On it the likeness of the man or woman who is buried there is roughly engraved. If a man, they put on a buckler, a spear, war club, and bows and arrows. If he is a chief he will have a plume on his head and some other designs or ornaments. If a boy, they give him one bow and a single arrow. If a woman or girl, they put on a kettle, an earthen pot, a wooden spoon, and a paddle. The wooden tomb is 6 or 7 feet long and 4 wide, painted yellow and red.
Some northern tribes—probably Cree—according to the Jesuit Relations (a), gave a notice of death to absent relations or dear friends of the deceased by hanging the object signifying his name on the path by which the traveler must return, e. g., if the name of the deceased was Piré (Partridge) the skin of a partridge was suspended. The main object of the notice was that the traveler, thereby knowing of the death, should not on his return to the lodge or village ask after or mention the deceased. Perhaps this explains the custom of placing pictographs of personal names and totemic marks on some prominent point or on trails without any apparent incident.
The same Relation describes a custom of the same Indians of shaping out of wood a portraiture of the more distinguished dead and inserting it over their graves, afterwards painting and greasing it as if it were the live man.
In Keating’s Long (g) it is told that the Sac Indians are particular in their demonstrations of grief for departed friends. These consist in darkening their faces with charcoal, fasting, abstaining from the use of vermillion and other ornaments in dress, etc. They also make incisions in their arms, legs, and other parts of the body; these are not made for the purposes of mortification, or to create a pain which shall by dividing their attention efface the recollection of their loss, but entirely from a belief that their grief is internal and that the only way of dispelling it is to give it a vent through which to escape.
This is an explanation of the practice which has been verified in the field work of the Bureau of Ethnology and corresponds with the concept of finding relief from disease and pain by similar incisions, to let out the supposed invading entity that causes distress.
The same authority, p. 332, gives the following account of Dakota burial scaffolds:
On these scaffolds, which are from 8 to 10 feet high, corpses were deposited in a box made from part of a broken canoe. Some hair was suspended which we at first mistook for a scalp; but our guide informed us that these were locks of hair torn from their heads by the relations to testify their grief. In the center, between the four posts which supported the scaffold, a stake was planted in the ground; it was about 6 feet high, and bore an imitation of human figures; five of which had a design of a petticoat, indicating them to be females; the rest, amounting to seven, were naked, and were intended for male figures. Of the latter, four were headless, showing that they had been slain; the three other male figures were unmutilated but held a staff in their hands which, as our guide informed us, designated that they were slaves. The post, which is an usual accompaniment to the scaffold that supports a warrior’s remains, does not represent the achievements of the deceased, but those of the warriors that assembled near his remains, danced the dance of the post, and related their martial exploits.
Maximilian, Prince of Wied (d), tells that as a sign of mourning the Sioux daub themselves with white clay.
According to Powers, (d) “A Yokaia widow’s style of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the usual evidence of grief she mingles the ashes of the dead husband with pitch, making a white tar or ungent with which she smears a band about two inches wide all around the edge of her hair (which is previously cut off close to the head), so that at a little distance she appears to be wearing a white chaplet.”
Mr. Dorsey reports that mud is used by a mourner in the sacred-bag war party among the Osages. Several modes of showing mourning by styles of paint and markings are presented in this paper under the headings of Color and of Tattooing. Other practices connected with the present topic, and which may explain some pictographs, are described in the work of Dr. H. C. Yarrow, acting assistant surgeon, U. S. Army, on The Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians, in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.