Written under the supervision of Klára Kolínská, PhD, and submitted on 30 May 2012, this essay was part of my total coursework at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. The essay is published with the kind permission of the faculty.

North American Native Burial Customs

High on the mountain slopes of Tibet, the commonest way of disposing of a deceased body is by means of the traditional sky burial. The ritual is usually initiated shortly before dawn as the mourning procession brings the body out in the open to the charnel ground, found in the vicinity of the local monastery (Travel China Guide). Here, the body is stripped and numerous cuts are made into it by the so-called body breakers in order to make what is to follow easier. Consequently, the body is offered for consumption to vultures. When all the flesh is devoured, bones are smashed into splinters, mixed with water and tsampa, roasted barley flour, and once again given to the birds so that nothing is left (Travel China Guide).

At first sight, this tradition may perhaps appear unnecessarily cruel or even inhumane. However, this would be to judge it from the European perspective, and completely omit all cultural, religious, and geographical differences. Even though the precise origins of this ritual remain shrouded in mystery, enough is known for us to be able to obtain the basic understanding of it. First of all, the life in Tibet is much more closely connected to nature, and so we may understand this ritual as giving back to Mother Nature what one has been taking from it throughout one’s entire life. Secondly, in Buddhism, the corpse is considered as nothing but an empty vessel since the soul of the person is to exit the body to be reincarnated. The vultures themselves play a vital part at this point because, being Dakinis, the Tibetan equivalent of angels, it is their duty by means of eating up the flesh to deliver the soul into the heavens where it is to await the reincarnation (Travel China Guide). Additionally, by providing food for a part of nature, the deceased person is considered generous – a quality highly praised in Buddhism (Mihai). Thirdly and finally, this burial tradition also has its practical reasons. In such high altitudes, there are no trees growing anywhere, and so all wood has to be laboriously brought up from below – therefore, due to the scarcity and preciousness of wood, cremation is out of the question. Also, because the layer of soil is very thin, and directly underneath it there is the bedrock of the Himalayas, it is utterly unthinkable to dig a grave in the ground (Travel China Guide). Suddenly, it is apparent that the sky burial is not as grisly and gruesome as it initially seemed to be.

Even though this essay is not to concern itself with the Tibetan burial traditions, but with those of the North American Native tribes, this sky burial prologue is meant to serve a particular purpose. It is to demonstrate that we ought not to distinguish between us, Europeans, and them, Native Americans, but to see the bigger picture – us within the cultural mosaic of the world. Our traditions should therefore by no means be considered a default from which all other traditions are mere distortions. Aside from that, it is to hint to the fact that sometimes it is impossible to uncover the precise origins of some of these traditions. Finally, it is meant to point out that we should not immediately judge something only because we may find it strange. In case of the burial traditions of both the Tibetans and the Native Americans, we have to understand that their bonds with nature have always been much closer than perhaps our European ones, and also that their religions may perceive the act of burial differently.

As it was already stated, this essay is to present the burial traditions of the North American Native tribes – to be more precise, the (from our perspective) elusive yet culturally immensely intriguing traditions of cave burial, tree burial, scaffold burial, and water burial. In this respect, it is vital to realize that this essay is highly selective since, by far, “the commonest mode of burial among North American Indians has been that of internment in the ground” (Yarrow). As the main source of information, Dr. H. C. Yarrow’s 1880 treatise named “Introduction to the Study of Mortuary Customs Among the North American Indians” will be used. This already implies one simple fact – that these selected burial traditions, because legally prohibited, are no longer used. One piece of information which, following the example of Dr. Yarrow, needs to be stressed as well, is that the Natives have never truly talked with freedom about their dead, mainly for fear that knowledge which may be communicated could be used to the injury of themselves or of their loved ones (Yarrow). Therefore, aside from their tighter bond with nature and perhaps some coinciding religious beliefs, it is very difficult to ascertain the particular reasoning behind some of their more unusual burial customs.

At this point, it would also be beneficial to point out the sheer number of tribes on the continent (for instance, in 2010 in the USA alone, there were some 564 remaining Native tribes) because it provides us with an incredible variation in the burial customs (The Family Plot Blog). Only because the four aforementioned burial traditions were not exceedingly common among the Natives, it does not mean that they would be restricted to a single tribe or a single area. Due to the vast number of peoples, we may find these customs all over North America, often hundreds of miles apart. Additionally, as Dr. Yarrow makes clear, the customs differed “at the death of different persons, depending upon age, sex, and social standing” (Yarrow).

Let us now initiate the introduction of the past Native mortuary customs, starting with the cave burial. Even though burying the dead in a cave, rather than in the ground, may seem a little bit odd, natural or artificial holes in the soil, caverns, and fissures in rock have been used as places of deposit for the dead since the earliest periods of time not only in North America but all around the globe by peoples noted for their mental elevation and civilization (Yarrow). Practically speaking, caves are always ready and rather convenient resting places for the dead, especially for instance in the North where the soil during winter freezes over and becomes nearly impossible to dig in. Tribes which practiced cave burials were to be found all over the continent – from Ninstints in today’s British Columbia (McCommish) or Inuits to Los Pinos Indians in today’s Colorado. Regarding the last tribe, Dr. Yarrow quotes a description written down by one American physician who witnessed such burial:

As soon as death takes place the event is at once announced by the medicine-man […] [Preparing the corpse for the grave] does not take long; whatever articles of clothing may have been on the body at the time of death are not removed. The dead man’s limbs are straightened out, his weapons of war laid by his side, and his robes and blankets wrapped securely and snugly around him […] The death song is not a mere inarticulate howl of distress; it embraces expressions eulogistic in character […] After the body has been received into the cleft, it is well covered with pieces of rock, to protect it against the ravages of wild animals. […]In conformity with a long-established custom, all the personal property of the deceased is immediately destroyed. His horses and his cattle are shot, and his wigwam, furniture, &c., burned. (Yarrow)

We shall now focus on some of the details of this record and comment on them, starting with the author’s mentioning of the weapons being buried with the body. It was customary for the native tribes to bury their dead along with items which they used, such as fishing tackle or hunting weapons, items which could somehow characterize them, or items which they may find helpful on their way to the spirit land. For instance, the cemeteries of the Chippewa Indians in Michigan show that the Native tribal members were buried with tobacco, matches, guns, shells, seed corn, or cotton tents (Walker, 239). Interestingly enough, Yarrow states that bows and arrows or guns were frequently found buried along with men, whereas with women it was rather their cooking utensils or other implements of their toil (Yarrow). Here, we have to take the statement with a pinch of salt, perhaps, considering the time Yarrow’s book was published, and therefore the fact that some items might have been given greater emphasis, based on gender stereotyping, while others may have been backgrounded or even overlooked.

Second element to which we shall now draw our attention is the use of songs, chants, and prayers during the burial. Once again, such practice has always been customary, and it has survived to this day. Each tribe has had their own variation of funeral prayers and songs in their Native tongue which they used in the occasion (The Family Plot Blog). Yarrow quotes an unnamed writer who has once taken part in a Native funeral:

At almost all funerals there is an irregular crying kind of singing with no accompaniments, but generally all do not sing the same melody at the same time in unison. Several may sing the same song and at the same time, but each begins and finishes when he or she may with. […] The words are simply an exclamation of grief, as our word ‚alas‘; but they also have other words which they use, and sometimes they use merely the syllable la. (Yarrow)

Interestingly, in these songs or prayers, the name of the deceased did not generally appear. In an actual fact, it seems that the majority of the tribes never mentioned the name of the dead person again after their death, believing that if they did so, they would “call the deceased back and make his spirit restless” (Popovic) binding him “nearby to haunt his relatives or the village” (AAANativeArts). If the person was ever to be mentioned, one would always opt for a descriptive phrase rather than the proper name (AAANativeArts).

The last feature to be commented upon is the shooting of the animals and the burning of the possessions of the deceased. The dead person’s favorite horse was frequently slaughtered near the burial site in order to carry the person’s soul into the spirit world (The Family Plot Blog). Consequently, their cattle were shot and material possessions burned, most probably in order for the spirit not to be tied to anything in this world, and thus to be able to continue on the path to the afterlife. Another point of view may be provided by the case of some Plateau tribes, in whose tradition most of a person’s belongings that weren’t buried with them “were burned along with his/her lodge after the funereal, so relatives wouldn’t have to suffer the grief of seeing them“(AAANativeArts).

Now that we are acquainted with some of the general customs associated with the traditional Native burial ceremony, let us focus on the second type of burial announced in the introduction – tree burial. Tree burials, depicted for instance in a 1920 watercolor painting by Joanna Simpson Wilson, were “one of the most distinctive burial methods on the Northwest Coast” (Northwest Coast Archaeology). After the death of a person, their body was, alongside their most precious possessions, enclosed in a wooden coffin which was afterwards raised high up into the branches of a large tree, and fastened to its trunk. As Yarrow points out, “such a tree was never located close to the village” (Yarrow), apart from many a practical reason presumably also so that the inhabitants thereof would not be haunted by the spirits of the dead. After a couple of years, once the coffins have deteriorated and the bones have fallen down to the ground, they would be gathered and the person would be given a secondary burial, usually at a village site cemetery (Northwest Coast Archaeology). This type of burial was, of course, used predominantly only where timber abounded and where, therefore, the lives of the people were intimately intertwined with trees. It was among the trees that the people found food and shelter, so it is presumably not difficult to understand why it was in particular among trees that they would want to be buried. The reason why certain tribes may have buried their dead high above the ground instead of in it, however, may have been a much more practical one. Yarrow notes that tree burials were frequently used in lands where wolves and bears were numerous, and where a dead body may therefore “be dug up and devoured, though it be put many feet under the ground” (Yarrow).

Where trees were scarce, a similar means of burial was developed – so-called scaffold burial. The methodology behind it was somewhat similar to the previous one. This type of burial was often used, for instance, by the Iroquois but Yarrow provides a nice account of it, as practiced by the tribe of Choctaws from Carolina:

As soon as a person is dead, they erect a scaffold 18 or 20 feet high in a grove adjacent to the town, where they lay the corps, lightly covered with a mantle; 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 make 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, which is deposited in the bone-house, a building erected for that purpose in every town. (Yarrow)

A very special kind of scaffold burial was that of depositing the body in a canoe supported on posts. One case was recorded in the Skokomish tribe in the state of Washington, where an American missionary witnessed such burial of a prominent woman. He wrote: “The canoe was about 25 feet long. The posts, of old Indian hewed boards, were about a foot wide. Holes were cut in these, in which boards were placed, on which the canoe rested.“ Of course, this kind of burial was not reserved for prominent tribal members only, being also a common mode of disposal of the dead in the fishing communities. For example, in some of the fishing tribes in the Oregon and Washington Territory, the canoes “were generally drawn into the woods at some prominent point a short distance from the village, and sometimes placed between the forks of trees or raised from the ground on posts“ (Yarrow).

The last type of burial tradition to be introduced is the so-called water burial. The association between water and immortality has been reflected in countless cultures, and in their myths which often center on heroes who sail away from their people in death with the promise of return, and so it is no surprise that the bodies of chiefs and heroes were therefore sometimes either set adrift on rivers and oceans in death ships, or simply wrapped, weighted with stones, and thrown into the water (Encyclopædia Britannica Online). It must be noted, though, that most of this does not apply to the North American Native culture, being in itself rather of a European or Asian pedigree. As Yarrow points out:

As a confirmed rite or ceremony, this mode of disposing of the dead has never been followed by any of our North American Indians, although occasionally the dead have been disposed of by sinking in springs or watercourses, by throwing into the sea, or by setting afloat in canoes. (Yarrow)

One such case was recorded in Skull Valley in the Great Salt Lake Desert area. The name of the valley was chosen because of the large number of skulls found in it. This has to do with the tradition of the local Goshute Indians of “burying their dead in springs, which they sink with stones or keep down with sticks” (Yarrow). Nonetheless, it must be stressed that this particular means of burial was extremely rare among the North American Native tribes.

In conclusion, as fascinating as all of these burial traditions appear to be, none of them has survived to this day as they would be considered a violation of the law. Already Dr. H. C. Yarrow in 1880 noted, rather condescendingly (and from the contemporary point of view even offensively), that “the primitive manners and customs of the North American Indians are rapidly passing away under influences of civilization” (Yarrow). To juxtapose the presumably primitive Indians with the presumably advanced Euro-American civilization is to fail to understand the basic truth that it is never feasible to compare any two so vastly different cultures. The traditions and culture of neither of these are better than the other, as both of them ought to be considered as inherently equal to one another.

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