Argument XX.
The Jewish records tell us, that their women Mourned for the loss of their deceased husbands, and were reckoned vile, by the civil law, if they married in the space, at least, of ten months after their death. In resemblance to that custom, all the Indian widows, by an established strict penal law, mourn for the loss of their deceased husbands; and among some tribes for the space of three or four years. But the East-India Pagans forced the widow, to sit on a pile of wood, and hold the body of her husband on her knees, to be consumed together in the flames.
The Muskohge widows are obliged to live a chaste single life, for the tedious space of four years; and the Chikkasah women, for the term of three, at the risque of the law of adultery being executed against the recusants. Every evening, and at the very dawn of day, for the first year of her widowhood, she is obliged through the fear of shame to lament her loss, in very intense audible strains. As Yah ah signifies weeping, lamenting, mourning, or Ah God; and as the widows, and others, in their grief bewail and cry Yo He (ta) Wah, Yohetaweh; Yohetaha Yohetahe, the origin is sufficiently clear. For the Hebrews reckoned it so great an evil to die unlamented, like Jehoiakim, Jer. xxii. 18. “who had none to say, Ah, my brother! Ah, my sister! Ah, my Lord! Ah, his glory!” that it is one of the four judgments they pray against, and it is called the burial of an ass. With them, burying signified lamenting, and so the Indian widows direct their mournful cries to the author of life and death, insert a plural note in the sacred name, and again transpose the latter, through an invariable religious principle, to prevent a prophanation.
Their law compels the widow, through the long term of her weeds, to refrain all public company and diversions, at the penalty of an adulteress; {186} and likewise to go with flowing hair, without the privilege of oil to anoint it. The nearest kinsmen of the deceased husband, keep a very watchful eye over her conduct, in this respect. The place of interment is also calculated to wake the widow’s grief, for he is intombed in the house under her bed. And if he was a war-leader, she is obliged for the first moon, to sit in the day-time under his mourning war-pole[[XLIX]], which is decked with all his martial trophies, and must be heard to cry with bewailing notes. But none of them are fond of that month’s supposed religious duty, it chills, or sweats, and wastes them so exceedingly; for they are allowed no shade, or shelter. This sharp rigid custom excites the women to honour the marriage-state, and keeps them obliging to their husbands, by anticipating the visible sharp difficulties which they must undergo for so great a loss. The three or four years monastic life, which she lives after his death, makes it her interest to strive by every means, to keep in his lamp of life, be it ever so dull and worthless; if she is able to shed tears on such an occasion, they often proceed from self-love. We can generally distinguish between the widow’s natural mourning voice, and her tuneful laboured strain. She doth not so much bewail his death, as her own recluse life, and hateful state of celibacy; which to many of them, is an uneligible, as it was to the Hebrew ladies, who preferred death before the unmarried state, and reckoned their virginity a bewailable condition, like the state of the dead.
[XLIX]. The war-pole is a small peeled tree painted red, the top and boughs cut off short: it is fixt in the ground opposite to his door, and all his implements of war, are hung on the short boughs of it, till they rot.
The Choktah Indians hire mourners to magnify the merit and loss of their dead, and if their tears cannot be seen to flow, their shrill voices will be heard to cry, which answers the solemn chorus a great deal better[[L]]. However, they are no way churlish of their tears, for I have seen them, on the occasion, pour them out, like fountains of water: but after having {187} thus tired themselves, they might with equal propriety have asked by-standers in the manner of the native Irish, Ara ci fuar bass—“And who is dead?”
[L]. Jer. ix. 17. 19. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: consider ye, and call for the mourning-women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, how are we spoiled? we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out.
They formerly dressed their heads with black moss on those solemn occasions; and the ground adjacent to the place of interment, they now beat with laurel-brushes, the women having their hair disheveled: the first of which customs seems to be derived from the Hebrew custom of wearing sack-cloth at their funeral solemnities, and on other occasions, when they afflicted their souls before God—to which divine writ often alludes, in describing the blackness of the skies: and the laurel being an ever-green, is a lively emblem of the eternity of the human soul, and the pleasant state it enters into after death, according to antiquity. They beat it on the ground, to express their sharp pungent grief; and, perhaps, to imitate the Hebrew trumpeters for the dead, in order to make as striking a sound as they possibly can on so doleful an occasion.
Though the Hebrews had no positive precept that obliged the widow to mourn the death of her husband, or to continue her widowhood, for any time; yet the gravity of their tempers, and their scrupulous nicety of the law of purity, introduced the observance of those modest and religious customs, as firmly under the penalty of shame, as if they bore the sanction of law[[LI]]. In imitation of them, the Indians have copied so exactly, as to compel the widow to act the part of the disconsolate dove, for the irreparable loss of her mate. Very different is the custom of other nations:—the Africans, when any of their head-men die, kill all their slaves, their friends that were dearest to them, and all their wives whom they loved best, that they may accompany and serve them, in the other world, which is a most diabolical Ammonitish sacrifice of human blood. The East-India widows may refuse to be burned on their husbands funeral piles, with impunity, if they become prostitutes, or public women to sing and dance at marriages, or on other occasions of rejoicing. How superior {188} is the virtuous custom of the savage Americans, concerning female chastity during the time of their widowhood?
[LI]. Theodosius tells us, Lib. I. Legum de fecundis nuptiis, that women were infamous by the civil law, who married a second time before a year, or at least ten months were expired.
The Indian women mourn three moons, for the death of any female of their own family or tribe. During that time, they are not to anoint, or tie up their hair; neither is the husband of the deceased allowed, when the offices of nature do not call him, to go out of the house, much less to join any company: and in that time of mourning he often lies among the ashes. The time being expired, the female mourners meet in the evening of the beginning of the fourth moon, at the house where their female relation is intombed, and stay there till morning, when the nearest surviving old kinswoman crops their fore-locks pretty short. This they call Ehó Intànáah, “the women have mourned the appointed time.” Ehó signifies “a woman,” Inta “finished by divine appointment,” Aà “moving” or walking, and Ah, “their note of grief, sorrow, or mourning:” the name expresses, and the custom is a visible certificate of, their having mourned the appointed time for their dead. When they have eaten and drank together, they return home by sun-rise, and thus finish their solemn Yah-ah.[[82]]