by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com
This is a review of Native Cemeteries and Forms of Burial East of the Mississippi, by David I. Bushnell, Jr. A publication of the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 71, the work was printed in Washington by the Government Printing Office in 1920. Mr. Bushnell's book is available on Google Fullview Books.
This review is based upon a PDF version of a digital copy of the book accessed January 3, 2009. Special attention is given in this review to the two major Indian groups of the Hill Country of Mississippi --- the Choctaw and the Chickasaw.
Various means of burial are discussed in this excellent reference of burial customs among native Americans. Much of the work of the book is based upon the journals of early explorers, missionaries, traders and travelers who encountered indigenous peoples prior to their customs being completely altered by exposure to Europeans.
From a discussion of the pit burials of New England to a discussion of the burial customs of the Seminoles of Florida, Bushnell covers the eastern United States completely in his analysis of the various approaches to the disposition of the dead among native people. He presents how some tribes had two customs -- one for the high and influential and another for the ordinary members of the group. Important person's bodies were prepared and dried and placed in the "temples" of the villages whereas the ordinary corpses were consigned to a pit burial.
Bushnell uses a few line drawing within his text to illustrate certain customs. The drawing below depicts the means by which the Seminoles transported a corpse to the burial ground.
Some tribes buried only cleaned bones; some buried the cleaned bones only periodically. Some tribes gathered up all bones about once a decade in a great ritual and buried the bones in a large pit or ossuary in a massive ceremony. Some New England tribes used ground iron oxide in great amounts within their burial pits.
But almost all groups showed a tremendous reverence for their dead often moving the bones of their relatives with them as they relocated. All groups had specific mourning rituals --- and all groups seemed to have a well-developed sense of an afterlife.
Cremation was certainly one option the indigenous peoples of the North American continent practiced.
In and around present-day Nashville, Tennessee (and elsewhere), is evidence of another practice --- in-ground burials within stone-lined graves.
Of course many of the Southern Indian groups practiced mound burials --- but often those burials were of cremated remains --- or of bones picked clean, dried, and completely disarticulated.
Of the in-ground burials within stone-lined graves, Bushnell quotes Troost's 1845 description of the Nashville graves made of thin sheets of sandstone or limestone ---
As to the form of the graves, they are rude fabrics, composed of rough flat stones. Such flat stone was laid on the ground in an excavation made for the purpose; upon it were put (edgewise) two similar stones of about the same length as the former, and two small ones were put at both extremities, so as to form an oblong cavity lined with stones, of the size of a man; the place for the head and feet had the same dimensions. When a coffin was to be constructed next to it, one of the side stones serves for both, and consequently they lay in straight rows, in one layer only (page 45).
Below are pictures from Bushnell showing a stone-lined grave from Tennessee before and after the cover was removed. [Note: All of the plates within Bushnell's work are at the end of the text; I recommend that you start your reading of this book at the end and examine the black and white plates.]
Another description of these stone graves in Tennessee by Jones in 1878 indicates that the burials often were for other species than human beings --- and in some cases, remains of both human beings and other animals were found within the same grave. These stone graves are described as
. . . the earth having been excavated to the depth of about eighteen inches, and the dimension of the excavation corresponding to the size of the skeleton. The sides of each were lined with carefully selected stones, forming a perfect parallelogram, with a single stone for the head and foot. The skeleton or body of the dead person was then deposited at full length. In the square short grave the skull was placed in the centre and surrounded by the long bones. . . Some of the small graves contained nothing more than bones of small animals and birds. The animals appeared to be a species of dog, also rabbits, raccoons, and opossums. The bones of birds appeared to belong to the wild turkey, eagle, owl, hawk, and wild duck. Occasionally bones of these animals and birds were found in the large graves along with the bones of human adults (pages 45-46).
In my part of Mississippi, it is the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes whose burials customs and traditions are still much in evidence by the burials mounds left through the region. And it is amazing at the number of churches and cemeteries early European settlers developed on top of older tribal burial mounds. Several cemeteries in Monroe County are on the remains of an older Indian burial mound.
The Choctaws first encountered Europeans when the early Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century came into the region. For three centuries, there are various reports of the Choctaws and their customs of living in "towns" and of their practices of building mounds.
Here is a 1792 description by Bartram of the burial process of the Choctaw.
As soon as a person is dead, they erect a scaffold eighteen or twenty feet high, in a grove adjacent to the town, where they lay the corpse lightly covered with a mantel; here it is suffered to remain, visited and protected by the friends and relations, until the flesh becomes putrid, so as easily to part from the bones; then undertakers, who made it their business, carefully strip the flesh from the bones, wash and cleanse them, and when dry and purified by the air, having provided a curiously wrought chest or coffin, fabricated of bones and splints, they place all the bones therein; it is then deposited in the bone house, a building erected for that purpose in every town. And when this house is full, a general solemn funeral takes place; the nearest kindred or friends of the deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone house, take up the respective coffins, and follow one another in order of seniority, the nearest relations and connexions attending their respective corpse, and the multitude following after them, all as one family, with united voice of alternate Allelujah and lamentation, slowly proceed to the place of general interment, where they place the coffins in order, forming a pyramid; and lastly, cover all over with earth, which raises a conical hill or mount. They then return to town in order of solemn procession, concluding the day with a festival, which is called the feast of the dead (pages 94-95).
Although many believe most of the burial mounds throughout Choctaw Nation have their origin in the sort of burial customs described above, research has shown that burials within the mounds may also have included cremations and entire body burials. Certainly large numbers of warriors killed in battle seem to have been buried "whole" in earthen mounds without the flesh being removed from the bones and the bones disarticulated and cleaned. Some such mounds near the present town of West Point would tend to support this conclusion.
The job of "bone picker" was most often that of a man but some reports of female bone pickers have been noted. And at least one report indicates that members of the dead person's family gathered as a group to pick the bones clean after the corpse had been on the scaffold for three or four months. [Somewhere I read, I don't remember if in this book by Bushnell or elsewhere, that the work of the bone picker was by fingers only --- that no tools or implements were used to prepared the bones other than the hand.]
Periods of mourning also varied --- as did customs of expressing grief and sorrow. In some Choctaw groups, the corpse on the scaffold was visited regularly and "questioned" and protected. After the bones were picked clean and deposited in their small chest within the bone house, there is some evidence that relatives paid their respects. But the period of mourning after a relative died varied according to the age of the individual -- the older he or she was, the longer the period of mourning according to some writers.
When the period of mourning was over, it was announced by placing a marker outside the home of those desiring an end to the mourning. The marker, three long pieces of wood stuck into the ground in a triangle and the upper ends tied together with a bright colored cloth near the entrance to the home, signaled the beginning of the end of the mourning. For three days after the marker was erected, the family wept three times per day --- at sunrise, at noon, and at sundown. The mourners sat or kneeled on blankets which also they used to cover their heads. Friends and more distant relatives seeing the sign gathered to assist in this final outpouring of grief --- and planned feasting and dancing of which the mourners, at the end of the third day, stopped their weeping and joined in the festivities.
The Chickasaw Nation, which lay more-or-less to the north of the Choctaw Nation, had a different set of burial customs. One early observer, Romans, stated in 1775:
They bury their dead almost the moment the breath is out of the body, in the very spot under the couch on which the deceased died, and the nearest relations mourn over it with woeful lamentations . . . the mourning continues about a year, which they know by counting the moons, they are every morning and evening, and at first throughout the day at different times, employed in the exercise of this last duty (page 105 - 106).
The trader Adair, says this of the Chickasaw in 1775:
When any of their people die at home, they wash and anoint the corpse, and soon bring it out of doors . . . they carry him three times around the house in which he is to be interred, stopping half a minute each time (page 106).
The corpse was buried under the house. Many of the early homes had earthen floors so there was not much problem in preparing a grave beneath the house. "The body deposited within and covered with logs and multiple layers of cypress bark and brought up the level of the floor of the house. Beds were often made above the graves" (page 106).
There is evidence that the custom of burying the dead beneath the floor of the house goes back to earlier prehistoric times. Even stone-lined graves were sometimes found beneath houses (see report from Wilson County, Tennessee on page 106).
Adair gives this description for the burial customs followed by the Chickasaw when the dead occurs a great distance from home.
When any of them die at a distance, if the company be not driven and pursued by an enemy, they place the corpse on a scaffold, covered with notched logs to secure it from being torn by wild beasts, or fowls of prey; when they imagine the flesh is consumed, and the bones are thoroughly dried, they return to the place, bring them home, and inter them in a very solemn manner (pages 106-107).
Bushnell provides a easy-to-read and thorough review of the old literature regarding tribal burial customs. His table of contents is specific enough that a reader can access just the tribal group, location or custom of interest but most will wish to read all of this most interesting account of burial customs observed by early Europeans. An excellent index is also included.
Burial customs of Native Americans were rapidly changed and or eradicated with the settlement of Europeans in the New World. Customs changed as native people were forced to relocate; customs changed as native people were indoctrinated into newer ways of thinking. In the Hill Country of Mississippi, is was reported that all of the older ways of burial had all but disappeared by 1820. And many of the burial grounds of early man in our country have been lost or destroyed.
Bushnell's excellent book provides a glimpse of many of the burial customs of Native Americans --- and recommend that all members of the Association of Graveyard Rabbits read it.