are
said to have burned only those who died a violent death or were bitten
by snakes, but to have buried all others.[262] The Minnetaree Indians
disposed of their dead differently according to their moral character.
Bad and quarrelsome men they buried in the earth that the Master of Life
might not see them; but the bodies of good men they laid on scaffolds,
that the Master of Life might behold them.[263] The Kolosh or Tlingit
Indians of Alaska burn their ordinary dead on a pyre, but deposit the
bodies of shamans in large coffins, which are supported on four
posts.[264] The ancient Mexicans thought that all persons who died of
infectious diseases were killed by the rain-god Tlaloc; so they painted
their bodies blue, which was the rain-god's colour, and buried instead
of burning them.[265]

[Sidenote: Special modes of burial adopted to prevent or facilitate the
return of the spirit.]

These examples may suffice to illustrate the different ways in which the
same people may dispose of their dead according to the age, sex, social
rank, or moral character of the deceased, or the manner of his death. In
some cases the special mode of burial adopted seems clearly intended to
guard against the return of the dead, whether in the form of ghosts or
of children born again into the world. Such, for instance, was obviously
the intention of the old English custom of burying a suicide at a
cross-road with a stake driven through his body. And if some burial
customs are plainly intended to pin down the dead in the earth, or at
least to disable him from revisiting the survivors, so others appear to
be planned with the opposite intention of facilitating the departure of
the spirit from the grave, in order that he may repair to a more
commodious lodging or be born again into the tribe. For example, the
Arunta of Central Australia always bury their dead in the earth and
raise a low mound over the grave; but they leave a depression in the
mound on the side which faces towards the spot where the spirit of the
deceased is supposed to have dwelt in the intervals between his
successive reincarnations; and we are expressly told that the purpose of
leaving this depression is to allow the spirit to go out and in easily;
for until the final ceremony of mourning has been performed at the
grave, the ghost is believed to spend his time partly in watching over
his near relations and partly in the company of its _arumburinga_ or
spiritual double, who liv