siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

174 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN- ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
the stage, a fire is made, and the respectable operator, after the body is taken
down, with his nails tears the remaining flesh off the bones, and tlirows it with
the intrails into the tire, where it is consumed ; then he scrapes the bones and
burns the scrapings likewise ; the head being painted red with Vermillion is
with the rest of the bones put into a neatly made chest (which for a chief is also
made red) and deposited in the loft of a hut built for that purpose, and called
bone house ; each town has one of these ; after remaining here one year or
thereabouts, if he be a man of any note, they take the chest down, and in an
assembly of relations and friends they weep once more over him, refresh the
colour of the head, paint the box red, and then deposit him to lasting oblivion.
An enemy and one who commits suicide is buried under the earth as one to be
directly forgotten and unworthy the above ceremonial obsequies and mourning."
Yet Claiborne affirms that suicide was common, assigning " ridi-
cule or disgrace " as the principal cause.^*
Milfort's testimony comes from a period but a few years subsequent
to Romans
When a Tchacta is dead, his relatives erect a scafEold about twenty or
twenty-five feet in front of the doorway of his house, on which they place the
corpse wrapped in the skin of a bear or bison, or in a woolen covering, and
leave it in that condition for seven or eight months. The nearest female
relatives go each morning to weep while they circle the scaffold. When they
believe that the body is in a state of putrefaction sufficient to allow the
flesh to come away from the bones easily, they (the women) go to inform
the priest or medicine man of the canton where the dead man lived, who is
entrusted with the dissection, the most disgusting that it is possible to
imagine. As all the relatives and friends of the dead man must be present
at this ceremony, which is terminated by a family repast, the priest agrees
upon a day in order to allow sufficient time to inform everyone ; and, on the
appointed day all assemble around the scaffold ; and there, after having made
horrible grimaces as a sign of mourning, they intone sombre chants, in which
they express the grief which they feel at the loss they have suffered. When
they have finished this horrible charivari, the priest ascends the scaffold,
removes the skin or covering which covers the body ; and, with his fingernails
(he is not permitted to make use of anything else),'^* he detaches the flesh
which may still adhere to the bones, so as to separate the one from the
other entirely. When he has finished this disgusting operation, he makes one
bundle of the fiesh which he leaves on the scaffold to be burned and one of
the bones which he carries down on his head to restore to the relatives of
the dead man, making them a speech suited to the occasion. As soon as the
latter have received the bones, they take great care to examine them, and to
assure themselves that the priest has forgotten none of them ; afterward they
deposit them in a kind of chest, the opening of which they shut with a plank,
after which the women kindle torches of pitch pine, and the nearest relatives
go in procession to bear this chest into a cabin which serves as the sepulchre
of that family alone.
While the priest is on the scaffold occupied with the dissection, all of the
others who are present busy themselves on their side in lighting fires, on
"Romans, Nat. Hist. E. and W. Fla., pp. 89-90.
=* Claiborne, Hist. Miss., i, p. 495 ; on suicide see p. 110.
s^" Adair would seem to imply an exception (see p. 172), but he was probably mistaken.