In connection with this subject, we may devote a moment to the consideration of their idea of the human soul, or as they call it, the shadow.[40] They think this becomes unsettled, or as it were detached from the body in violent sickness; and they look upon a person who is very low, as one already dead. Hence it is not unusual to hear them speak of such and such a person, as being now dying, and yet to find him survive, not only many days, but years; and when told of this, they seem conscious of no impropriety in the expression: on the contrary, they often say of a person, he died at such a time, but came again. I have also heard them reproach a sick person, for what they considered imprudent exposure in convalescence; telling him that his shadow was not well settled down in him, and that therefore he was in danger of losing it. It would seem, however, that although they believe the soul leaves the body previous to the commencement of dissolution in the former, yet that it is not removed far from it until long after death. This is manifest from their usage in the feast of Che-bah-koo-che-ga-win, and from some of the ceremonies of interment, particularly in the case of women, when their husbands are buried.
In the spring of the year 1826, a man of the Menomonies died and was buried very near the encampment of a part of the fifth regiment of United States infantry, on the high prairie in the rear of the village of Prairie Du Chein, on the Mississippi. The body was attended to the grave by a considerable number of the friends and relatives, and when it was let down into the shallow grave, the wife of the deceased approached the brink, and after looking down on the rude coffin, she stepped upon it, and immediately across, taking her course over the plains, towards the bluffs there, about a mile distant. This is a common practice of the women of that tribe; and the mourner is careful, if she contemplates a second marriage, never to look back towards the grave she has left, but returns to her lodge by some devious and circuitous route. It is done, as they say, that the Cha-pi (Je-bi of the Ojibbeways,) or the dead person, may not be able to follow them afterwards. If the woman should look back, they believe she would either fall dead immediately, or become insane, and remain so ever after. On some occasions, but rarely, another person accompanies the mourner, carrying a handful of small twigs, and following immediately after her, flourishes it about her head, as if driving away flies. The verb applicable to this action, is in the third person singular, Wai-whai-na-how, the more general one applicable to the whole ceremony, Ah-neuk-ken-new.
In the instance above mentioned, the woman walked rapidly, and without looking back, across the wide prairie, in a direction almost opposite that leading to her lodge; but her loud and bitter lamentings could be heard at a great distance, seeming to contradict the action by which she professed to seek an everlasting separation from the deceased.
The more common and well known observances paid to the dead by these people, seem not to indicate such a destitution of affection as the ceremony just described. In many of their customs relating to the treatment of the dead, we can discover, not only the traces of kind feeling, but a strong confidence in a future existence, and the belief that their departed friends can know and estimate the value of friendly offices rendered them after their departure. At the time of the great council at Prairie Du Chein, in 1825, a Sioux chief, of the remote band of the Sissitong, sickened and died of a bilious fever. He had been a distinguished man among his own people, and, as he had come a great distance from his own country, in obedience to the call of our government, the military commandant at that post was induced to bury him with the honours of war. The men of his band were gathered around his body, in the lodge where he died, and when the escort arrived, they raised him upon his bier, a hundred manly voices at the same time chanting forth a requiem, thus rendered by a person well acquainted with their language:
Grieve not, our brother! the path thou art walking
Is that in which we, and all men must follow.
And thus they continued to repeat, until they reached the grave. There is something impressive and affecting in their habit of preserving and dressing up the je-bi, or memorial of the dead, which, like our weeds and crapes, finds a place in many a dwelling where little of mourning is visible. Yet, though the place which death had made vacant in their hearts, may have been filled, they seem never to forget the supply they consider due the wants of the departed. Whenever they eat or drink a portion is carefully set apart for the je-bi, and this observance continues for years, should they not, in the mean time, have an opportunity to send out this memorial with some war party; when, if it be thrown down on the field of battle, as they aim always to do, then their obligation to the departed ceases.
Of the Chippewyans, the Sarcees, the Strong Bows, and other tribes inhabiting those dreary regions which border on the arctic circle, it is related, that they in many instances omit to bury their dead, and that they frequently desert their relatives and friends, whenever, from sickness or old age, they become unable to endure the ordinary fatigues of their manner of life. There is no more reason to question the accuracy of these statements, than of those in relation to the cannibalism, sodomy, and other shocking vices of more southern tribes. But as the destitution of natural affection manifested in the conduct of many of the American tribes towards their relatives in sickness and decrepitude, is undoubtedly that among their vices, which is most abhorrent to the feelings of civilized men, so we shall find the instances of rare occurrence, except where the rigour of the climate, or other natural causes, impose on them a necessity, to which we ourselves, in the same circumstances, should probable yield as they do. The horrible practices to which men of all races have been driven in besieged cities, in cases of shipwreck, and other similar emergencies, should admonish us that the Indians, as a race, deserve no peculiar detestation for crimes growing unavoidably out of their situation.