The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-12-21

cred the most curious mortuary custom
Of any Indian tribe, dismounted from
my horse, who had secured for me by
his keen sense the opportunity of seeing
what l had heard about but never
found, and, leaving the well-trained
creature standing unfastened on the
trail, approached the tree. As I did so
| saw that the object was plainly little
parfeche, blanleted and sided with
burial boards, one of which had fallen
to the ground. | also saw that the
branches OF the tree leading up to the
burial case were barled near the trunk,
one above another, as if they had been
climbed by the feet of persons anxious
70 see such rare and peculiar object OF
curiosity. In ascending the tree Limb
by limb / reached, at last, the little
grave. A jealous crow called out over.
head to me as | bent over it searching
ly. Sure enough, there lay the little
whitened skeleton. Some of the bones
were missing, but still enough re.
manned to tell the story The covering
through which it peepcd out at me was
partially dragged apart, probably by
some persistent bird Of prey, but the
case boards. with their holes, through
which the cords were passed that held
them together, still pressed the tiny
stranger, whose little form had met the
strange mystery Of death at the very
portals of life.
Descending from the tree picked ur
the fallen case board with the cord holes
in it, and climbing my horse renewed
my journey.
Born dead!' Born dead!'' Those
words kept ringing in my ears as the
horse moved slowly forward.
Scarcely had left the spot when a
loud undulating sound, hardly less hui
man than the broken sobs of the mother
herself, called loudly over the little
stretcher out of the top of the pine tree.
''C-o-o-o-o-o-hP'
1t was certainly a startling coinci.
dental sound. Had an Indian heard it
with that stretched grave before him,
he would have hurried from the spot,
filed as he is with supeTstitions about
the dead, and, calling it bad medi-
cine relied his medicine bag with
new charm secret. But an Indian never
revisits the grave of a stiIlborn child.
! recognized the sound instantly as the
familiar voice to me Of the Screech owl.
who, lingering round the remains of
the dead. broods ike an evil spirit in
such haunted places, repeating in this
instance, however, the death knelling
dirge that would have been uttered by
the Navajo mother had her soui passed
into the ominous bird at the death OF
her little one.
The pitch of the terebonthine tree,
as | have since learned, is prime death
medicine II is in the medicine bag.
All the mortuary customs of Indian
tribes may be summed up in the tale of
the pine tree,
The burial of the dead among the Ma
vajos is peculiar to themselves a re-
semblance only to their mortuary Gus
toms is to be found among the Round
Valley Indians, of California. the Ka-
gonlas and Billoxiss of Louisiana, and
the Indians Of Virginia. The Navajo,
however, is the more unique. The
house is the grave. The body is buried
just where it dies As soon as death
takes place a shallow grave is scooped
IN the center Of the hogan. In this
grave the body is placed by the nearest
relatives, who previously smear their
bodies with tar from the pinion tree in
order to protect themselves against the
evil influence OF the devils work. This