This account was taken in the Tuccabatchey-square, 27th July, 1759, per Will. Bolsover. (A) It was at this town, the great Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, delivered orations against the Americans and their government which led the Upper Creeks to rise in arms (1813), and finally to the Creek War. The same plates are referred to in C. Swan’s Account in Schoolcraft’s Information Indian Tribes, V, 283. (W)
As the Hebrews carefully buried their dead, so on any accident, they gathered their bones and laid them in the tombs of their fore-fathers:[[78]] Thus, all the numerous nations of Indians perform the like friendly office to every deceased person of their respective tribe; insomuch, that those who {179} lose their people at war, if they have not corrupted their primitive customs, are so observant of this kindred duty, as to appropriate some time to collect the bones of their relations; which they call bone gathering, or “gathering the bones to their kindred,” according to the Hebrew idiom[[XLVI]]. The Cheerake, by reason of their great intercourse with foreigners, have dropped that friendly office: and as they seem to be more intelligent than the rest of our English-American Indians in their religious rites, and ceremonial observances, so I believe, the fear of pollution has likewise contributed to obliterate that ancient kindred duty. However, they separate those of their people who die at home, from others of a different nation; and every particular tribe indeed of each nation bears an intense love to itself, and divides every one of its people from the rest, both while living, and after they are dead.
[XLVI]. With the Hebrews, “to gather,” usually signified to die. Gen. xlix. 33. Jacob is said to be gathered to his people. Psal. xxvi. 9. Gather not my soul with sinners. And Numb. xx. 24. Aaron shall be gathered to his people.
When any of them die at a distance, if the company be not driven and pursued by the enemy, they place the corpse on a scaffold,[[79]] covered with notched logs to secure it from being torn by wild beasts, or fowls of prey: when they imagine the flesh is consumed, and the bones are thoroughly dried, they return to the place, bring them home, and inter them in a very solemn manner. They will not associate with us, when we are burying any of our people, who die in their land: and they are unwilling we should join with them while they are performing this kindred duty to theirs. Upon which account, though I have lived among them in the raging time of the small pox, even of the confluent sort, I never saw but one buried, who was a great favourite of the English, and chieftain of Ooeasa, as formerly described.
The Indians use the same ceremonies to the bones of their dead, as if they were covered with their former skin, flesh, and ligaments. It is but a few days since I saw some return with the bones of nine of their people, who had been two months before killed by the enemy. They were tied in white deer-skins, separately; and when carried by the door of one of the houses of their family, they were laid down opposite to it, till the female {180} relations convened, with flowing hair, and wept over them about half an hour. Then they carried them home to their friendly magazines of mortality, wept over them again, and then buried them with the usual solemnities; putting their valuable effects, and as I am informed, other convenient things in along with them, to be of service to them in the next state. The chieftain carried twelve short sticks tied together, in the form of a quadrangle; so that each square consisted of three. The sticks were only peeled, without any paintings; but there were swans feathers tied to each corner, and as they called that frame, Tereekpe tobeh, “a white circle,” and placed it over the door, while the women were weeping over the bones, perhaps it was originally designed to represent the holy fire, light, and spirit, who formerly presided over the four principal standards of the twelve tribes of Israel.
When any of their people die at home, they wash and anoint the corpse, and soon bring it out of doors for fear of pollution; then they place it opposite to the door, on the skins of wild beasts, in a sitting posture, as looking into the door of the winter house, westward, sufficiently supported with all his moveable goods; after a short elogium, and space of mourning, they carry him three times around the house in which he is to be interred, stopping half a minute each time, at the place where they began the circle, while the religious man of the deceased person’s family, who goes before the hearse, says each time, Yàh, short with a bass voice, and then invokes on a tenor key, Yo, which at the same time is likewise sung by all the procession, as long as one breath allows. Again, he strikes up, on a sharp treble key, the fœminine note, He, which in like manner, is taken up and continued by the rest: then all of them suddenly strike off the solemn chorus, and sacred invocation, by saying, on a low key, Wàh; which constitute the divine essential name, Yohewah. This is the method in which they performed the funeral rites of the chieftain before referred to; during which time, a great many of the traders were present, as our company was agreeable at the interment of our declared patron and friend. It seems as if they buried him in the name of the divine essence, and directed their plaintive religious notes to the author of life and death, in hopes of a resurrection of the body; which hope engaged the Hebrews to stile their burying places, “the house of the living.” {181}
When they celebrated these funeral rites of the above chieftain, they laid the corpse in his tomb, in a sitting posture, with his face towards the east, his head anointed with bear’s oil, and his face painted red, but not streaked with black, because that is a constant emblem of war and death; he was drest in his finest apparel, having his gun and pouch, and trusty hiccory bow, with a young panther’s skin, full of arrows, along side of him, and every other useful thing he had been possessed of,—that when he rises again, they may serve him in that tract of land which pleased him best before he went to take his long sleep. His tomb was firm and clean in-side. They covered it with thick logs, so as to bear several tiers of cypress-bark, and such a quantity of clay as would confine the putrid smell, and be on a level with the rest of the floor. They often sleep over those tombs; which, with the loud wailing of the women at the dusk of the evening, and dawn of the day, on benches close by the tombs, must awake the memory of their relations very often: and if they were killed by an enemy, it helps to irritate and set on such revengeful tempers to retaliate blood for blood.
The Egyptians either embalmed, or buried, their dead: other heathen nations imagined that fire purified the body; they burned therefore the bodies of their dead, and put their ashes into small urns, which they religiously kept by them, as sacred relicks. The Tartars called Kyrgessi, near the frozen sea, formerly used to hang their dead relations and friends upon trees, to be eaten by ravenous birds to purify them. But the Americans seem evidently to have derived their copy from the Israelites, as to the place where they bury their dead, and the method of their funeral ceremonies, as well as the persons with whom they are buried, and the great expenses they are at in their burials. The Hebrews buried near the city of Jerusalem, by the brook Kedron; and they frequently hewed their tombs out of rocks, or buried their dead opposite to their doors, implying a silent lesson of friendship, and a pointing caution to live well. They buried all of one family together; to which custom David alludes, when he says, “gather me not with the wicked:” and Sophronius said with regard to the like form, “noli me tangere, hæretice, neque vivum nec mortuum.” But they buried strangers apart by themselves, and named the place, Kebhare Galeya, “the burying place of strangers.” And these rude Americans are so strongly partial to the same custom, that they imagine if any of us {182} were buried in the domestic tombs of their kindred, without being adopted, it would be very criminal in them to allow it; and that our spirits would haunt the eaves of their houses at night, and cause several misfortunes to their family.
In resemblance to the Hebrew custom of embalming their dead, the Choktah treat the corpse just as the religious Levite did his beloved concubine, who was abused by the Benjamites; for having placed the dead on a high scaffold stockaded round, at the distance of twelve yards from his house opposite to the door, the whole family convene there at the beginning of the fourth moon after the interment, to lament and feast together: after wailing a while on the mourning benches, which stand on the east side of the quadrangular tomb, they raise and bring out the corpse, and while the feast is getting ready, a person whose office it is, and properly called the bone-picker, dissects it, as if it was intended for the shambles in the time of a great famine, with his sharp-pointed, bloody knife. He continues busily employed in his reputed sacred office, till he has finished the task, and scraped all the flesh off the bones; which may justly be called the Choktah method of enbalming their dead. Then, they carefully place the bones in a kind of small chest, in their natural order, that they may with ease and certainty be some time afterward reunited, and proceed to strike up a song of lamentation, with various wailing tunes and notes: afterwards, they join as cheerfully in the funeral feast, as if their kinsman was only taking his usual sleep. Having regaled themselves with a plentiful variety, they go along with those beloved relicks of their dead, in solemn procession, lamenting with doleful notes, till they arrive at the bone-house, which stands in a solitary place, apart from the town: then they proceed around it, much after the manner of those who performed the obsequies of the Chikkasah chieftain, already described, and there deposit their kinsman’s bones to lie along side of his kindred-bones, till in due time they are revived by Ishtohoollo Aba, that he may repossess his favourite place.
Those bone-houses are scaffolds raised on durable pitch-pine forked posts, in the form of a house covered a-top, but open at both ends. I saw three of them in one of their towns, pretty near each other—the place seemed to be unfrequented; each house contained the bones of one tribe, {183} separately, with the hieoglyphical figures of the family on each of the old-shaped arks: they reckon it irreligious to mix the bones of a relation with those of a stranger, as bone of bone, and flesh of the same flesh, should be always joined together; and much less will they thrust the body of their beloved kinsman into the abominable tomb of a hateful enemy. I observed a ladder fixed in the ground, opposite to the middle of the broad side of each of those dormitories of the dead, which was made out of a broad board, and stood considerably bent over the sacred repository, with the steps on the inside. On the top was the carved image of a dove, with its wings stretched out, and its head inclining down, as if earnestly viewing or watching over the bones of the dead: and from the top of the ladder to almost the surface of the earth, there hung a chain of grape-vines twisted together, in circular links, and the same likewise at their domestic tombs. Now the dove after the deluge, became the emblem of Rowah, the holy spirit, and in process of time was deified by the heathen world, instead of the divine person it typified: the vine was likewise a symbol of fruitfulness, both in the animal and vegetable world.