost--Veneration

for the dead--A royal funeral--The death dance--The last of the

“Stung Serpent.”

In Samoa, another of the Polynesian islands, it is considered a

disgrace to the family of an aged chief if he is not buried alive·

“When an old man feels sick and infirm,” says the missionary Turner,

“and thinks he is dying, he deliberately tells his children and friends

to get all ready and bury him. They yield to his wishes, dig a round

deep pit, wind a number of fine mats round his body, and lower down

the poor old heathen into his grave in a sitting posture. Live pigs

are then brought and tied, each with a separate cord, the one end

of the cord to the pig and the other to the arm of the old man. The

cords are then cut in the middle, leaving the one half hanging at the

arm of the old man, and off the pigs are taken to be killed and baked

for the burial feast. The old man, however, is still supposed to take

the pigs with him to the world of spirits. The greater the chief the

more numerous the pigs, and the more numerous the pigs the better the

reception in their Hades of heathenism. The poor old man thus wound up,

furnished with his pig strings, and covered over with some more mats,

is all ready. His grave is then filled up, and his dying groans are

drowned amid the weeping and the wailing of the living.

“This revolting custom of burying alive is, as I have noted, not

confined to infants and the aged. If a person in sickness shows signs

of delirium, his grave is dug, and he is buried forthwith, to prevent

the disease spreading to other members of the family. A young man in

the prime of life was thus buried lately. He burst up the grave and

escaped. He was caught and forced into the grave again. A second time

he struggled to the surface, and they led him to the bush, lashed him

fast to a tree, and left him there to die.

“Whenever the eye is fixed in death the house becomes a scene of

indescribable lamentation and wailing. ‘Oh! my father, why did you not

let me die, and you live here still?’ ‘Oh! my brother, why have you run

away and left your only brother to be trampled upon?’ ‘Oh! my child,

had I known you were going to die! Of what use is it for me to survive

you?’ These and other doleful cries may be heard two hundred yards

from the house; and as you go near you find that they are accompanied

by the most frantic expressions of grief, such as rending garments,

tearing the hair, thumping the face and eyes, burning the body with

small piercing firebrands, beating the head with stones till the blood

runs; and this they called an “offering of blood for the dead.” Every

one acquainted with the historical parts of the Bible will here observe

remarkable coincidences. After an hour or so, the more boisterous

wailing subsides, and, as in that climate the corpse must be buried

in a few hours, preparations are made without delay. The body is laid

out on a mat oiled with scented oil, and, to modify the cadaverous

look, they tinge the oil for the face with a little turmeric. The body

is then wound up with several folds of native cloth, the chin propped

up with a little bundle of the same material, and the face and head

left uncovered, while for some hours longer the body is surrounded by

weeping relatives. If the person has died of a complaint which has

carried off some other members of the family, they will probably open

the body to search for the disease. Any inflamed substance they happen

to find they take away and burn, thinking that this will prevent any

other members of the family being affected with the same disease. This

is done when the body is laid in the grave.

“While a dead body is in the house no food is taken under the same

roof. The family have their meals outside, or in another house. Those

who attended the deceased were formerly most careful not to handle

food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants.

Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment

inflicted by the household, if they violated the rule. Fasting was

common at such times, and they who did so, ate nothing during the

day, but had a meal at night, reminding us of what David said when

mourning the death of Abner: ‘So do God to me and more also, if I taste

bread or aught else till the sun be down.’ The fifth day was a day of

purification. They bathed the face and hands with hot water, and then

they were clean, and resumed the usual time and mode of eating.

“The death of a chief of high rank was attended with great excitement

and display: all work was suspended in the settlement; no stranger

dared to pass through the place. For days they kept the body unburied,

until all the different parties connected with that particular clan

assembled from various parts of the island, and until each party had

in turn paraded the body, shoulder high, through the village, singing

at the same time some mournful dirge. The body, too, was wrapped up

in the best robe, viz., the most valuable fine mat clothing which the

deceased possessed. Great respect is still shown to chiefs on these

occasions, and there was a recent instance of something like a thirty

days’ mourning; but the body is seldom paraded about the settlements

now-a-days.

“The burial generally takes place the day after death. As many friends

as can be present in time attend. Every one brings a present; and the

day after the funeral, these presents are all so distributed again as

that every one goes away with something in return for what he brought.

Formerly, the body was buried without a coffin, except in the cases of

chiefs; but now it is quite common to cut off the ends of some canoe

belonging to the family, and make a coffin of it. The body being put

into this rude encasement, all is done up again in some other folds

of native cloth, and carried on the shoulders of four or five men to

the grave. The friends follow, but in no particular order; and at the

grave again there was often further wailing, and exclamations such as,

“Alas! I looked to you for protection, but you have gone away! why

did you die! would that I had died for you!” Since the introduction

of Christianity, all is generally quiet at the grave. The missionary,

or some native teacher appointed by him, attends, reads a portion of

Scripture, delivers an address, and engages in prayer, that the living

may consider and prepare for the time to die. The grave is called the

last resting place; and in the case of chiefs the house is thatched

with the leaves of sandal wood, alluding to the custom of planting

some tree with pretty foliage near the grave. Attempts have been made

to get a place set apart as the village burying-ground, but it is

difficult to carry it out. All prefer laying their dead among the ashes

of their ancestors, on their own particular ground. As the bones of

Joseph were carried from Egypt to Canaan, so did the Samoans carry the

skulls of their dead from a land where they had been residing during

war, back to the graves of their fathers as soon as possible after

peace was proclaimed. The grave is often dug close by the house. They

make it about four feet deep; and, after spreading it with mats like a

comfortable bed, there they place the body, with the head to the rising

of the sun and the feet to the west. With the body they deposit several

things which may have been used to answer the purpose of a pickaxe in

digging the grave; not that they think these things of any use to the

dead, but it is supposed that if they are left and handled by others,

further disease and death will be the consequence. Other mats are

spread over the body, on these a layer of white sand from the beach,

and then they fill up the grave.

[Illustration: A Samoan Sepulchre.]

“The spot is marked by a little heap of stones a foot or two high. The

grave of a chief is nearly built up in an oblong slanting form, about

three feet high at the foot and four at the head. White stones or

shells are intermixed with the top layer; and if he has been a noted

warrior, his grave may be surrounded with spears, or his gun laid

loosely on the top.”

Embalming, the same authority informs us, is known and practised with

surprising skill in one particular family of Samoan chiefs. Unlike the

Egyptian method, as described by Herodotus, it is performed in Samoa

exclusively by women. The viscera being removed and buried, they day

after day anoint the body with a mixture of oil and aromatic juices,

and they continue to puncture the body all over with fine needles. In

about two months the process of desiccation is completed. The hair,

which had been cut off and laid aside at the commencement of the

operation, is now glued carefully on to the scalp by a resin from the

bush. The abdomen is filled up with folds of native cloth, the body is

wrapped up with the same material, and laid out on a mat, leaving the

hands, face, and head exposed.

A house is built for the purpose, and there the body is placed with a

sheet of native cloth loosely thrown over it. Now and then the face is

oiled with a mixture of scented oil and turmeric, and passing strangers

are freely admitted to see the remains of the departed. At present

there are four bodies laid out in this way in a house belonging to the

family to which we refer--viz., a chief, his wife, and two sons. They

are laid on a platform, raised on a double canoe. It must be upwards

of thirty years since some of them were embalmed, and although thus

exposed they are in a remarkable state of preservation. They assign

no particular reason for this embalming, further than that it is the

expression of their affection to keep the bodies of the departed still

with them as if they were alive.

On the evening of the burial of any important chief, his friends

kindled a number of fires at a distance of some twenty feet from each

other, near the grave, and there they sat and kept them burning till

morning light. This was continued sometimes for ten days after the

funeral; it was also done before the burial. In the house where the

body lay, or out in front of it, fires were kept burning all night

by the immediate relatives of the departed. The common people had a

similar custom. After burial they kept a fire blazing in the house all

night, and had the space between the house and the grave so cleared

as that a stream of light went forth all night from the fire to the

grave. Whether this had its origin in any custom of burning the dead

body, like the ancient Greeks, it is impossible now to ascertain. The

probability, however, is that it had not. The account the Samoans

give of it, is, that it was merely a light-burning in honour of the

departed, and a mark of tender regard: just as we may suppose the Jews

did after the death of Asa, when it is said they made a very great

burning for him. Those commentators who hold that this and one or two

other passages refer to a Jewish mark of respect, and not to the actual

burning of the body, have in the Samoan custom which we have just named

a remarkable coincidence in their favour.

The unburied occasioned great concern. “No Roman,” says Mr. Turner,

“was ever more grieved at the thought of his unburied friend wandering

a hundred years along the banks of the Styx than were the Samoans,

while they thought of the spirit of one who had been drowned, or

of another who had fallen in war, wandering about neglected and

comfortless. They supposed the spirit haunted them everywhere night and

day, and imagined they heard it calling upon them in a most pitiful

tone, and saying, ‘Oh! how cold; oh! how cold.’ Nor were the Samoans,

like the ancient Romans, satisfied with a mere _tumulus-inanis_

(or empty grave), at which to observe the usual solemnities; they

thought it was possible to obtain the soul of the departed in some

tangible transmigrated form. On the beach, near where a person had

been drowned, or on the battle-field, where another fell, might be

seen sitting in silence a group of five or six, and one a few yards

in advance, with a sheet of native cloth spread out on the ground

before him. Addressing some god of the family, he said, ‘Oh! be kind

to us; let us obtain without difficulty the spirit of the young man.’

The first thing that happened to light upon the sheet was supposed to

be the spirit. If nothing came, it was supposed that the spirit had

some ill-will to the person praying. That person after a time retired,

and another stepped forward, addressed some other god, and waited

the result. By-and-bye something came--grasshopper, butterfly, ant,

or whatever else it might be; it was carefully wrapped up, taken to

the family, the friends assembled, and the bundle buried with all due

ceremony, as if it contained the real spirit of the departed.”

The burial, like all other customs of the New Zealanders, are very

singular. Very little, however, was known concerning them until a

recent date. At the time Captain Cook visited the country, everything

connected with the disposal of their dead was concealed from him by the

natives.

It is now known, however, that the dead bodies of slaves were thrown

into holes or into the sea, or buried under the poles supporting

houses; but the dead bodies of free persons were ever held in high

respect. It was only, however, at the death of chiefs that the funeral

rites of the people were celebrated. A chief on his death bed was

surrounded by most of his relatives, his last words were treasured

up, and the resignation with which the dying man submitted to his

fate suggested to the mind that he died of his own will. The moment

the vital spark fled, its departure was bewailed with doleful cries:

abundance of water was shed in the form of tears, and the spectators

groaned, sighed, and seemed inconsolable. But all was hollow, except

with the immediate relatives of the deceased, and a specimen of the

talent of the New Zealanders for dissimulation. Men, women, and

children cut themselves with shells, and slaves were slain to attend

on the dead in the next world, and in revenge for his death. Since the

introduction of fire-arms, guns are fired off at the death of chiefs.

Twenty-four hours after death the body was washed and beaten with

flax-leaves, to drive away evil spirits. Priests then dressed the

corpse. The legs were bent, the body placed in a sitting attitude,

the hair tied in a lump on the crown of the head, and ornamented with

albatross feathers; garlands of flowers were wound round the temples,

tufts of white down from a sea-bird’s breast were stuck in the ears,

the face was smeared with red ochre and oil, and the whole body, save

the head, enveloped in a fine mat. In this condition, surrounded with

his weapons of war, the bones and preserved heads of his ancestors,

the dead chief sat in state; and as the complexion of the skins of the

natives alters little after death, there was a life-like appearance

in the whole scene. Certain birds were sacrificed to the gods. Tribes

from a distance visited the dead. Wisps of the long toitoi grass placed

in the dead warrior’s hands were grasped by friends, and flattering

laments, of which the following is a good specimen, were sung in his

honour:--

“Behold the lightning’s glare:

It seems to cut asunder Tuwhara’s rugged mountains.

From thy hand the weapon dropped,

And thy bright spirit disappeared

Beyond the heights of Rauhawa.

The sun grows dim, and hastes away,

As a woman from the scene of the battle.

The tides of the ocean weep as they ebb and flow,

And the mountains of the south melt away,

For the spirit of the chieftain

Is taking its flight to Kona.

Open ye the gates of the heavens--

Enter the first heaven, then enter the second heaven,

And when thou shalt travel the land of spirits,

And they shall say to thee, ‘What meanest this?’

Say’st thou, the winds of this our world

Have been torn from it in the death of the brave one,

The leader of our battles.

Atutahi and the stars of the morning

Look down from the sky.

The earth reels to and fro,

For the great prop of the tribes lies low,

Ah! my friend, the dews of Kokianga

Will penetrate the body;

The waters of the rivers will ebb out,

And the land be desolate.”

Dead chiefs sat in state until they gave out an ill odour. Then

their bodies were wrapped in mats, put into canoe-shaped boxes along

with their _meris_, and deposited on stages nine feet high, or

suspended from trees in the neighbourhood of villages, or interred

within the houses where they died. Here, after daylight, for many weeks

the nearest relatives regularly bewailed their death with mournful

cries. Persons tapued from touching the dead were now made clean.

Carved wooden ornaments, or rude human images twenty or forty feet

high, not unlike Hindoo idols, were erected on the spots where the

bodies were deposited. Mourning head dresses made of dark feathers were

worn; some mourners clipped half their hair short, and people talked of

the dead as if they were alive.

The bodies were permitted to remain about half a year on the stages, or

in the earth, after which the bones were scraped clean, placed in boxes

or mats, and secretly deposited by priests in sepulchres, on hill tops,

in forests, or in caves. The meris and valuable property of chiefs were

now received by their heirs. To witness this ceremony of the removal of

bones neighbouring tribes were invited to feasts, called the hahunga;

and for several successive years afterwards hahungas were given in

honour of the dead, on which occasions skulls and preserved heads of

chiefs were brought from sepulchres, and adorned with mats, flowers,

and feathers. Speeches and laments delivered at hahungas kept chiefs’

memories alive, and stimulated the living to imitate the dead.

In Borneo when a Dayak dies the whole village is tabooed for a day;

and within a few hours of death the body is rolled up in the sleeping

mat of the deceased, and carried by the “Peninu,” or sexton of the

village, to the place of burial or burning. The body is accompanied

for a little distance from the village by the women, uttering a loud

and melancholy lament. In one tribe--the Pemujan--the women follow

the corpse a short way down the path below the village to the spot

where it divides, one branch leading to the burning ground, the other

to the Chinese town of Siniawau. Here they mount upon a broad stone

and weep, and utter doleful cries till the sexton and his melancholy

burden have disappeared from view. Curiously enough, the top of this

stone is hollowed, and the Dayaks declare that this has been occasioned

by the tears of their women, which, during many ages, have fallen so

abundantly and so often as to wear away the stone by their continual

dropping.

In Western Sarawak the custom of burning the dead is universal. In the

district near the Samarahan they are indifferently burnt or buried,

and when the Sadong is reached, the custom of cremation ceases, the

Dayaks of the last river being in the habit of burying their dead. In

the grave a cocoa nut and areca nut are thrown; and a small basket

and one containing the chewing condiments of the deceased are hung up

near the grave, and if he were a noted warrior a spear is stuck in the

ground close by. The above articles of food are for the sustenance of

the soul in his passage to the other world.

The graves are very shallow, and not unfrequently the corpse is rooted

up and devoured by wild pigs. The burning also is not unfrequently very

inefficiently performed. “Portions of bones and flesh have been brought

back by the dogs and pigs of the village to the space below the very

houses of the relatives,” says Mr. St. John. “In times of epidemic

disease, and when the deceased is very poor, or the relatives do not

feel inclined to be at much expense for the sexton’s services, corpses

are not unfrequently thrown into some solitary piece of jungle not far

from the village, and there left. The Dayaks have very little respect

for the bodies of the departed, though they have an intense fear of

their ghosts.

“The office of sexton is hereditary, descending from father to son;

and when the line fails, great indeed is the difficulty of inducing

another family to undertake its unpleasant duties, involving, as it is

supposed, too familiar an association with the dead and with the other

world to be at all beneficial. Though the prospect of fees is good, and

perhaps every family in the village offers six gallons of unpounded

rice to start the sexton in his new and certainly useful career, it

is difficult to find a candidate. The usual burying fee is one jav,

valued at a rupee; though if great care be bestowed on the interment, a

dollar is asked; at other places as much as two dollars is occasionally

demanded.”

On the day of a person’s death a feast is given by the family to their

relations: if the deceased be rich, a pig and a fowl are killed; but if

poor, a fowl is considered sufficient. The apartment and the family in

which the death occurs are tabooed for seven days and nights, and if

the interdict be not rigidly kept, the ghost of the departed will haunt

the place.

Among the Sea Dayaks, as we are likewise informed by Mr. St. John,

human bodies are usually buried, although, should a man express a wish

to share the privilege of the priests, and be, like them, exposed on a

raised platform, his friends are bound to comply with his request.

Immediately after the breath has left the body, the female relations

commence loud and melancholy laments; they wash the corpse and dress

it in its finest garments, and often, if a man, fully armed, and bear

it forth to the great common hall, where it is surrounded by its

friends to be mourned over. In some villages a hireling leads the

lament, which is continued till the corpse leaves the house. Before

this takes place, however, the body is rolled up in clothes and fine

mats, kept together by pieces of bamboo tied on with rattans, and taken

to the burial-ground. A fowl is then killed as a sacrifice to the

spirit who guards the earth, and they commence digging the grave from

two and a half to four and a half feet deep, according to the person’s

rank: deeper than five feet would be unlawful. Whilst this operation

is going on others fell a large tree, and cutting off about six feet,

split it in two, and hollow out the pieces with an adze. One part

serves as a coffin and the other as the lid; the body is placed within,

and the two are secured together by means of strips of pliable cane

wound round them.

After the coffin is lowered into the grave, many things belonging to

the deceased are cast in, together with rice, tobacco, and betel-nut,

as they believe they may prove useful in the other world.

It was an old custom, but now falling into disuse, to place money, gold

and silver ornaments, clothes, and various china and brass utensils

in the grave; but these treasures were too great temptation to those

Malays who were addicted to gambling, and the rifling of the place of

interment has often given great and deserved offence to the relations.

As it is almost impossible to discover the offenders, it is now the

practice to break in pieces all the utensils placed in the grave, and

to conceal as carefully as possible the valuable ornaments.

The relatives and bearers of the corpse must return direct to the

house from which they started before they may enter another, as it

is unlawful or unlucky to stop, whatever may be the distance to

be traversed. Sea Dayaks who fall in battle are seldom interred,

but a paling is put round them to keep away the pigs, and they are

left there. Those who commit suicide are buried in different places

from others, as it is supposed that they will not be allowed to mix

in the “Seven-storied Sabayau,” or Paradise, with such of their

fellow-countrymen as come by their death in a natural manner, or

through the influence of the spirits.

Black is the sign of mourning among the Indians of North America, as

among us; but among these savage populations grief is manifested by

other signs than the gloomy colour of the dress. The Crows cut part

of their hair on the death of a relation. The widows of the Foxes,

as a sign of mourning, remain several months without changing their

clothes, or paying any other attention to their dress. This custom is

common to many tribes of the north. Among the Shahonees and several

other of the western population, those who have lost one of their

relatives manifest their grief by inflicting on themselves mutilations

and wounds. The mourning of an Indian for the loss of a relative

continues for at least six months. It generally consists in neglecting

his person, and painting his face black. A widow will generally mourn

the loss of her husband for a year. During all this time she appears

sincerely affected, never speaking to any one unless she is forced

to do so from necessity or propriety. She always seeks solitude, and

desires to remain alone, in order to abandon herself more freely to her

affliction. After her mourning is over, she resumes her best garments,

and paints herself as coquettishly as possible, in order to find

another husband.

The customs observed in the burial of the dead differ in different

tribes. The only observance common to them all is the singular one of

painting the corpses black. The Omahas swathe the bodies with bandages

made of skins, giving them the appearance of Egyptian mummies. Thus

enveloped they are placed in the branches of a tree, with a wooden

vase full of dried meat by their side, and which from time to time is

renewed. The Sioux bury their dead on the summit of a hill or mountain,

and plant on the tomb a cedar tree, which may be seen from afar. When

no natural elevation exists, they construct a scaffolding two or three

yards high.

The Chinooks, says the Abbé Dominech (from whose account of Indian

burial customs this description is chiefly derived), and some other

populations of Columbia and Oregon, have a more poetical custom. They

wrap the bodies of their dead in skins, bind their eyes, put little

shells in their nostrils, and dress them in their most beautiful

clothes; they then place them in a canoe, which is allowed to drift at

the pleasure of the winds and currents, on a lake, a river, or on the

Pacific Ocean.

When there is neither lake nor river nor sea near the village, the

funeral canoe is attached to the branches of the loftiest trees. These

aërial tombs are always so placed that the wild animals cannot reach

them; the favourite spots are solitary and wooded islands. These

sepulchral canoes are often moored in little bays, under shady trees

whose thick foliage overhang them like a protecting dome. There are

islands on the large rivers of Columbia where as many as twenty or

thirty of these canoes are attached to the cedars and birches on the

banks.

Not far from Columbia is a rock which serves as a cemetery for the

people of the neighbourhood. One perceives, on examining this village

of death, that the tribes of fishermen bestow the same religious care

on the dead as do the various tribes of hunters. In one case, as in the

other, the favourite objects he used while alive are placed by his side

in death. In Columbia, the oar and the net lie by the fisherman in his

funereal canoe; in the Great Prairies, the lance, the bow and arrows,

and often the war-horse, are buried in the grave with the hunter. To

the east as to the west of the Rocky Mountains, the savages venerate,

respect, and take care of their friends and relatives even after death.

The lamentations and prayers of the survivors are heard each day at

dawn and dusk wherever there are tombs.

In New Mexico the whites have singularly modified the customs of the

Indians; what remains of their ancient practices bears the impress at

once of the superstitious character of the natives, and of the habits

of the Spaniards. Thus, the inhabitants of Pueblo de Laguna, who are

half Christians, half followers of Montezuma, wrap the body of the

deceased in his ordinary garments, lay him in a narrow grave of little

depth, and place bread and a vase of water near him. They then throw

huge stones upon him with such violence as to break his bones, with the

notion that any evil spirit remaining in the carcase may be driven out

in the process.

The Sacs and Foxes place their dead, wrapped in blankets or buffalo

skins, in rude coffins made out of old canoes or the bark of trees, and

bury them; if the deceased was a warrior, a post is erected above his

head, painted with red lines, indicating the number of men, women, and

children he has killed during his life, and who are to be his slaves in

the land of shadows.

The Tahkalis burn the bodies of their dead. The medicine-man who

directs the ceremony makes the most extraordinary gesticulations and

contortions, for the purpose, as he pretends, of receiving into his

hands the life of the deceased, which he communicates to a living

person by laying his hands on his head, and blowing on him; the person

thus endowed takes the rank of the deceased, whose name he adds to

that he bore previously. If the dead man had a wife, she is obliged to

lay down on the funeral pyre while it is set on fire, and to remain

there till she is almost suffocated with smoke and heat. Formerly,

when a woman endeavoured to escape this torture, she was carried to

the fire and pushed in, to scramble out how she might. When the corpse

is consumed it is the duty of the widow to collect the ashes, place

them in a basket and carry them away. At the same time she becomes

the servant of her husband’s family, who employ her in all sorts of

domestic drudgery, and treat her very ill. This servitude continues

during two or three years, at the expiration of which period the

relatives of deceased assemble to celebrate the “feast of deliverance.”

At this solemnity a pole five or six yards in height is fixed in the

ground, to sustain the basket containing the ashes of the deceased,

which remain thus exposed till the pole, destroyed by time and the

elements, falls down. The widow then recovers her liberty, and can

marry again.

Mr. Paul Kane, in his “Wanderings of an Artist,” describes much

such a ceremony as observed by him in New Caledonia, which is east

of Vancouver’s Island and north of Columbia. Among the tribe called

“Taw-wa-tius,” and also among other tribes in their neighbourhood, the

custom prevails of burning the bodies, with circumstances of peculiar

barbarity to the widows of the deceased. The dead body of the husband

is laid naked upon a large heap of resinous wood; his wife is then

placed upon the body, and covered over with a skin; the pile is then

lighted, and the poor woman is compelled to remain until she is nearly

suffocated, when she is allowed to descend as best she can through

the flames and smoke. No sooner, however, does she reach the ground,

than she is expected to prevent the body from becoming distorted by

the action of the fire on the muscles and sinews; and wherever such an

event takes place, she must with her bare hands restore the burning

body to its proper position, her person being the whole time exposed

to the intense heat. Should she fail in the performance of this

indispensable rite, from weakness or the intensity of her pain, she is

held up by some one until the body is consumed. A continual singing and

beating of drums is kept up throughout the ceremony, which drowns her

cries.

Afterwards she must collect the unconsumed pieces of bone and the

ashes, and put them in a bag made for the purpose, and which she has

to carry on her back for three years; remaining for a time a slave to

her husband’s relations, and being neither allowed to wash nor comb

herself for the whole time, so that she soon becomes a very unpleasant

object to behold. At the expiration of three years a feast is given by

her tormentors, who invite all the friends and relations of her and

themselves. At the commencement they deposit with great ceremony the

remains of the burnt dead in a box, which they affix to the top of a

high pole, and dance round it. The widow is then stripped and smeared

from head to foot with fish-oil, over which one of the bystanders

throws a quantity of swans’-down, covering her entire person. After

this she is free to marry again, if she have the inclination and

courage enough to venture on a second risk of being roasted alive and

the subsequent horrors.

It has often happened that a widow, who has married a second husband in

the hope perhaps of not outliving him, commits suicide in the event of

her second husband’s death, rather than undergo a second ordeal.

[Illustration: A Mandan Chief.]

Among the Mandans, another tribe of North American Indians, burial is

unknown. A tract of land is set apart, and is known to all the tribes

as the “village of the dead.” When a Mandan dies he is wrapped in the

hide of a freshly-slaughtered buffalo, which is secured by thongs of

new hide. Other buffalo skins are soaked until they are soft as cloth,

and in these the already thoroughly enveloped body is swathed till the

bulk more resembles a bale of goods packed for exportation than a human

body. Within the bundle are placed the man’s bow and quiver, shield,

knife, pipe and tobacco, flint and steel, and provisions enough to last

him some time “on his long journey.” Then his relatives bear him on

their shoulders, and carry him to the cemetery, “where,” says Catlin,

“are numerous scaffolds, consisting of four upright poles some six

or seven feet in height. On the top of these are small poles passing

around from one corner post to another; across these are placed a row

of willow rods, just strong enough to support the body.”

[Illustration: Mandan Place of Skulls.]

On this scaffold, and with his feet towards the rising sun, the Mandan

is laid, and he is not disturbed till the scaffold poles decay, and

the buffalo coffin, still containing the Mandan’s bones, falls to the

earth. Then the relatives of the deceased, having received notice of

the circumstance, once more assemble at the cemetery and, digging a

hole, bury the bones--all except the skull; for this is reserved a

separate ceremony.

Apart from the willow biers may be seen circles of skulls, numbering

from fifty to a hundred, each about nine inches from its neighbour,

and with the face turned towards the centre. In this ghastly cordon

room is made, and the newly fallen skull added thereto, and ever after

regarded with the rest as an object of veneration, not only by those

who can claim with it family acquaintance, but by the whole tribe.

“Very frequently,” says Catlin, “the traveller may observe a wife, or

maybe a mother, of this sad remnant of mortality sitting down by the

side of the skull of its departed husband or child, talking to it in

the most endearing tones, and even throwing herself down to embrace

it, the while bewailing with loud and incessant cries; very often too

they will cut and hack themselves with knives as a punishment for any

offence they may have given their relative while alive.”

Among the Ojibbeways, as soon as the man is dead, they array him in his

best clothes, and as soon as possible place him in a coffin. If this

latter article is not available, he is wrapped in the best skins or

blankets the tent furnishes. A hole about three feet deep is dug, and

generally within twelve hours of his decease the man is buried, with

his head towards the west. By the side of his body is placed his former

hunting and war implements, such as his bow and arrow, tomahawk, gun,

pipe and tobacco, knife, pouch, flint and steel, medicine-bag, kettle,

trinkets, and other articles which he carried with him when going on

a long journey. The grave is then covered, and on the top of it poles

or sticks are placed lengthways, to the height of about two feet, over

which birch bark or mats form a covering to secure the body from the

rain. The relations or friends of the deceased then sit on the ground

in a circle round the head of the grave, when the usual offering to the

dead, consisting of meat, soup, or the fire-waters, is made. This is

handed to the people present in bowls, a certain quantity being kept

back for a burnt offering. While this is preparing at the head of the

grave, the old man, or speaker for the occasion, makes a prayer to

the soul of the departed, enumerating his good qualities, imploring

the blessing of the dead that his spirit may intercede for them, that

they may have plenty of game; he also exhorts his spirit to depart

quietly from them. They believe that the soul partakes of a portion

of the feast, and especially that which is consumed by fire. If the

deceased was a husband, it is often the custom for the widow, after the

burial is over, to spring or leap over the grave, and then run zigzag

behind the trees, as if she were fleeing from some one. This is called

running away from the spirit of her husband, that it may not haunt

her. In the evening of the day on which the burial has taken place,

when it begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns through the

hole left at the top of the wigwam. As soon as this firing ceases, the

old women commence knocking and making such a rattling at the door as

would frighten away any spirit that would dare to hover near. The next

ceremony is to cut into narrow strips like ribbon, thin birch bark.

These they fold into shapes, and hang round inside the wigwam, so that

the least puff of wind will move them. With such scarecrows as these,

what spirit would venture to disturb their slumbers? Lest this should

not prove effectual, they will also frequently take a deer’s tail,

and after burning or singeing off all the hair, will rub the necks or

faces of the children before they lie down to sleep, thinking that the

offensive smell will be another preventive to the spirit’s entrance. “I

well remember,” says the Rev. Peter Jones, a Christianised Ojibbeway

and missionary, “when I used to be daubed over with this disagreeable

fumigation, and had great faith in it all. Thinking that the soul

lingers about the body a long time before it takes its final departure,

they use these means to hasten it away.

“I was present at the burial of an old pagan chief by the name of

Odahmekoo, of Muncey Town. We had a coffin made for him, which was

presented to his relatives; but before they placed the body in it, they

bored several holes at the head, in order, as they supposed, to enable

the soul to go in and out at pleasure.

“During the winter season, when the ground is frozen as hard as a rock

two or three feet deep, finding it almost impossible to penetrate

through the frost, having no suitable tools, they are obliged to wind

up the corpse in skins and the bark of trees, and then hang it on the

fork of a large tree, high enough to be beyond the reach of wolves,

foxes, and dogs, that would soon devour it. Thus the body hangs till

decomposition takes place, and the bones, falling to the ground, are

afterwards gathered up and buried.

“Immediately after the decease of an Indian all the near relatives go

into mourning, by blackening their faces with charcoal, and putting

on the most ragged and filthy clothing they can find. These they wear

for a year, which is the usual time of mourning for a husband or wife,

father or mother.

“At the expiration of a year the widow or widower is allowed to

marry again. Should this take place before the year expires, it is

considered, not only a want of affection for the memory of the dead,

but a great insult to the relations, who have a claim on the person

during the days of the mourning. The first few days after the death of

the relative are spent in retirement and fasting; during the whole of

their mourning they make an offering of a portion of their daily food

to the dead, and this they do by putting a part of it in the fire,

which burns while they are eating. I have seen my poor countrymen make

an offering of the fire-waters to the departed: they deem this very

acceptable, on account of its igniting the moment it touches the fire.

Occasionally they visit the grave of the dead, and there make a feast

and an offering to the departed spirit: tobacco is never forgotten at

these times. All the friends of the dead will for a long time wear

leather strings tied round their wrists and ankles, for the purpose of

reminding them of their deceased relative.”

It is a custom always observed by widows to tie up a bundle of clothes

in the form of an infant, frequently ornamented with silver brooches.

This she will lie with and carry about for twelve months, as a memorial

of her departed husband. When the days of her mourning are ended, a

feast is prepared by some of her relatives, at which she appears in her

best attire. Having for the first time for a twelvemonth washed herself

all over, she looks once more neat and clean.

The Shahonees bury their dead with everything belonging to them. The

Comanches generally bury a warrior with his arms and his favourite

horse; formerly his wives also shared the same fate, but this custom

has disappeared. Whilst the Sioux put striking marks on their tombs

that they may be easily distinguished, the Comanches cover them with

grass and plants to keep them concealed. Among the tribes of the west

the warriors are still sometimes buried on horseback, wrapped in their

richest dress, with bow in hand, buckler on arm, the quiver full of

arrows slung behind, the pipe and the medicine-bag hanging to the belt,

and supplied with a provision of tobacco and dried meat sufficient for

the voyage to the enchanted prairies.

The Assineboins, like several other tribes of the great American

desert, never bury their dead, but suspend them by thongs of leather

between the branches of the great trees, or expose them on scaffoldings

sufficiently high to place the body out of reach of the voracious wild

animals. The feet of the corpse are turned towards the rising sun; and

when the scaffoldings fall through old age, the bones are collected and

burned religiously within a circle formed of skulls. The sacred deposit

is guarded, as among the Mandans, by medicine-trees or posts, from

which amulets or medicine-bags are suspended.

On the death of a member of their tribe, the Potowatomies, the Ottawas,

and several other people of the north, distribute all the things which

belonged to the deceased to his friends. Some of them are Catholics,

and these fix on the tomb a great pole, at the summit of which floats

a banner ornamented with a black cross. Among these same tribes, when

a married man or woman dies, the survivor pays the debt of the body

by giving money, horses, and other presents to the relatives of the

deceased. The Ottawas sacrifice a horse on the tomb of the dead; they

strangle the animal by means of a noose, then cut off its tail and

suspend it to stakes fixed on the tomb. The women of the Crows also

pay the debt of the dead by making incisions deep in their own flesh.

The Chippewas are in the habit of lighting large fires on the tombs of

members of their family for several nights after the funeral.

As to the origin of this last-mentioned custom nothing is known; but

there exists among the Chippewas a legend which may be worth the

reader’s perusal as throwing some light on the subject.

“Once upon a time, many years ago, a war raged between the Chippewas

and their enemies, and the lands of the hostile tribes were red with

blood. It was then that a party of the Chippewas met a band of their

foes upon an open plain in the country of the Great Lakes. Meteewan,

the leader of the Chippewas, was a brave; his martial deeds were the

song of every youth who looked to obtain renown in the warpath; and

the young squaws talked of them at the fires. And never did the chief

act with more bravery or prudence than on this occasion. After he had,

by the strength of his arm, turned the battle against his enemies, and

while he was giving the great shout of victory, an arrow quivered in

his breast, and he fell upon the plain. No Indian warrior killed thus

is ever buried. According to old custom, he was placed in a sitting

posture upon the field of battle, his back supported by a tree, and

his face turned towards the path in which his enemies had fled. His

spear and club were placed in his hands, and his bow and quiver leaned

against his shoulder. So they left him.

[Illustration: “He heard them recount their valiant deeds.”]

“But was he gone to the land of spirits? Though he could not move, nor

speak, he heard all that had been said by his friends. He heard them

bewail his death and could not comfort them; he heard them speak of his

great deeds; he heard them depict the grief of his wife when she should

be told he was dead. He felt the touch of their hands, but his limbs

were bound in chains of strength, and he could not burst them. His

thoughts flowed as free as the great rivers; but his limbs were like

the fallen branches. His anguish, when he felt himself thus abandoned,

was heavy; but he was compelled to bear it. His wish to follow his

friends who were about to return to their wigwams so filled his mind,

that, after making a violent exertion, he rose, or seemed to rise, and

followed them.

But he was invisible; they neither saw his form nor heard his voice.

Astonishment, disappointment, rage filled him, while he attempted to

make himself heard, seen, or felt, and could not; but still he followed

on their track. “Wherever they went, he went; when they walked, he

walked; when they ran, he ran; when they built their fires, and sat

down, his feet were in the embers; when they slept, he slept; when they

awoke, he awoke. He heard them recount their valiant deeds, but he was

unable to tell them how much his own exceeded theirs; he heard them

paint the joys which awaited their return to their wigwams, but could

not say how much peace and how much love was in his.

“At length the war-party reached their village, and the women and

children came out to welcome their return. The old warrior whom

weakness had compelled to throw down the bow and the spear, and the

eagle-eyed boy who was fast hastening to take them up, did each his

part in making joy. The wife came forward with embraces, the timid

maiden with love weighing on her eyelids, to meet their braves. And if

an old warrior found not his son, he knew he had fallen bravely, and

grieved not; and if the wife found not her husband, she wept only a

little while: for was he not gone to the great Hunting Grounds?

“Still no one seemed conscious of the presence of the wounded chief.

He heard many ask for him; he heard them say that he had fought,

conquered, and fallen, pierced through his breast with an arrow, and

that his body had been left among the slain.

“‘It is not true,’ replied the indignant chief with a loud voice. ‘I

am here; I live! I move! See me! touch me! I shall again raise my

spear and bend my bow in the war path; I shall again sound my drum at

the feast.’ But nobody knew of his presence; they mistook the loudest

tones of his voice for the softest whisperings of the winds. He walked

to his own lodge; he saw his wife tearing her hair, and bewailing

him. He endeavoured to undeceive her, but she also was insensible to

his presence or his voice. She sat despairing, with her head upon her

hands. He told her to bind up his wounds, but she made no reply. He

then placed his mouth close to her ear and shouted, ‘Give me food.’ The

wife said, ‘It is a fly buzzing.’ Her enraged husband struck her upon

the forehead. She placed her hand to her head and said, ‘It is a little

arrow of pain.’

“Foiled thus in every attempt to make himself known, the chief began

to think upon what he had heard the priests and wise men say, that the

spirit sometimes left the body, and might wander. He reflected that

possibly his body had remained upon the field of battle, while his

spirit only accompanied his returning companions. He determined then

to return upon their track, though it was four days’ journey. He went.

For three days he pursued his way, and saw nothing; but on the fourth,

at evening, as he came to the skirts of the battle-field, he saw a fire

in the path. He walked on one side to avoid stepping into it, but the

fire also went aside, and was still before him. He went another way,

but the fire still burned in his path. ‘Demon!’ he exclaimed at length,

‘why dost thou keep my feet from the field of battle, where my body

lies? Knowest thou not that I am a spirit also, and seek again to enter

that body? Or dost thou say I shall return and do it not? Know that I

am a chief and a warrior, well tried in many a hard battle--I will not

be turned back.’

“So saying, he made a vigorous effort, and passed through the flame.

In this exertion he awoke from his trance, having lain eight days on

the field. He found himself sitting on the ground, with his back to

a tree, and his bow leaning against his shoulder, the same as they

had been left. Looking up, he beheld a large canieu, a war-eagle,

sitting upon the tree above his head. Then he knew this bird to be the

same he had dreamed of in his youth, and which he had taken as his

guardian spirit, his Manitou. While his body had lain breathless, this

friendly bird had watched it. He got up and stood upon his feet; but

he was weak, and it was a long time before he felt that his limbs were

his. The blood upon his wound had stanched itself; he bound it up.

Possessing, as every Indian does, the knowledge of medicinal roots, he

sought diligently in the woods for them, and obtained sufficient for

his purpose. Some of them he pounded between stones and placed upon

the wound, others he ate. So in a short time he found himself so much

recovered as to commence his journey. With his bow and arrows he killed

birds in the day, which he roasted before the fire at night. In this

way he kept hunger from him until he came to a water that separated his

wife and friends from him. He then gave that whoop which says a friend

is returned. The signal was instantly known, and a canoe came to bring

him across; and soon the chief was landed amidst many shouts. Then he

called his people to his lodge, and told them all that happened. Then

ever after it was resolved to build a fire by the dead warrior, that

he might have light and warmth, if he only dreamed as the chief had

dreamed.”

The Indians of Natchez carried to a still higher point their profound

veneration for those who were no more. At the funerals of their

relatives or friends they gave unequivocal signs of extreme and most

sincere grief. They did not burn the body, like the Greeks, the Romans,

and several American nations, but they placed it for a time in a coffin

of reed, and regularly brought it food in token of their love and

solicitude. This they continued till nothing remained of the body but

dry bones, which were then collected and placed in the funeral temple.

These temples of the dead only differed from the ordinary dwellings of

the Natchez in having a wooden head suspended over the entrance door.

Nothing could surpass their attachment to these relics of the departed

beings they had lost, and when they emigrated they generally carried

away the bones of their ancestors.

The interment of their sovereigns, or one of his near relations,

assumed with the Natchez the proportions of a public calamity. Such

funereal ceremonies were accompanied by a real voluntary massacre, in

which a multitude of individuals allied to the family of the deceased,

his friends or servants, were immolated. We will give, still through

the Abbé Dominech, a few examples of this custom, by citing some

details related in history concerning the death of the “Stung Serpent,”

brother of the “Great Sun.” As the number of victims to be sacrificed

during the funeral ceremony was very considerable, the officers of

Port Rosalie repaired to the village where the deceased had dwelt,

in order to save from death as many people as they could. Thanks to

the charitable intervention of the French, the number of victims was

limited to the two wives of the deceased, the chamberlain, physician,

servant, pipe-bearer, and a remarkably beautiful young Indian girl, who

had loved him greatly, and some old women, who were to be strangled

near the mortal remains of the noble dead.

The body of the “Stung Serpent” was clothed in beautiful garments, and

placed on a bed of state; his face was painted vermilion, on his feet

were beautiful embroidered mocassins, and on his head he wore a crown

of red and white feathers, as a prince of blood. By his side was placed

his gun, his pistol, his bow and a quiver full of arrows, and his best

tomahawk, with all the calumets of peace which had been offered to

him during his life. At the head of the bed was a red pole supporting

a chain of reeds also painted red, and composed of forty-six rings,

indicating the number of enemies he had killed in battle.

All the persons composing the household surrounded the deceased,

serving him from time to time as when in life; but as of course all the

food remained untouched, his servant called out, “Why do you not accept

our offerings? Do you no longer love your favourite meats? Are you

angry with us, and will you allow us no longer to serve you? Ah! you

speak to us no more as you used to do. You are dead! all is finished!

Our occupation is ended; and since you abandon us, we will follow you

to the land of spirits.” Then the servant uttered the death shout,

which was repeated by all present, and spread from village to village

to the farthest extremities of the country like a tremendous funeral

echo.

The beautiful young Indian, who would not survive her lover, raised her

voice in the midst of the general lamentations, and, addressing the

officers, said, “Chiefs and nobles of France, I see how much you regret

my husband. His death is indeed a great calamity for you, as well as

for your nation, for he carried them all in his heart. How he has left

us for the world of spirits; in two days I shall be with him, and I

will tell him that your hearts swelled with sadness at the sight of

his mortal remains. When I am no more, remember that our children are

orphans, remember that you loved their father, and let the dew of your

friendship fall in abundance on the children of him who was friendly to

you.”

The following day the grand master of the ceremonies came to fetch the

victims for the death dance, and led them in procession to the place

where they were to die. Each of them was accompanied by eight of his

nearest relatives, who were to perform the office of executioners: one

carried a tomahawk, and threatened every instant to strike the victim;

another carried the mat on which the sacrifice was to be made; a third

the cord which was to serve for the execution; a fourth bore the deer

skin which was to be placed on the head and shoulders of the condemned;

the fifth carried a wooden bowl containing the pills of tobacco which

the patient swallowed before dying; the sixth an earthen bottle full of

water, to facilitate the passage of the pills. The office of the last

two was to render the strangulation as speedy as possible, by drawing

the cord to the right and to the left of the patient.

These eight persons became noble after the execution: they walked two

and two after the victims, whose hair was painted red. On arriving at

the public place where the temple stood, all began to shout out the

death cry; the persons who were to be sacrificed placed themselves

on the mats, and danced the death dance. Their executioners formed a

circle round them, and danced the same dance; then all returned in

procession to the cabin of the deceased.

The inauspicious day of the funeral ceremony having arrived, the

legitimate wife of the “Stung Serpent” took leave of her children with

the following words. “The death of your father is a great loss. He

wills that I accompany him into the world of spirits, and I must not

let him wait for me in vain. I am in haste to depart, for since his

death I walk the earth with a heavy step. You are young, my children;

you have before you a long path, which you must pursue with a prudent

spirit and a courageous heart. Take care you do not tear your feet on

the thorns of duplicity and the stones of dishonesty. I leave you the

keys of your father’s inheritance, brilliant and without rust.”

The body of the prince was borne by eight guardians of the temple,

and preceded by a multitude of warriors, who, in walking, described

continual circles until they reached the temple where the body of

the “Stung Serpent” was deposited. The victims, after having been

strangled according to custom, were buried in the following order: the

two widows in the same tomb as their husband, the young Indian woman

to the right of the temple, and the chamberlain to the left. The other

bodies were removed to the different villages to which they belonged.

Then the dwelling of the “Stung Serpent” was fired, and burnt to its

foundations. Such were the barbarous and touching ceremonies observed

by the Natchez on the death of the highest dignitaries of their ancient

nation.

[Illustration: Dacotah Chief.]

CHAPTER XXIX.

Funeral rites in Damara land--The Koossan method of disposing

of the dead--The grave in the cattle fold--No recovering

spilt water--Coming out of mourning--No half mourning among

savages--The feast of release--The slave barracoon--A thousand

skeletons--The mortal remains of a Bechuana--The burying

ground at Fetich Point--The grave of old King Pass-all--A

Barrodo Beondo funeral--The late King Jemmy--Respect of the

Timannees for their dead--A Religious impostor--A funeral

at Mandingo--Strange behaviour of the mourners--By whose

“Griffee” did you die?--Burial of King Archibongo--His

devil-house--Funeral ceremonies in Madagascar--How the poor

Malagasey is disposed of--“Take that for dying”--Sepulchral

rites in Abyssinia--Burying in Sambo land--The demon

“Wulasha”--Blood rule in Dahomey--The very last grand

custom--Devil’s work--How a Dahoman king is buried--A pot for

the king’s bones.

Among the Damaras of South Africa the mode of disposing of the dead is

somewhat different from that practised by those who dwell in the more

remote parts of that country. Andersson tells us, that in the case

of the Damara, as soon as he dies (sometimes, indeed, it is horridly

rumoured, _before_ animation has ceased), his nearest kinsfolk

fetch a big stone and break the backbone, the more conveniently to

bundle and tie him nose and knees together. This accomplished, the

body is wrapped in the hide of an ox, a hole dug in the earth, and the

defunct squatted in with his face towards the north. This is done, say

the natives, to remind them where they originally came from.

When a poor Bechuana or Damara woman, having a helpless baby, dies,

it is no uncommon thing for the little creature to be placed with her

_alive_ in the hole dug for the reception of the adult body. Mr.

Rath, a missionary, happened on one occasion to approach a burial party

at which this atrocity was about to be committed, and was successful in

releasing the poor little thing.

“After having consigned the remains of a chief to his last

resting-place,” says Andersson, “they collect his arms, war-dress,

etc., and suspend them to a pole or to a tree at the head of the grave.

The horns of such oxen as have been killed in commemoration of the

occasion are hung up in a like manner. The tomb consists of a large

heap of stones surrounded by thorn bushes, no doubt to keep hyænas

and other carnivorous animals from extracting the corpse. Sometimes,

however, the chief, should he have expressed a wish to that effect,

instead of being buried is placed in a reclining position on a slightly

raised platform in the centre of his own hut, which in such a case is

surrounded by stout and strong palisadings.

[Illustration: Damara Tomb.]

“When a chief feels his dissolution approaching, he calls his sons to

his bedside and gives them his benediction, which consists solely in

wishing them an abundance of the good things of this world. The eldest

son of the chief’s favourite wife succeeds his father; and as soon as

the obsequies are over he quits the desolate spot, remaining absent for

years. At last, however, he returns, and immediately proceeds to his

parent’s grave, where he kneels down, and in a whispering voice tells

the deceased that he is there with his family and the cattle that he

gave him. He then prays for a long life; also that his herds may thrive

and multiply: and, in short, that he may obtain all those things that

are dear to a savage. This duty being performed, he constructs a kraal

on the identical spot where once the ancestral camp stood; even the

huts and the fireplaces are placed as near as possible in their former

position.

“The flesh of the first animal slaughtered here is cooked in a

particular vessel; and when ready the chief hands a portion of it to

every one present. An image consisting of two pieces of wood, supposed

to represent, the household deity, or rather the deified parent, is

then produced and moistened in the platter of each individual. The

chief then takes the image, and after affixing a piece of meat to the

upper end of it, he plants it in the ground on the identical spot where

the parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first pail of milk produced

from the cattle is also taken to the grave; a small quantity is also

poured over the ground, and a blessing asked on the remainder.

Among the Koossas, a tribe of South African natives, as soon as they

perceive a sick man near his end, he is carried from his hut to some

solitary spot beneath the shade of a tree. A fire is then made, and a

vessel and water set near him. Only the husband or wife, or some near

relation, remains with him. If he appear dying, water is thrown over

his head, in hopes of its reviving him; but should this fail, and it

becomes apparent that death is approaching, he is left by everybody

but his wife; or should the sick person be a woman, then it is her

husband alone who stays with her. The relations, however, do not retire

to their homes; they gather at a distance, and from time to time the

dying person’s nurse calls out and lets them know how matters are

progressing, till comes the final announcement “he is dead.” When all

is over, the dead man’s relatives proceed to the nearest stream, and,

having purified themselves, return home.

The wife, however, who must pay the last duties to her husband,

cannot do this. She leaves the body, about which no one is any longer

solicitous, to become a prey to beasts and birds, and goes with a

firebrand taken from the fire that had been kindled near the dying man,

to some other solitary place, where she again makes a fire, and though

it should rain ever so hard, she must not suffer it to be extinguished.

In the night she comes secretly to the hut where she had lived with her

husband, and burns it, and then returns back to her solitude, where she

must remain a month entirely secluded from the world, and living the

whole time on roots and berries. When this period of solitary mourning

has expired, she divests herself of her clothes, which she destroys,

bathes, lacerates her breasts and her arms with a sharp stone, and

having made her a long petticoat of rushes returns at sunset to the

kraal.

At her desire a youth of the tribe brings her a lighted firebrand, and

exactly on the spot where her husband’s hut formerly stood she builds

a fire; some one of her tribe then brings her some new milk, with

which she rinses her mouth, and she is then acknowledged as completely

purified, and is received once more among her relations and friends.

Singularly enough, however, the cow from which the milk is drawn is,

on the contrary, rendered impure, and though not killed, is neglected

entirely and left to die a natural death. The day following the widow’s

return an ox is killed, and after feasting on its flesh, the skin is

given to her to make her a new mantle. Immediately after this her

sisters-in-law assist her in building a new hut, and she is completely

reinstated in social life.

A widower has nearly the same mourning ceremonies to observe, only

with this difference, that his seclusion lasts but half a month. He

then throws his garments away and prepares himself a new garment from

the skin of an ox. He takes besides the hair the tail of the ox, with

which he makes himself a necklace and wears it as long as it will last.

If a person dies suddenly the whole colony will shift, judging that

no further luck will attend them if they stay, and the body of the

suddenly defunct is allowed to remain exactly as it fell, and with the

hut for its sepulchre. If, however, the individual suddenly dying is a

young child, impurity is supposed to attach only to the hut in which it

died, and which is either pulled down or closed up for ever.

It is only the chiefs and their wives who are buried. They are left to

die in their huts; the corpse is then wrapped in the folds of their

mantle and a grave is dug in the cattle-fold. After the earth is thrown

in some of the oxen are driven into the fold and remain there, so that

the earth is entirely trodden down and indistinguishable from the rest.

The oxen are then driven out; but they by this process become sacred

oxen, and must by no man be slain for his eating.

The widows of the deceased have all the household utensils which they

and their husbands had used together; and after remaining three days

in solitude purify themselves according to the usual manner. They then

each kill an ox, and each makes herself a new mantle of its hide. The

kraal is then entirely deserted by the tribe and is never chosen as

a building site, even though it be highly eligible and the horde in

search of a site is entirely unknown to that belonging to which the

chief died. A chief whose wife dies has the same ceremonies to observe

as any other man, excepting that with him the time of mourning is only

three days. The place where the wife of a chief is buried is forsaken

in the same manner as in the case of the chief himself.

The Koossas have no priests or religious ceremonies, and consequently

but few traditions. They know of no power superior to that with which

ordinary mortals are invested except that professed by enchanters,

which are of two sorts--good and bad; the former being the more

powerful and able to frustrate the designs of the latter, provided

that he be called on in time and the transaction be made worth his

while. The Koossan enchanters are, as a rule, old women--poor wretches

who, doubtless, finding themselves past labour and objects of contempt

and impatience among their tribe, avail themselves of their long

experience of the weaknesses and superstitions of those by whom they

are surrounded, and boldly set up as witches as the most certain means

of gaining not only the goodwill of the people but also their awe and

respect.

Should a Koossan find himself at what he has reason to suspect to be

death’s door, he sends for an enchantress. The “magic woman,” after

hearing his case--never mind what it may be--proceeds to cure him; she

makes some pellets of cow-dung, and laying them in rows and circles

upon the man’s stomach, chants certain mysterious airs and dances and

skips about him; after a while she will make a sudden dart at her

patient and hold up to her audience a snake or a lizard, which the said

audience is to infer was at that moment, through her force of magic,

extracted from the seat of the patient’s ailment. If the sick man

should die the excuse is that the appointed time of life had expired

and that “there was no recovering spilled water,” or else she puts a

bold face on the matter and declares that at least two evil enchanters

were working against her, and that against such odds success was

hopeless. In his dealings with these enchanters, however, the Koossan

has this substantial security that no stone will be left unturned

to effect his cure--the fee is agreed on beforehand and posted with

a friend; should the patient grow well the friend delivers the ox,

or whatever the fee may consist of, to the doctress; if the patient

should die, or after a reasonable time find himself no better for the

old lady’s services, he fetches home his ox and there is an end to the

matter.

If, however, the patient be an exacting individual and inclined to

avail himself to the fullest of Koossan law, he, although quite

restored to health through the witch’s agency, may still refuse to pay

her her fee till she discovers and brings to justice the person who

enchanted him. As this, however, is a mere matter of hard swearing,

combined with a little discrimination in the selection of the victim,

the witch-doctress is seldom averse to undertake this latter business.

The whole tribe is collected on a certain day, and in their midst a hut

is built. To this hut the witch retires on the pretence that before

she can reveal the name of the malefactor she must sleep, that he

may appear before her in a dream. The people without in the meantime

dance and sing for a while, till at length the men go into the hut and

beg the enchantress to come forward. At first she hesitates; but they

take her a number of assagais as a present, and in a little while she

makes her appearance with the weapons in her hand. While staying in the

hut she has busied herself in painting her body all sorts of colours,

and with scarcely any other covering she stalks into the midst of the

assembled throng.

With loud compassion for her nudity the people hasten to pluck their

ox-hide mantles from their own shoulders and cast them on those of the

witch, till she is nearly overwhelmed by these demonstrations of their

solicitude. Suddenly, however, she starts up, flings off the cover of

mantles, and makes a rush towards a certain man or woman, striking him

or her with the bundle of assagais. For the unlucky wretch to protest

his innocence it is utterly useless. The rabble, chafing like other

beasts, seizes the evil doer and impatiently await the good witch’s

decision as to what had best be done with him--whether, for instance,

he shall be buried under an ant heap or put in a hole in the ground

and covered with large hot stones. Should the ant hill be his doom,

lingering torture and death are certain; but if he be a very strong man

he may resist the hot stone torture, and when night arrives may force

the terrible weights from off him, and dragging his poor scorched body

out of the hole make his escape. Never again, however, must he venture

among the people, who in all probability number among them his wife and

children; for should he do so he would be executed off hand and his

body thrown out to the hyænas.

In certain parts of the interior of Africa the custom of “waking” the

defunct is ordinarily practised. Du Chaillu had a serving man named

Tonda, and one day Tonda died, and the traveller having a suspicion

of the ceremony that would be performed visited the house of Tonda’s

mother, where the body lay. The narrow space of the room was crowded;

about two hundred women were sitting and standing around, singing

mourning songs to doleful and monotonous airs. “They were so huddled

together that for a while I could not distinguish the place of the

corpse. At last some moved aside, and behold! the body of my friend.

It was seated in a chair, dressed in a black tail coat and a pair of

pantaloons, and wore round its neck several strings of beads. Tonda’s

mother approaching her dead son, prostrated herself before him and

begged him to speak to her once more. A painful silence followed the

of course fruitless adjuration; but presently it was broken by the loud

hopeless wailing uttered by the bereaved woman, the rest of the company

making dolorous chorus.”

[Illustration: African Wake.]

The savages of Central Africa do not wear black for their departed

relatives, unless indeed an accumulative coat of dirt may be so called;

for it is a fact that among these people the way to express extreme

sorrow is to go unwashed and very dirty. Besides, they wear about their

bodies any ragged cloth that comes handy, and altogether evidently

endeavour to convey the idea that now so-and-so is dead their relish

for life is at an end, and that the frivolous question of personal

appearance is no longer worth discussing. To their credit be it named,

however, they are not guilty of the monstrous civilized custom of

_half_-mourning. They don’t immediately on the death of a friend

don attire and virtually proclaim, “See how sorry I am!--see my jetty

gown or coat and the black studs in my shirt-front!” nor do they, when

the deceased has passed away three months or less, streak their black

with white and proclaim, “I am a _little_ more cheerful--you may

see how much by the breadth of the white stripe in my ribands.” The

African is happily ignorant of these grades of grief; when he sorrows

he sorrows to the very dust, but between that mood and boisterous

merriment is with him but a single skip. Thus when the mourning period

has expired (it varies from one to two years) a day is appointed for

the breaking-up of mourning-time and a return to the bright side of the

world. The friends and relatives and the widows (there are often six

or seven of them) come in gangs of ten or a dozen from villages far

off--some by the road, and some in their canoes, and none empty-handed.

Each one is provided with a jar of _mimbo_ or palm wine, and

_something that will make a row_--gunpowder, kettles with round

stones to shake in them, drums, tom-toms, and whistles made of reed.

The row is the leading feature of the breaking-up, and is called

_bola woga_. Virtually the mourning is over the evening before the

ceremony commences, for the company have all arrived, as has the dead

man’s heir (who, by-the-by, can, if he chooses, claim and take home

every widow on the establishment), and the bereaved wives, albeit as

yet uncleansed from their long-worn and grimy mourning suit, are full

of glee and giggle, and have pleasant chat among themselves concerning

the gay rig out they will adopt to-morrow.

To-morrow comes. Early in the morning the village is informed that the

widows are already up and have already partaken of a certain magic

brew that effectually divorces them from their weeds. The gun firing

is likewise the signal for as many as choose to come and take part in

the jollification, and as it invariably happens that as many as like

unlimited _mimbo_ accept the invitation, the entire population

may presently be seen wending one way--toward the feast house. There

they find mats spread not only about the house, but down the street

that leads to it, and there they find the cleanly-washed widows decked

in spotless calico and wearing anklets and wristlets heavy enough to

account for their sedate mien. Then all the guests, having taken care

that floods of _mimbo_ are within easy reach, take their seats,

and more guns are fired, and the orgie commences, and concludes not

till every jar of palm wine has been broached, all the gunpowder

expended, every drum-head beaten in, and every kettle hammered into

a shapeless thing by the banging of the stones within. The rising

moon finds them to a man huddled in every possible attitude about the

wine-stained mats, helplessly drunk and with each other’s carcases, and

cooking pots, and jars, and fractured drums as pillows. Next day the

house of the deceased is razed to the ground, and the mourning for the

rich man with many wives is at an end.

While Du Chaillu was sojourning at Sangatanga, the domains of a certain

African king named Bango, whose chief revenue is derived from dealing

in slaves and by taxing the slave “factors” whose “barracoons” (as

the slave warehouses are called) are situated on the coast there;

he was witness to the disposal of the body of a poor wretch who had

fortunately died before he could be bought, hauled aboard a slaver,

and “traded-off” anywhere where the market was briskest. If anything

can be told in connexion with the hideous system further to disgust

its enemies--which happily includes every man in England’s broad

dominions--it is such stories as the following:

“During my stay in the village, as I was one day shooting birds in a

grove not far from my house, I saw a procession of slaves coming from

one of the barracoons towards the further end of my grove. As they came

nearer I saw that two gangs of six slaves each, all chained about the

neck, were carrying a burden between them, which I presently knew to

be the corpse of another slave. They bore it to the edge of the grove,

about three hundred yards from my house, and there throwing it down

upon the bare ground returned to their prison, accompanied by their

overseer, who with his whip had marched behind them hither. Here,

then, is the burying-ground of the barracoon, I said to myself sadly,

thinking, I confess, of the poor fellow who had been dragged away from

his home and friends to die here and be thrown out as food for the

vultures, who even as I stood in thought began already to darken the

air above my head and were presently heard fighting over the remains.

“The grove, which was in fact but an African aceldama, was beautiful to

view from my house, and I had often resolved to explore it and rest in

the shade of its dark-foliaged trees. It seemed a ghastly place enough

now, as I approached it to see more closely the work of the disgusting

vultures. They fled when they saw me, but only a little way, sitting

upon the lower branches of the surrounding trees watching me with eyes

askance, as though fearful I would rob them of their prey.

“As I walked towards the body I felt something crack under my feet,

and looking down saw that I was already in the midst of the field of

skulls. I had inadvertently stepped into the skeleton of some poor

creature who had been thrown here long enough ago for the birds and

ants to pick his bones clean and the rains to bleach them. I think

there must have been a thousand such skeletons lying within my sight.

The place had been used for many years, and the mortality in the

barracoons is sometimes frightful. Here the dead were thrown, and here

the vultures found their daily carrion. The grass had just been burned,

and the white bones scattered everywhere gave the ground a singular,

and when the cause was known, a frightful appearance. Penetrating a

little farther into the bush, I found great piles of bones.

[Illustration: The “Master of Life” as represented in Equatorial

Africa.]

“Here was the place where, when years ago Cape Lopez was one of the

great slave markets on the west coast and barracoons were more numerous

than now, the poor dead were thrown one upon another till even the

mouldering bones remained in high piles as monuments of the nefarious

traffic.”

In Angola, in cases of death the body is kept several days, and there

is a grand concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and

debauchery kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the

relatives. The great ambition of many of the blacks of Angola is to

give their friends an expensive funeral. Often when one is asked to

sell a pig he replies, “I am keeping it in case of the death of any of

my friends.” A pig is usually slaughtered and eaten on the last day of

the ceremonies, and its head thrown into the nearest stream or river.

A native will sometimes appear intoxicated on these occasions, and if

blamed for his intemperance will reply, “Why, don’t you know that my

mother is dead,” as if he thought it a sufficient justification. The

expenses of funerals are so heavy that often years elapse before they

can defray them.

The Bechuanas of Southern Africa generally bury their dead. The

ceremony of interment, etc., varies in different localities and is

influenced by the rank of the deceased. But the following is a fair

specimen of the way in which these obsequies are managed:

On the approaching dissolution of a man, a skin or net is thrown over

the body, which is held in a sitting posture with the knees doubled

up under the chin, until life is extinct. A grave is then dug--very

frequently in the cattle-fold--six feet in depth and about three in

width, the interior being rubbed over with a certain large bulb. The

body, having the head covered, is then conveyed through a hole made for

the purpose in the house and the surrounding fence and deposited in

the grave in a sitting position, care being taken to put the face of

the corpse against the north. Portions of an ant-hill are placed about

the feet, when the net which held the body is gradually withdrawn.

As the grave is filled up the earth is handed in with bowls, while

two men stand in the hole to tread it down round the body, great care

being taken to pick out anything like a root or pebble. When the earth

reaches the height of the mouth, a small twig or branch of an acacia

is thrown in, and on the top of the head a few roots of grass are

placed. The grave being nearly filled, another root of grass is fixed

immediately over the head, part of which stands above ground. When this

portion of the ceremony is over, the men and women stoop, and with

their hands scrape on to the little mound the loose soil lying about.

A large bowl of water, with an infusion of bulbs, is now brought, when

the men and women wash their hands and the upper part of their legs,

shouting “Pùla, pùla” (rain, rain). An old woman, probably a relation,

will then bring the weapons of the deceased (bows, arrows, war-axe,

and even the bone of an old pack ox), with other things. They finally

address the grave, saying, “These are all your articles.” The things

are then taken away and bowls of water are poured on the grave, when

all retire, the women wailing, “Yo, yo, yo,” with some doleful dirge,

sorrowing without hope.