Father Hennepin (writing about 1680) relates, that the northern Indians inquired about the manner of living in heaven, and remarks: "When I made answer that they live there without eating or drinking, 'We will not go thither,' said they, 'because we must not eat;' and when I have added that there would be no occasion for food there, they clapt their hands to their mouths, as a sign of admiration, and said, 'Thou art a great liar!—is there anything can live without eating?'"[180]
Similar opinions, among many different tribes, I have heard declared in direct terms; yet, did we want further testimony, some of their burial customs and funeral rites would seem to indicate their ideas of the future state. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Kansas, and kindred tribes, besides many others, or perhaps most others of the frontier, have been accustomed to inter the most valuable property of the deceased and many necessaries with them. "Their whole property was buried {243} with them,"[181] says an intelligent Cherokee, in some manuscript notes concerning his ancestors, I have in my possession: and I have been assured by creditable natives, that, within their recollection [p291] they have seen, at these burials, provisions, salt, and other necessaries, interred with the dead for their long journey.
There are very few of the prairie Indians but practise something of this kind: many kill the favorite hunting-horses, and deposit the arms, etc., of the deceased, for his use in the chase, when he arrives at the 'happy hunting ground.' We are also informed by Capt. Bonneville, and other travellers, that this is practised by some, if not all, of the natives beyond the Rocky Mountains. The same is told of the Navajoes, Apaches, and other uncatholicized tribes of the north of Mexico.
Peter Martyr, a learned and celebrated protestant divine, who wrote his "Decades of the Newe Worlde"[182] towards the middle of the sixteenth century, observes that, "in many places of the firme lande, when any of the kynges dye, all his householde servauntes, as well women as men which have continually served hym, kyl themselves, beleavynge, as they are taught by the devyl Tuyra, that they which kyll themselves when the kynge dyeth, go with hym to heaven and serve hym in the same place and office as they dyd before on {244} the earth whyle he lyved.[183] And that all that refuse so to doo, when after they dye by theyr naturall death or otherwyse, theyr soules to dye with theyr bodyes, and to bee dissolved into ayer and become nothynge as do the soules of hogges, byrdes or fysshes, or other brute [p292] beastes."[184] In corroboration of a similar custom among the natives along the Mississippi, in 1542, Herrera relates,[185] that, after the death of Fernando de Soto, and his party had set out westward, they were joined by a youth, who stated that he had fled to escape being buried with his lord who had died; which was the practice in that country. Travellers from the upper lakes to the Mississippi speak of similar customs, at an early day, among the tribes of that quarter.
It would appear that they believe everything, both animate and inanimate—beasts, arms, ornaments, etc.—to possess immortal attributes, subject to resurrection in the world of spirits. However, did not their motives seem so well defined by the direct allusions to their notions of futurity, we might suppose, as is frequently urged, that the burying of property, slaves, etc., with the deceased, was only intended as a mark of respect; which, indeed, is hardly more irrational than the custom {245} of interring costly garniture and appendages with the dead among us.
Some of the modes of burial adopted by the American aborigines are different, I believe, from those of any other people. Though, as among civilized nations, even the wildest tribes sometimes inter in ordinary graves, yet they frequently deposit their dead, in a sitting and even in a standing posture, in pits, caves, and hollow trees; and occasionally, they lay the corpse out upon scaffolds suspended from the branches of trees, or resting upon them where they will admit of it, so as to be out of reach of the wolves and other beasts.
I was once, with a little caravan, travelling up the course of the Arkansas river, when, a thunder-storm coming up [p293] suddenly, and night drawing near, we turned the wagons as soon as we could, to the river-bank, to encamp. The bustle of ungearing and securing the teams before they should be frightened by the tempest, was hardly over, when we discovered a platform suspended above our heads, upon the branches of a cottonwood, which, upon examination, was found to contain an Indian corpse, from whose bones the putrid flesh had not yet separated!
This mode of disposing of the dead would seem once to have been quite extensive; for, as well as upon the western prairies, it formerly prevailed among the Potawatomies of the north, and the Choctaws of the south, at least while on their expeditions. In this case, if practicable, they would leave a band of {246} aged men, known as bone-pickers,' to clean the bones, when the flesh decayed, and carry them to their village for interment.
Barbarians are generally superstitious to an extreme, believing in hobgoblins, witchcraft, legerdemain and all sorts of mummeries.[186] Like many grandmothers in backwoods life, they delight in recounting the extraordinary apparitions, transmigrations, sorceries, etc., which they pretend to have witnessed. Nothing seems too absurd for their belief. Among many other cases of similar cast, an intelligent Potawatomie once assured me that he had witnessed the death of one of his nation, who had received [p294] a stab in his side with a knife (probably in some illicit adventure); and it being unknown to his friends how the wound had been inflicted, it was currently reported and believed, that from their {247} present home on the frontier of Missouri, he had visited the 'Old Nation' in Michigan,[187] poisoned an enemy there, received the fatal stab, and returned and died, all in one day.
If you tell an Indian that such things are absurd and impossible, he is apt to answer, "It may be so with the white man, but how do you know it to be impossible with the Indian? You tell us many strange things which happened to your fathers—we don't contradict them, though we believe such things never could have happened to the red man." Or, they will reply, perhaps, as they did to Father Hennepin in a similar case: "Fie, thou knowest not what thou sayest; thou may'st know what has passed in thy own Country, for thy Ancestors have told thee of them; but thou canst not know what has passed in ours before the Spirits (that is to say the Europeans) came hither."