children, and infanticide, both before and after birth, prevails to a great extent.  This is not considered a crime, and old women of the tribe practice it.  A widow may marry again after a year’s mourning for her first husband; but having children no man will take her for a wife and thus burden himself with her children.  Widows generally cultivate a small piece of ground, and friends and relatives (men) plow the ground for them.

Fig. 2, drawn from Captain Grossman’s description by my friend Dr. W.J.  Hoffman, will convey a good idea of this mode of burial.

Stephen Powers[8] describes a similar mode of grave preparation among the Yuki of California: 

The Yuki bury their dead in a sitting posture.  They dig a hole six feet deep sometimes and at the bottom of it “coyote” under, making a little recess in which the corpse is deposited.

The Comanches of Indian Territory (Nem, we, or us, people), according to Dr. Fordyce Grinnell, of the Wichita Agency, Indian Territory, go to the opposite extreme, so far as the protection of the dead from the surrounding earth is concerned.  The account as received is given entire, as much to illustrate this point as others of interest.

When a Comanche is dying, while the death-rattle may yet be faintly heard in the throat, and the natural warmth has not departed from the body, the knees are strongly bent upon the chest, and the legs flexed upon the thighs.  The arms are also flexed upon each side of the chest, and the head bent forward upon the knees.  A lariat, or rope, is now used to firmly bind the limbs and body in this position.  A blanket is then wrapped around the body, and this again tightly corded, so that the appearance when ready for burial is that of an almost round and compact body, very unlike the composed pall of his Wichita or Caddo brother.  The body is then taken and placed in a saddle upon a pony, in a sitting posture; a squaw usually riding behind, though sometimes one on either side of the horse, holds the body in position until the place of burial is reached, when the corpse is literally tumbled into the excavation selected for the purpose.  The deceased is only accompanied by two or three squaws, or enough to perform the little labor bestowed upon the burial.  The body is taken due west of the lodge or village of the bereaved, and usually one of the deep washes or heads of canons in which the Comanche country abounds is selected, and the body thrown in, without special reference to position.  With this are deposited the bows and arrows; these, however, are first broken.  The saddle is also placed in the grave, together with many of the personal valuables of the departed.  The body is then covered over with sticks and earth, and sometimes stones are placed over the whole.

Funeral ceremonies.—­the best pony owned by the deceased is brought to the grave and killed, that the departed may appear