Did Not Know He Was Dead.
Several years ago smallpox raged along the coast and swept off many of the Indians as well as the whites. The city and government at Victoria appointed certain white grave-diggers to bury the numerous corpses found upon the beach, among the trees, in huts and in canoes.
In many cases the grave-diggers found poor creatures almost, but not altogether, dead; they knew they would be fit for burial soon, and did not care to spend time waiting for the last gasp. It is said they were taking one poor fellow off to the grave, but he objected on the very proper ground that he was not dead yet. He was told to shut up, as he was dead, but too delirious to comprehend the fact. So they carefully placed him under the sod to await the resurrection morn.
Rising from the Grave.
The coal company at Nanaimo were building a wharf from a point in the harbor, and paid for the removal of a number of Indian bodies which had been buried near the spot. New graves were dug on a little side hill, and to these the remains were transferred. The holes, however, were quite shallow, owing to the presence of a clay hard-pan underneath. Next day a great outcry was made in the camp, and intense excitement prevailed, for most of the boxes had risen up and had come out of the graves. We went down to discover the cause of the disturbance, and what had seemed to the poor people so strange and uncanny had been caused by the heavy rain of the night before filling the shallow graves and floating out what they contained. It took some time to quiet the fears of the people.
The men who do anything in any way in the digging of the grave or the handling of the body are paid excessively for their services. This may be due, in part, to their horrible fear of the dead.
Mourning for the Dead.
The Indian mother grieves for her children with the same intensity of feeling that characterizes her white sister. After the burial she will return to the grave in the early morning and weep bitterly. She often continues this for days at a time. She wails and calls up the looks of the little one, its acts and words. She will carry the clothes and playthings to the little grave, and cry and talk away to her lost darling, and pathetically plead for its return.
There is, however, a kind of professionalism about a great deal of their mourning for the dead. When a chief or leading person had passed away women were accustomed to rush into the house from all parts of the village. Perhaps on their way there they might be chatting and laughing about trifles, but as soon as they got near the house where the dead lay, they would commence rubbing their hands down their faces, and really seem to pump up their tears, for before they were fairly seated the tears were flowing, while they wailed and told all the good qualities of the dead.