Chapter XXVIII
DEATH AND BURIAL
Atsugewi and mountain Maidu left the corpse in the house for one day. They prepared it for burial by dressing it well and adding bead necklaces, then wrapping it in a hide. Yana did the same, washing the body first, and although also adorning the corpse with jewelry, they always removed decorative nose ornaments, replacing these with simple sticks. According to Voegelin, Atsugewi removed the body for burial prone and feet first through the wall of the house, but Garth states that the body was removed through the southern ventilator passage or through the regular entrance way in the roof.
The mountain Maidu, Yana, Yahi, and usually the Atsugewi bent the body into a position called flexed. The arms were folded across the chest and the knees were drawn up against the stomach before wrapping the corpse in a robe which was then sewn shut. The mountain Maidu sometimes put the wrapped cadaver into a large basket. Voegelin was of the opinion that Atsugewi buried their dead lying flat on their backs, and if so, always with the head toward the east. It is thought that this prone burial might be a recent innovation learned from white man.
Mourners among all of our local tribes wailed aloud and brought gifts for the dead. Women, especially the older ones, mourned vigorously. To quote Garth again on Atsugewi, of their mourning he states:
“The deceased’s close relatives mourned the hardest, but friends might also mourn——‘to make them feel better.’ Mourners cried and rolled on the ground, throwing dirt and hot ashes in their faces and hair. Some, in their grief, tried to commit suicide, and a close watch had to be kept over them to prevent their doing so. Favorite methods were to swallow small bits of (obsidian) or to eat a certain kind of spider. Mourners were warned not to cry around the house near the body but to go to the hills to cry, and also not to look down when crying or to cry too much. Otherwise they were subject to bad dreams in which spirits would plague them and possibly kill them. A mourner might acquire power at this time. A widow, with possibly a sister to help her, would wail for a time at daybreak and again in the evening. This lasted for two or three months, sometimes longer. A widower seldom cried more than two or three weeks. The widow visited places at which she had camped with her husband, broke up utensils left there, burned down the brush where he was accustomed to cut wood, and piled up rocks where they had slept together. A widower behaved in similar fashion.... If death occurred in a village, no entertainments could be held for a time; otherwise relatives of the deceased had the right to break things up and throw them around. A man would not sing or attend a ‘big time’ gathering until at least a year after death of a close relative.”
If the lodge were to be lived in again, after a person had died in it, Atsugewi brought in juniper boughs, and these were burned to purify the house. Bark huts, however, were always burned down after an occupant had died.
Mountain Maidu children were kept away from the dead and from the funeral proceedings. In that tribe and probably among all local tribes, if the deceased were rich the funeral would be much larger and more pretentious than if the person had been poor. In the former case the ceremony was followed by a feast. Other tribes buried the dead in the evening generally within twenty-four hours after death, but Yana waited three or four days. Mountain Maidu grave diggers put grass in their mouths. Small shallow graves sufficed for poor people, in fact, among Atsugewi, at least, poor people were often buried in small depressions in lava flows and covered over with convenient rocks.
Enroute to Atsugewi burials no one was permitted to look back, and water was sprinkled along the path to prevent the dead person’s spirit from returning to the village. At the grave the dead were asked aloud please not to look back, for if they did other members of their families would die soon.
Cremation, that is, burning of corpses was rare among tribes of the Lassen area. At the battlefield and in other instances of death far from home, especially in the case of mountain Maidu, burning was done occasionally. After this the bones were collected, wrapped in buckskin, and then buried.
The flexed bodies of the dead were always placed in graves facing eastward. Widows customarily attempted to throw themselves into the graves, but were restrained from doing so. A basket of water was invariably placed next to the body, and most personal property of the deceased was broken and also placed in the grave. The amount of property so disposed of varied with the tribe. Mountain Maidu and especially the Yana tribes put practically everything in the grave. The latter even went so far as to include many gifts of a nature not normally associated with the sex. Aprons and baskets, for instance, might be placed in a man’s burial. Among Atsugewi the relatives retained some of the property of the deceased. Atsugewi might place some food on the grave and mark it with a vertical stick, but it was not tended later, and the site was generally soon lost.