A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians
Tsinūk, tamahno-ūs, mé-mel-ūs-illa-hee; Kaw-a-wāh, Tāh-zee: macron (“long” mark) on a or u
There is also a single Greek word. If any of these characters do not display properly, or if the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s default font.
Much of this article is quoted from other published sources. The resulting inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation are unchanged. Typographical errors are shown with mouse-hover popups . Differences in punctuation or hyphenization between the List of Illustrations and the captions themselves are not noted.
The Table of Contents and Index were supplied from the beginning and end of the Annual Report volume. The List of Illustrations was printed with the article. For this e-text, illustrations were placed as close as practical to their discussion in the text; the List of Illustrations shows their original location.
In the original, Figure 12 was printed before Figure 11 (both full-page Plates). Figure 45 ( on page 196) was printed before the group of plates 34-44 ( between pages 196 and 197).
In view of the fact that the present paper will doubtless reach many readers who may not, in consequence of the limited edition, have seen the preliminary volume on mortuary customs, it seems expedient to reproduce in great part the prefatory remarks which served as an introduction to that work; for the reasons then urged, for the immediate study of this subject, still exist, and as time flies on become more and more important.
The primitive manners and customs of the North American Indians are rapidly passing away under influences of civilization and other disturbing elements. In view of this fact, it becomes the duty of all interested in preserving a record of these customs to labor assiduously, while there is still time, to collect such data as may be obtainable. This seems the more important now, as within the last ten years an almost universal interest has been awakened in ethnologic research, and the desire for more knowledge in this regard is constantly increasing. A wise and liberal government, recognizing the need, has ably seconded the efforts of those engaged in such studies by liberal grants, from the public funds; nor is encouragement wanted from the hundreds of scientific societies throughout the civilized globe. The public press, too—the mouth-piece of the people—is ever on the alert to scatter broadcast such items of ethnologic information as its corps of well-trained reporters can secure. To induce further laudable inquiry, and assist all those who may be willing to engage in the good work, is the object of this further paper on the mortuary customs of North American Indians, and it is hoped that many more laborers may through it be added to the extensive and honorable list of those who have already contributed.