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176 BUBEAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
edge of a town. When this ceremony was performed, there was a large collec-
tion of people. The bone-pickers had some other ceremonies, but I do not recol-
lect them. Twice in each year—spring and fall—the people assembled in
numbers near the bone houses, on account of the dead. The two families [i. e.
the moieties], into which the nation by the usage of the people is divided,
would meet. On one day one family would cry and howl over the bones of
the dead, the bones being then brought out of the houses. And while one
family cried, the other danced. On the succeeding, day, the family that danced
on the day before would cry and howl, and the other dance. After this the
bones lying in the boxes were deposited again in the bone houses. A small
present was made to the bone-pickers. About 38 years since the Choctaws
began to buiT the dead. At that time an old king died and was buried. He
was the first man who was buried."
Coming down to relatively modern times we find in Cushman no
less than three descriptions, one by himself, one from a manuscript
by a native missionary, Rev. Israel Folsom, and a third quoted from
a manuscript by Nathaniel Folsom. These are as follows
In the disposition of their dead, the ancient Choctaws practiced a strange
method different from any other Nation of people, perhaps, that ever existed.
After the death of a Choctaw, the corpse, wrapped in a bear skin or rough
kind of covering of their own manufacture, was laid out at full length upon a
high scaffold erected near the house of the deceased, that it might be protected
from the wild beasts of the woods and the scavengers of the air. After the
body had remained upon the scaffold a sufficient time for the flesh to have
nearly or entirely decayed, the Hattak fullih nipi foni, (Bone Picker) the prin-
cipal official in their funeral ceremonies and especially appointed for that
duty—appeared and informed the relatives of the deceased that he had now
come to perform the last sacred duties of his office to their departed friend.
Then, with the relatives and friends, he marched with great solemnity of
countenance to the scaffold and, ascending, began his awful duty of picking
off the flesh that still adhered to the bones, with loud groans and fearful
grimaces, to which the friends below responded in cries and wailings.
The Bone-Picker never trimmed the nails of his thumbs, index and middle
fingers which accordingly grew to an astonishing length—sharp and almost as
hard as fiint—and well adapted to the horrid business of their owner's calling.
After he had picked all the flesh from the bones, he then tied it up in a bundle
and carefully laid it upon a corner of the scaffold ; then gathering up the
bones in his arms he descended and placed them in a previously prepared box,
and then applied fire to the scaffold, upon which the assembly gazed uttering
the most frantic cries and moans until it was entirely consumed. Then forming
a procession headed by the Bone-Picker the box containing the bones was
carried, amid weeping and wailing, and deposited in a house erected and conse-
crated to that purpose and called A-bo-ha fo-ni, (Bone-hou^-e) with one of
which all villages and to^^^ls were supplied. Then all repaired to a previously
prepared feast, over which the Bone-Picker, in virtue of his office, presided
with much gravity and silent dignity.
As soon as the bone-houses of the neighboring villages were filled, a general
burial of the bones took place, to which funeral ceremony the people came from
87 The Missionary Herald, vol. xxv, No. 11 (Nov., 1829), p. 350.