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218 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
Simpson Tubby said that he had heard fires used to be lighted
where a person had been killed and he thought this might be in
order to keep the ghost of another person away.
Almost all of our other informants treat of the two regions of the
dead as if they were constituted on the basis of rewards and punishments
in a more general sense than Wright indicates, thus European-
izing what seems to have been the older view. Catlin quotes Peter
Pinchlin [Pitchlynn] on this subject as follows
Our people all believe that the spirit lives in a future state—that it has a
great distance to travel after death towards the West—that it has to cross a
dreadful deep and rapid stream, which is hemmed in on both sides by high and
rugged hills—over this stream, from hill to hill, there lies a long and slippery
pine-log, with the bark peeled off, over which the dead have to pass to the
delightful hunting-grounds. On the other side of the stream there are six
persons of the good hunting-grounds, with rocks in their hands, which they
throw at them all when they are in the middle of the log. The good walk on
safely, to the good hunting-grounds, where tliere is one continual day—where
the trees are always green—where the sky has no clouds—where there are
continual fine and cooling breezes—where there is one continual scene of
feasting, dancing, and rejoicing—where there is no pain or trouble, and people
never grow old, but for ever live young and enjoy the youthful pleasures.
The wicked see the stones coming, and try to dodge, by which they fall from
the log, and go down thousands of feet to the water which is dashing over the
rocks, and is stinking with dead fish, and animals, where they are carried
around and brought continually back to the same place in whirlpools—where
the trees are all dead, and the waters are full of toads and lizards, and snakes
where the dead are always hungry, and have nothing to eat—are always sick,
and never die—where the sun never shines, and where the wicked are continually
climbing up by thousands on the sides of a high rock from which they can
ovei'look the beautiful country of the good hunting-grounds, the place of the
happy, but never can reach it."
Rewards and retributions appear again in the accounts given by
Cushman
Their opinions concerning the departure of the spirit at death were various.
Some believed that it lingered for a time near those earthly precincts which
it had just left, and it continued still to be, in a certain manner, akin to the
earth. For this reason, provisions were placed at the feet of the corpse dur-
ing the time it lay on its elevated scaffold, exposed to the influence of light
or air. The deceased had not as yet entered into the realm of spirits ; but
when the flesh had withered away from the bones, these were buried with
songs and cries, terminating in feasts and dances peculiar to the ceremonies
of disposing of the dead. Others believe that when the spirit leaves the body,
it lingers for some time before it can be wholly separated from its former
conditions ; after which it wanders off traversing vast plains in the moon-
light. At length, it arrives at a great chasm in the earth, on the other side
of which is the land of the blessed, where there is eternal spring and
hunting grounds supplied with great varieties of game. But there is no other
way of crossing this fearful gulf but by means of a barked pine log that
» Catlin, N. A. Inds., vol. 2, pp. 145-146.