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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL LIFE 175
which they place for the guests great earthen pots full of food. When these
viands are cooked, they remove them from the fire in order to allow them to
cool without touching them, for the priest alone is permitted to remove the
coverings, and he can do so only after having finished his operation.
When the ceremony of inhuming the bones Is finished, a great quantity of dry
wood is collected about the scaffold where the flesh has been left, the relatives
set fire to it, and, while the scaffold burns, they dance around it uttering loud
cries of joy ; then the priest chooses a suitable place, where all sit about and
he remains in the middle, with the vessels holding the viands which are to be
served at the feast, and which have been given time to cool. When each has
taken his place the medicine man or priest uncovers the vessels, and, without
having even washed his hands, which he has merely wiped on some grass, he
puts them in the pots in order to draw out the viands and distribute them
among the relatives and friends of the dead man, according to their rank ; he
serves the soup to them in the same manner, as well as the hominy (sagamite)
which is their drink.
I have said elsewhere that these people have a particular relish for horseflesh
which they prefer to all other kinds ; in consequence if the person whose
funeral rites are conducted was rich enough to have horses, as many as three
are sometimes killed, which are cooked and their flesh used in doing the honors
at the feast. It happens indeed, when the dead man has no horses, that those
of the relatives who have them are sacrificed for this ceremony. This reunion
of relatives and friends can be dissolved only when there is nothing more to
eat ; so that after they have had the first meal, and are unable to consume all,
they begin to dance or to indulge in violent exercises in order to acquire an
appetite, and be in a condition to finish the feast. When there is nothing more
to eat each one returns home.''
According to this writer a scaffold was erected and mourning ceremonies
gone through for a person who had disappeared and had
been declared dead by a doctor.''" Next we have a short note by Dr.
John Sibley:
The Choctaus in their Town don't bury their dead; but make a Scaffold of
forks & Poles of Twelve feet high near their Houses on v.'hich they place the
Dead body 'till the flesh is so putrid that it will slip off the Bones. This is
done by the nearest relation, the flesh is buried, the bones put in a box &
deposited in the Bone House.^'
The Missionary Herald contains this, communicated to the Rev.
Cyrus Byington by a white man long resident among these Indians ;
When any one died a small scaffold was made in the yard, near the house
and high enough to be out of the reach of the dogs. On this the dead body
was laid on one side, and then a blanket or bear-skin was thrown over it, and
there the body lay until it perished. Then the hone-pickers, some old men
with long finger nails, came and picked the flesh off and put the bones in a box.
The skull was adorned when put away. The bones were then taken to a bone
house, (a house set apart to receive the bones of the dead.) standing at the
^ Appendix, pp. 265-267 ; Mllfort, M6moire, pp. 292-298.
^a Ibid., p. 268 ; see also p. 214.
=* Letters of Dr. John Sibley of Louisiana to His Son Samuel Hopkins Sibley, 1803-1821
(in The Louisiana Historical Quarterly, vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1927), pp. 499-500.)