I omitted to mention that when presents are going round, the
     badge of mourning, this “husband” comes in for an equal
     share, as if it were the living husband.

A Chippeway mother, on losing her child, prepares an image of it in the best manner she is able, and dresses it as she did her living child, and fixes it in the kind of cradle I have referred to, and goes through the ceremonies of nursing it as if it were alive, by dropping little particles of food in the direction of its mouth, and giving it of whatever the living child partook.  This ceremony also is generally observed for a year.

Figure 32 represents the Chippewa widow holding in her arms the substitute for the dead husband.

The substitution of a reminder for the dead husband, made from rags, furs, and other articles, is not confined alone to the Chippewas, other tribes having the same custom.  In some instances the widows are obliged to carry around with them, for a variable period, a bundle containing the bones of the deceased consort.

Similar observances, according to Bancroft,[88] were followed by some of the Central American tribes of Indians, those of the Sambos and Mosquitos being as follows: 

The widow was bound to supply the grave of her husband for a year, after which she took up the bones and carried them with her for another year, at last placing them upon the roof of her house, and then only was she allowed to marry again.  On returning from the grave the property of the deceased is destroyed, the cocoa palms being cut down, and all who have taken part in the funeral undergo a lustration in the river.  Relatives cut off the hair, the men leaving a ridge along the middle from the nape of the neck to the forehead.  Widows, according to some old writers, after supplying the grave with food for a year take up the bones and carry them on the back in the daytime, sleeping with them at night for another year, after which they are placed at the door or upon the house-top.  On the anniversary of deaths, friends of the deceased hold a feast, called serkroe, at which large quantities of liquor are drained to his memory.  Squier, who witnessed the ceremonies on an occasion of this kind, says that males and females were dressed in ule cloaks fantastically painted black and white, while their faces were correspondingly streaked with red and yellow, and they performed a slow walk around, prostrating themselves at intervals and calling loudly upon the dead and tearing the ground with their hands.  At no other time is the departed referred to, the very mention of his name being superstitiously avoided.  Some tribes extend a thread from the house of death to the grave, carrying it in a straight line over every obstacle.  Froeebel states that among the Woolwas all property of the deceased is buried with him, and that both husband and wife cut the hair and burn the hut on the death of either, placing a gruel of maize upon the grave for a certain time.

Benson[89] gives the following account of the Choctaws’ funeral ceremonies, embracing the disposition of the body, mourning feast and dance: