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20 BITEEAU OP AMERICAIT ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
When the people beheld the gulden emblem of the sua glittering on the top
of the great work which, by the united labor of their own hands, had just been
accomplished, they were filled with joy and much gladness. And in their songs
at the feast, which was then going on, they would sing
" Behold the wonderful work of our hands ; and let us be glad. Look upon
the great mound; its top is above the trees, and its black shadow lies on the
ground, a bowshot. It is surmounted by the golden emblem of the sun; its
glitter (tohpakali) dazzles the eyes of the multitude. It inhumes the bones
of fathers and relatives; they died on our sojourn in the wilderness. They
died in a far off wild country ; they rest at Nunih Waya. Our journey lasted
many winters ; it ends at Nunih Waya."
The feast and the dance, as was the custom, continued five days. After this,
in place of the long feast, the minko directed that, as a mark of respect due
to the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, for whom they had with
so much labor prepared such a beautiful and wonderfully high monumental
grave, each iksa should come to the mound and, setting up an ornamental pole
for each clan, hold a solemn cry a whole moon. Then, to appease the restless
spirits of the deceased nation and satisfy all the men and women with what
they had done with the sacred relics of their dead, the Choc taws held a grand
and joyous national dance and feast of two days. And returning to their tents,
they remembered their grief no more.
All the people said that their great chief was full of wisdom ; that his heart
was with the people ; and that his counsels had led them in the clean and white
paths of safety and peace. Each of the iksas selected very tall pine poles,
which they peeled and made white and ornamented with festoons of evergreens
and flowers. Then in most solemn form, they performed the cry three times
every day, during one whole moon. Then at the great national pole pulling,
they celebrated a grand feast and dunce of two days. The rejoicing of the nation
was very great, and they returned to their camps with glad hearts, remem-
bering their sorrows no more.^"''
Afterward, when a death occurred, and the bones had been properly cleansed,
they were deposited in a great cavity which had been constructed for that
purpose, as. the work of the mound was progressing. It was the national
sepulchral vault; and thither the bones of all the people that died at Nunih
Waya were carried and neatly stowed aw^ay in dressed leather sacks. Thus
arose the custom of burying the dead in the great monumental sepulchre. And
when a member of a hunting party of more than two men or a family died, too
far out in the forest to pack home the bones, which could not be cleaned in the
woods—for the bone pickers never went hunting—it was deemed sufficient to
appease the wandering spirit to place all his hunting implements close to the
dead body, just as death had left it. In such cases it was not lawful to touch
the dead, and they were covered with a mound of earth thirty steps in circumference
and as high as a man's head. If death occurred at the camp of an
individual family in the far off hunt, the survivors would, during the cry moon,
carry, in cane baskets and [on] the blade bones of the buffalo, a sufficient
amount of earth to construct a mound of the above dimensions. If there should
be but two naen at a camp, or a lone man and his wife, and one should die, the
survivor had to carry the dead body home. Life for life, was the law ; and every
life had to be accounted for in a satisfactory manner. It would not answer
for a man to return home and report that his hunting companion or his wife
had been lost or drowned, devoured by wild beasts or died a natural death.
""As will be seen later, the pole-pulling ceremony was of later date tbau the custom
of burying in mounds.