Part 5 (1/2)
Will some learned Mason unravel this mystery and inform the Masonic world how the Indians obtained so much Masonic information?
The tomahawks, maxillary bones, some of the teeth, beads, and other bones, have been forwarded to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution at Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to be placed among the archives of that inst.i.tution for exhibition, at which place they may be seen.
Should Dr. Spainhour's inferences be incorrect, there is still a remarkable coincidence of circ.u.mstances patent to every Mason.
In support of this gentleman's views, attention is called to the description of the _Midawan_--a ceremony of initiation for would-be medicine men--in Schoolcraft's History of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1855, p. 428, relating to the Sioux and Chippewas. In this account are found certain forms and resemblances which have led some to believe that the Indians possessed a knowledge of Masonry.
_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:
This tribe, numbering about 8,000 souls, occupy a reservation in the extreme northwestern corner of New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona.
The funeral ceremonies of the Navajos are of the most simple character. They ascribe the death of an individual to the direct action of _Chinde_, or the devil, and believe that he remains in the vicinity of the dead. For this reason, as soon as a member of the tribe dies a shallow grave is dug within the hogan or dwelling by one of the near male relatives, and into this the corpse is unceremoniously tumbled by the relatives, who have previously protected themselves from the evil influence by smearing their naked bodies with tar from the pinon tree. After the body has thus been disposed of, the hogan (composed of logs and branches of trees covered with earth) is pulled down over it and the place deserted.
Should the deceased have no near relatives or was of no importance in the tribe, the formality of digging a grave is dispensed with, the hogan being simply leveled over the body. This carelessness does not appear to arise from want of natural affection for the dead, but fear of the evil influence of _Chinde_ upon the surviving relatives causes them to avoid doing anything that might gain for them his ill-will. A Navajo would freeze sooner than make a fire of the logs of a fallen hogan, even though from all appearances it may have been years in that condition. There are no mourning observances other than smearing the forehead and under the eyes with tar, which is allowed to remain until worn off, and then not renewed. The deceased is apparently forgotten, as his name is never spoken by the survivors for fear of giving offense to _Chinde_.
J. L. Burchard, agent to the Round Valley Indians, of California, furnishes an account of burial somewhat resembling that of the Navajos:
When I first came here the Indians would dig a round hole in the ground, draw up the knees of the deceased Indian, and wrap the body into as small a bulk as possible in blankets, tie them firmly with cords, place them in the grave, throw in beads, baskets, clothing, everything owned by the deceased, and often donating much extra; all gathered around the grave wailing most pitifully, tearing their faces with their nails till the blood would run down their cheeks, pull out their hair, and such other heathenish conduct. These burials were generally made under their thatch houses or very near thereto. The house where one died was always torn down, removed, rebuilt, or abandoned. The wailing, talks, &c., were in their own jargon; none else could understand, and they seemingly knew but little of its meaning (if there was any meaning in it); it simply seemed to be the promptings of grief, without sufficient intelligence to direct any ceremony; each seemed to act out his own impulse.
The next account, taken from M. Butel de Dumont,[25] relating to the Paskagoulas and Billoxis of Louisiana, may be considered as an example of burial in houses, although the author of the work was pleased to consider the receptacles as temples.
Les Paskagoulas et les Billoxis n'enterent point leur Chef, lorsqu'il est decede; mais-ils font secher son cadavre au feu et a la fumee de facon qu'ils en font un vrai squelette. Apres l'avoir reduit en cet etat, ils le portent au Temple (car ils en ont un ainsi que les Natchez), et le mettent a la place de son predecesseur, qu'ils tirent de l'endroit qu'il occupoit, pour le porter avec les corps de leurs autres Chefs dans le fond du Temple ou ils sont tous ranges de suite dresses sur leurs pieds comme des statues. A l'egard du dernier mort, il est expose a l'entree de ce Temple sur une espece d'autel ou de table faite de cannes, et couverte d'une natte tres-fine travaillee fort proprement en quarreaux rouges et jaunes avec la peau de ces memes cannes. Le cadavre du Chef est expose au milieu de cette table droit sur ses pieds, soutenu par derriere par une longue perche peinte en rouge dont le bout pa.s.se au dessus de sa tete, et a laquelle il est attache par le milieu du corps avec une liane. D'une main il tient un ca.s.se-tete ou une pet.i.te hache, de l'autre un pipe; et au-dessus de sa tete, est attache au bout de la perche qui le soutient, le Calumet le plus fameux de tous ceux qui lui ont ete presentes pendant sa vie. Du reste cette table n'est gueres elevee de terre que d'un demi-pied; mais elle a au moins six pieds de large et dix de longueur.
C'est sur cette table qu'on vient tous les jours servir a manger a ce Chef mort en mettant devant lui des plats de sagamite, du bled grole ou boucane, &c. C'est-la aussi qu'au commencement de toutes les recoltes ses Sujets vont lui offrir les premiers de tous les fruits qu'ils peuvent recueillir. Tout ce qui lui est presente de la sorte reste sur cette table; et comme la porte de ce Temple est toujours ouverte, qu'il n'y a personne prepose pour y veiller, que par consequent y entre qui veut, et que d'ailleurs il est eloigne du Village d'un grand quart de lieue, il arrive que ce sont ordinairement des Etrangers, Cha.s.seurs ou Sauvages, qui profitent de ces mets et de ces fruits, ou qu'ils sont consommes par les animaux.
Mais cela est egal a ces sauvages; et moins il en reste lorsqu'ils retournent le lendemain, plus ils sont dans la joie, disant que leur Chef a bien mange, et que par consequent il est content d'eux quoiqu'il les ait abandonnes. Pour leur ouvrir les yeux sur l'extravagance de cette pratique, on a beau leur representer ce qu'ils ne peuvent s'empecher de voir eux-memes, que ce n'est point ce mort qui mange; ils repondent que si ce n'est pas lui, c'est toujours lui au moins qui offre a qui il lui plait ce qui a ete mis sur la table; qu'apres tout c'etoit la la pratique de leur pere, de leur mere, de leurs parens; qu'ils n'ont pas plus d'esprit qu'eux, et qu'ils ne sauroient mieux faire que de suivre leur example.
C'est aussi devant cette table, que pendant quelques mois la veuve du Chef, ses enfans, ses plus proches parens, viennent de tems en tems lui rendre visite et lui faire leur harangue, comme s'il etoit en etat de les entendre. Les uns lui demandent pourquoi il s'est laisse mourir avant eux? d'autres lui disent que s'il est mort ce n'est point leur faute; que c'est lui meme qui s'est tue par telle debauche on par tel effort; enfin s'il y a eu quelque defaut dans son gouvernement, on prend ce tems-la pour le lui reprocher.
Cependant ils finissent toujours leur harangue, en lui disant de n'etre pas fache contre eux, de bien manger, et qu'ils auront toujours bien soin de lui.
Another example of burial in houses may be found in vol. vi of the publications of the Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. 89, taken from Strachey's Virginia. It is given more as a curious narrative of an early writer on American ethnology than for any intrinsic value it may possess as a truthful relation of actual events. It relates to the Indians of Virginia:
Within the chauncell of the temple, by the Okens, are the cenotaphies or the monuments of their kings, whose bodyes, so soon as they be dead, they embowell, and, sc.r.a.ping the flesh from off the bones, they dry the same upon hurdells into ashes, which they put into little potts (like the anncyent urnes): the annathomy of the bones they bind together or case up in leather, hanging braceletts, or chaines of copper, beads, pearle, or such like, as they used to wear about most of their joints and neck, and so repose the body upon a little scaffold (as upon a tomb), laying by the dead bodies'
feet all his riches in severall basketts, his apook, and pipe, and any one toy, which in his life he held most deare in his fancy; their inwards they stuff with pearle, copper, beads, and such trash, sowed in a skynne, which they overlapp againe very carefully in whit skynnes one or two, and the bodyes thus dressed lastly they rowle in matte, as for wynding sheets, and so lay them orderly one by one, as they dye in their turnes, upon an arche standing (as aforesaid) for the tomb, and thes are all the ceremonies we yet can learne that they give unto their dead. We heare of no sweet oyles or oyntments that they use to dresse or chest their dead bodies with; albeit they want not of the pretious rozzin running out of the great cedar, wherewith in the old time they used to embalme dead bodies, was.h.i.+ng them in the oyle and licoure thereof. Only to the priests the care of these temples and holy interments are committed, and these temples are to them as solitary a.s.seteria colledged or ministers to exercise themselves in contemplation, for they are seldome out of them, and therefore often lye in them and maynteyne contynuall fier in the same, upon a hearth somewhat neere the east end.
For their ordinary burialls they digg a deepe hole in the earth with sharpe stakes, and the corps being lapped in skynns and matts with their jewells, they laye uppon sticks in the ground, and soe cover them with earth; the buryall ended, the women (being painted all their faces with black coale and oyle) do sitt twenty-four howers in their howses, mourning and lamenting by turnes, with such yelling and howling as may expresse their great pa.s.sions.
While this description brings the subject under the head before given--house burial--at the same time it might also afford an example of embalmment or mummifying.