MORTUARY PRACTICES.
Several devices indicating death are presented under other headings of this paper. See, for example, page [103] and the illustrations in connection with the text.
According to Powers, “A Yokaia widow’s style of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the usual evidences of grief she mingles the ashes of her dead husband with pitch, making a white tar or unguent, with which she smears a band about 2 inches wide all around the edge of the hair (which is previously cut off close to the head), so that at a little distance she appears to be wearing a white chaplet.” (See Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 166.) Mr. Dorsey reports that mud is used by a mourner in the sacred-bag war party among the Osages. Many objective modes of showing mourning by styles of paint and markings are known, the significance of which are apparent when discovered in pictographs.
Figure 112 is copied from a piece of ivory in the museum of the Alaska Commercial Company, San Francisco, California, and was interpreted by an Alaskan native in San Francisco in 1882.
Fig. 112.—Votive offering. Alaska.
No. 1. Is a votive offering or “Shaman stick,” erected to the memory of one departed. The “bird” carvings are considered typical of “good spirits,” and the above was erected by the remorse-stricken individual, No. 3, who had killed the person shown in No. 2.
No. 2. The headless body represents the man who was killed. In this respect the Ojibwa manner of drawing a person “killed” is similar.
No. 3. The individual who killed No. 2, and who erected the “grave-post” or “sacred stick.” The arm is thrown earthward, resembling the Blackfeet and Dakota gesture for “kill.”
The following is the text in Aígalúxamut:
Nu-ná-mu-quk´ á-x’l-xik´ aí-ba-li to-qgú-qlu gú nú-hu tcuk nac-quí
Place two quarrel(with) one another, (one) killed him (the large knife took head
other) (with a)
qlu-gú, i-nó-qtclu-gu; Ka-sá-ha-lik´ na-bŏn´ ca-gú-lŭk a-gú-nŭ-qua-qlu-hŭ’.
off, laid him down; Shaman stick bird to set (or place) on the
(buried) (offering) (wooden) top of (over).
That portion of the Kauvuya tribe of Indians in Southern California known as the Playsanos, or lowlanders, formerly inscribed characters upon the gravestones of their dead, relating to the pursuits or good qualities of the deceased. Dr. W. J. Hoffman obtained several pieces or slabs of finely-grained sandstone near Los Angeles, California, during the summer of 1884, which had been used for this purpose. Upon these were the drawings, in incised lines, of the Fin-back whale, with figures of men pursuing them with harpoons. Around the etchings were close parallel lines with cross lines similar to the drawings made on ivory by the southern Innuit of Alaska.