siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

188 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 103
away the last stick on the moruiug of the burial day. The old-time Choctaws
reckoned time by " sleeps," and by throwing away a stick after each night's
sleep, no mistake could be made.
When the bone-picker arrives at the house of the deceased, the family,
kindred and visitors seat themselves on the mourning benches and go through
with their usual weeping and wailing. They then remove the benches and
the bone-picker attends to his oflSce. He first makes the coflSn or coflans, ornamenting
them to the best of his taste or ability. He then takes down the
corpses, with his long finger nails separates the flesh from the bones, scrapes
and washes the bones perfectly clean, and puts them in the coffin. Tradition
is silent as to the disposition of the decayed flesh and other refuse. According
to Bernard Romans' Florida, all this was burned. On the contrary, an
old Indian countryman, many years ago, informed the writer that it was
buried. This last statement seems to be corroborated by the Journal of the
Rev. Lorenzo Dow, page 220, where under the date of December 24, 1804, he
thus writes :
" We rode about forty miles through Six Towns of the Choctaws,
and whilst we were passing it, I observed where they scaffolded the dead, and
also the spot where the flesh was buried when the boue-picker had done his
oflSce." The probabilities are that some communities may have buried the
flesh, while others biirned it. Or, as Dow was a later observer, it may be
that in his day the fashion was changed, the flesh being buried instead of being
burned. In this connection it may not be amiss to call attention to Claiborne's
Mississippi, page 489, where there is a confusion of the ancient and the modern
ceremonies. He states that " the shrivelled integuments stripped off by the
bone-pickers were buried in a separate place over which a pole was planted."
The shrivelled integuments may have been buried, according to the evidence
just cited, but no pole was ever planted over them, nor was there any "pole-
pulling " ceremony, for, as will be seen farther on, the pole-planting business
and the pole-pulling ceremony were introduced afterwards as new ceremonies,
when the old bone-picking custom was abolished by the Choctaws.
According to the number of corpses the bone pickers may be one or more
days at work on their respective tasks. When the work is finished, from each
place a procession is formed, and the cotfins are borne to the bone-house,
whether situated far or near. As has been stated, it is well known on what
day all are to meet at the bone-house, and every procession so manages its
business as to arrive there on the appointed day. On their arrival the coffins
are placed upon the ground, the uaourners crouch down around them, shroud
their heads, then weep and wail a long time. When enough tears have been
shed, the cofiins are placed in the bone-house, and all then t;ike their departure
to their respective homes.
After the bone-house has become full in consequence of successive deposits,
the tradition says that men are appointed to cover the house all over with
earth, which practically makes a burial mound.
As Halbert points out, the tradition which he recorded differs
from other narratives at this jDoint. It also differs in stating that
the bones of the dead were synchronously brought to the burial scaffold.
He suggests that these discrepancies may be accounted for by
variations in usage, but to the present writer it looks as though the
tradition had substituted a synchronous collection of bones on the
scaffold for the synchronous burial of them in a mound. Occasion-
ally deaths might have taken place near enough together for the bone