BURIAL BENEATH, OR IN CABINS, WIGWAMS, OR HOUSES.

While there is a certain degree of similitude between the above-noted methods and the one to be mentioned subsequently—­lodge burial—­they differ, inasmuch as the latter are examples of surface or aerial burial, and must consequently fall under another caption.  The narratives which are now to be given afford a clear idea of the former kinds of burial.

Bartram[23] relates the following regarding the Muscogulges of the Carolinas: 

The Muscogulges bury their deceased in the earth; they dig a four-foot, square, deep pit under the cabin, or couch which the deceased laid on in his house, lining the grave with cypress bark, when they place the corpse in a sitting posture, as if it were alive, depositing with him his gun, tomahawk, pipe, and such other matters as he had the greatest value for in his lifetime.  His oldest wife, or the queen dowager, has the second choice of his possessions, and the remaining effects are divided among his other wives and children.

According to Bernard Roman,[24] the “funeral customs of the Chickasaws did not differ materially from those of the Muscogulges.  They interred the dead as soon as the breath left the body, and beneath the couch in which the deceased expired.”

The Navajos of New Mexico and Arizona, a tribe living a considerable distance from the Chickasaws, follow somewhat similar customs, as related by Dr. John Menard, formerly a physician to their agency: 

The Navajo custom is to leave the body where it dies, closing up the house or hogan or covering the body with stones or brush.  In case the body is removed, it is taken to a cleft in the rocks and thrown in, and stones piled over.  The person touching or carrying the body first takes off all his clothes and afterwards washes his body with water before putting them on or mingling with the living.  When a body is removed from a house or hogan, the hogan is burned down, and the place in every case abandoned, as the belief is that the devil comes to the place of death and remains where a dead body is.  Wild animals frequently (indeed, generally) get the bodies, and it is a very easy matter to pick up skulls and bones around old camping grounds, or where the dead are laid.  In case it is not desirable to abandon a place, the sick person is left out in some lone spot protected by brush, where they are either abandoned to their fate or food brought to them until they die.  This is done only when all hope is gone.  I have found bodies thus left so well inclosed with brush that wild animals were unable to get at them; and one so left to die was revived by a cup of coffee from our house and is still living and well.

Lieut.  George E. Ford, Third United States Cavalry, in a personal communication to the writer, corroborates the account given by Dr. Menard, as follows: