Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri / Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch

by Edwin Thompson Denig

The death of ordinary Indians is attended with like results, though if not warriors of note they are merely enveloped in their ordinary clothing and blankets or skins with their implements, but no horse is killed over their grave. When women die their favorite dogs are killed and all their tools for scraping and dressing hides, with their pillow and porcupine quills, are enveloped with them. If she be the wife of a chief or man of importance she is also wrapped in scarlet cloth, formerly in painted skins. There is as much mourning and distress observed on the death of their children, perhaps more, than when grown. On these occasions often some one of the parents destroy themselves, and all other Indians are very attentive to them for several days until the most violent grief is over. Should anyone offend the parent during this time his death would most certainly follow, as the man, being in profound sorrow, seeks something on which to wreak his revenge, and he soon after goes to war, to kill or be killed, either of which being immaterial to him in that state.

The reason the implements are deposited in the grave is that they are supposed to be necessary to his being in the world of spirits. It is a very ancient custom, perhaps coeval with their existence.

We know of no tumulus or barrow erected either in former or later times through this country containing many bodies or possessing the character of a charnel house, but are in the knowledge of the graves of many chiefs either on scaffolds or on hills.

Bodies are never interred in a sitting posture, though that manner is sometimes observed when deposited in the lodge above ground and the posture preserved by stakes driven in around the body with forks on the end supporting the different members and equilibrium.

There are no herbs or spices placed with the corpse, neither is it submitted to any process analogous to embalming. It is enveloped, as before mentioned, in skins to which those who can afford it add scarlet cloth and blankets.

Scaffolding of corpses is the general manner of disposing of them with all the prairie tribes, and the way they are prepared has been alluded to. They would prefer having them boxed instead of baled, but have no tools to prepare timber, and even if they had can not at all times procure it, which together with their lack of means to excavate in these frozen regions were no doubt the original causes of this mode of burial. When bodies are brought to the trading houses for interment or scaffolding they are always boxed by the whites, the coffin being made large enough to contain the implements and ornaments enveloped with the corpse. This in former times was a great honor done the Indians and highly recompensed, but of later years is a great bore and expense.

This method of securing them can, however, only be embraced when death takes place near the houses, and consequently happens to few. The Mandan and Gros Ventres, being stationed at the fort with those nations, have their dead boxed by the whites and placed on a scaffold made of posts planted near their villages. The Arikara prefer interring them in the ground, and all the rest of the tribes place their dead, secured in the manner described before, in the forks of trees, which in a year or two, as soon as the cords rot off and the envelopes fall to pieces, are blown down, and the bones are found scattered beneath. Carnivorous birds, such as eagles, ravens, and magpies, often pick at the envelope until they get at the body, but if it is well strapped in rawhide it is generally secure from either birds or beasts as long as it remains in the tree.

It is the custom of the Assiniboin to put up a funeral flag over the graves of their dead, particularly children, which at this time is composed of some such fabric as red flannel or calico tied to a pole, but which was formerly made of feathers and light skins. This is a very ancient custom, arising, we are told, from the necessity of having some such object thus raised which, fluttering in the wind, frightens away the beasts and birds of prey.

The custom of collecting and reinterring the bones is very general at the present day among all these tribes; indeed, it is seldom neglected if when they visit the scaffold they find the body to have blown down and the bones exposed.

The bones are picked by any one of the party, not related, in the presence of some of the relatives of the deceased, and this time buried in the ground, with demonstrations of grief and some scarifying, though they do not go into mourning dresses further than some white clay about the face, and no property is confiscated by others, as in the case of the first funeral, but those who aid are paid with some smaller articles. On these occasions a feast is made for the dead which, being eaten, and the spirit propitiated by prayer and invocation, the whole concludes, those concerned resuming their usual dress and occupations.