After the coffin is lowered into the grave, many things belonging to the deceased are cast in, together with rice, tobacco, and betel-nut, as they believe they may prove useful in the other world.
It was an old custom, but now falling into disuse, to place money, gold and silver ornaments, clothes, and various china and brass utensils in the grave; but these treasures were too great temptation to those Malays who were addicted to gambling, and the rifling of the place of interment has often given great and deserved offence to the relations. As it is almost impossible to discover the offenders, it is now the practice to break in pieces all the utensils placed in the grave, and to conceal as carefully as possible the valuable ornaments.
The relatives and bearers of the corpse must return direct to the house from which they started before they may enter another, as it is unlawful or unlucky to stop, whatever may be the distance to be traversed. Sea Dayaks who fall in battle are seldom interred, but a paling is put round them to keep away the pigs, and they are left there. Those who commit suicide are buried in different places from others, as it is supposed that they will not be allowed to mix in the “Seven-storied Sabayau,” or Paradise, with such of their fellow-countrymen as come by their death in a natural manner, or through the influence of the spirits.
Black is the sign of mourning among the Indians of North America, as among us; but among these savage populations grief is manifested by other signs than the gloomy colour of the dress. The Crows cut part of their hair on the death of a relation. The widows of the Foxes, as a sign of mourning, remain several months without changing their clothes, or paying any other attention to their dress. This custom is common to many tribes of the north. Among the Shahonees and several other of the western population, those who have lost one of their relatives manifest their grief by inflicting on themselves mutilations and wounds. The mourning of an Indian for the loss of a relative continues for at least six months. It generally consists in neglecting his person, and painting his face black. A widow will generally mourn the loss of her husband for a year. During all this time she appears sincerely affected, never speaking to any one unless she is forced to do so from necessity or propriety. She always seeks solitude, and desires to remain alone, in order to abandon herself more freely to her affliction. After her mourning is over, she resumes her best garments, and paints herself as coquettishly as possible, in order to find another husband.
The customs observed in the burial of the dead differ in different tribes. The only observance common to them all is the singular one of painting the corpses black. The Omahas swathe the bodies with bandages made of skins, giving them the appearance of Egyptian mummies. Thus enveloped they are placed in the branches of a tree, with a wooden vase full of dried meat by their side, and which from time to time is renewed. The Sioux bury their dead on the summit of a hill or mountain, and plant on the tomb a cedar tree, which may be seen from afar. When no natural elevation exists, they construct a scaffolding two or three yards high.
The Chinooks, says the Abbé Dominech (from whose account of Indian burial customs this description is chiefly derived), and some other populations of Columbia and Oregon, have a more poetical custom. They wrap the bodies of their dead in skins, bind their eyes, put little shells in their nostrils, and dress them in their most beautiful clothes; they then place them in a canoe, which is allowed to drift at the pleasure of the winds and currents, on a lake, a river, or on the Pacific Ocean.
When there is neither lake nor river nor sea near the village, the funeral canoe is attached to the branches of the loftiest trees. These aërial tombs are always so placed that the wild animals cannot reach them; the favourite spots are solitary and wooded islands. These sepulchral canoes are often moored in little bays, under shady trees whose thick foliage overhang them like a protecting dome. There are islands on the large rivers of Columbia where as many as twenty or thirty of these canoes are attached to the cedars and birches on the banks.
Not far from Columbia is a rock which serves as a cemetery for the people of the neighbourhood. One perceives, on examining this village of death, that the tribes of fishermen bestow the same religious care on the dead as do the various tribes of hunters. In one case, as in the other, the favourite objects he used while alive are placed by his side in death. In Columbia, the oar and the net lie by the fisherman in his funereal canoe; in the Great Prairies, the lance, the bow and arrows, and often the war-horse, are buried in the grave with the hunter. To the east as to the west of the Rocky Mountains, the savages venerate, respect, and take care of their friends and relatives even after death. The lamentations and prayers of the survivors are heard each day at dawn and dusk wherever there are tombs.
In New Mexico the whites have singularly modified the customs of the Indians; what remains of their ancient practices bears the impress at once of the superstitious character of the natives, and of the habits of the Spaniards. Thus, the inhabitants of Pueblo de Laguna, who are half Christians, half followers of Montezuma, wrap the body of the deceased in his ordinary garments, lay him in a narrow grave of little depth, and place bread and a vase of water near him. They then throw huge stones upon him with such violence as to break his bones, with the notion that any evil spirit remaining in the carcase may be driven out in the process.
The Sacs and Foxes place their dead, wrapped in blankets or buffalo skins, in rude coffins made out of old canoes or the bark of trees, and bury them; if the deceased was a warrior, a post is erected above his head, painted with red lines, indicating the number of men, women, and children he has killed during his life, and who are to be his slaves in the land of shadows.