Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

The Tahkalis burn the bodies of their dead. The medicine-man who directs the ceremony makes the most extraordinary gesticulations and contortions, for the purpose, as he pretends, of receiving into his hands the life of the deceased, which he communicates to a living person by laying his hands on his head, and blowing on him; the person thus endowed takes the rank of the deceased, whose name he adds to that he bore previously. If the dead man had a wife, she is obliged to lay down on the funeral pyre while it is set on fire, and to remain there till she is almost suffocated with smoke and heat. Formerly, when a woman endeavoured to escape this torture, she was carried to the fire and pushed in, to scramble out how she might. When the corpse is consumed it is the duty of the widow to collect the ashes, place them in a basket and carry them away. At the same time she becomes the servant of her husband’s family, who employ her in all sorts of domestic drudgery, and treat her very ill. This servitude continues during two or three years, at the expiration of which period the relatives of deceased assemble to celebrate the “feast of deliverance.” At this solemnity a pole five or six yards in height is fixed in the ground, to sustain the basket containing the ashes of the deceased, which remain thus exposed till the pole, destroyed by time and the elements, falls down. The widow then recovers her liberty, and can marry again.

Mr. Paul Kane, in his “Wanderings of an Artist,” describes much such a ceremony as observed by him in New Caledonia, which is east of Vancouver’s Island and north of Columbia. Among the tribe called “Taw-wa-tius,” and also among other tribes in their neighbourhood, the custom prevails of burning the bodies, with circumstances of peculiar barbarity to the widows of the deceased. The dead body of the husband is laid naked upon a large heap of resinous wood; his wife is then placed upon the body, and covered over with a skin; the pile is then lighted, and the poor woman is compelled to remain until she is nearly suffocated, when she is allowed to descend as best she can through the flames and smoke. No sooner, however, does she reach the ground, than she is expected to prevent the body from becoming distorted by the action of the fire on the muscles and sinews; and wherever such an event takes place, she must with her bare hands restore the burning body to its proper position, her person being the whole time exposed to the intense heat. Should she fail in the performance of this indispensable rite, from weakness or the intensity of her pain, she is held up by some one until the body is consumed. A continual singing and beating of drums is kept up throughout the ceremony, which drowns her cries.

Afterwards she must collect the unconsumed pieces of bone and the ashes, and put them in a bag made for the purpose, and which she has to carry on her back for three years; remaining for a time a slave to her husband’s relations, and being neither allowed to wash nor comb herself for the whole time, so that she soon becomes a very unpleasant object to behold. At the expiration of three years a feast is given by her tormentors, who invite all the friends and relations of her and themselves. At the commencement they deposit with great ceremony the remains of the burnt dead in a box, which they affix to the top of a high pole, and dance round it. The widow is then stripped and smeared from head to foot with fish-oil, over which one of the bystanders throws a quantity of swans’-down, covering her entire person. After this she is free to marry again, if she have the inclination and courage enough to venture on a second risk of being roasted alive and the subsequent horrors.

It has often happened that a widow, who has married a second husband in the hope perhaps of not outliving him, commits suicide in the event of her second husband’s death, rather than undergo a second ordeal.

A Mandan Chief.

Among the Mandans, another tribe of North American Indians, burial is unknown. A tract of land is set apart, and is known to all the tribes as the “village of the dead.” When a Mandan dies he is wrapped in the hide of a freshly-slaughtered buffalo, which is secured by thongs of new hide. Other buffalo skins are soaked until they are soft as cloth, and in these the already thoroughly enveloped body is swathed till the bulk more resembles a bale of goods packed for exportation than a human body. Within the bundle are placed the man’s bow and quiver, shield, knife, pipe and tobacco, flint and steel, and provisions enough to last him some time “on his long journey.” Then his relatives bear him on their shoulders, and carry him to the cemetery, “where,” says Catlin, “are numerous scaffolds, consisting of four upright poles some six or seven feet in height. On the top of these are small poles passing around from one corner post to another; across these are placed a row of willow rods, just strong enough to support the body.”

Mandan Place of Skulls.

On this scaffold, and with his feet towards the rising sun, the Mandan is laid, and he is not disturbed till the scaffold poles decay, and the buffalo coffin, still containing the Mandan’s bones, falls to the earth. Then the relatives of the deceased, having received notice of the circumstance, once more assemble at the cemetery and, digging a hole, bury the bones—all except the skull; for this is reserved a separate ceremony.