out 6 to 8 feet in length
and 4 feet in breadth, about which is hung gourds, feathers, and
other such like trophies, placed there by the dead man's relations
in respect to him in the grave. The other parts of the funeral rites
are thus: As soon as the party is dead they lay the corpse upon a
piece of bark in the sun, seasoning or embalming it with a small
root beaten to powder, which looks as red as vermillion; the same is
mixed with bear's oil to beautify the hair. After the carcass has
laid a day or two in the sun they remove it and lay it upon crotches
cut on purpose for the support thereof from the earth; then they
anoint it all over with the aforementioned ingredients of the powder
of this root and bear's oil. When it is so done they cover it over
very exactly with the bark or pine of the cypress tree to prevent
any rain to fall upon it, sweeping the ground very clean all about
it. Some of his nearest of kin brings all the temporal estate he was
possessed of at his death, as guns, bows and arrows, beads,
feathers, match-coat, &c. This relation is the chief mourner, being
clad in moss, with a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty for
three or four days, his face being black with the smoke of pitch
pine mixed with bear's oil. All the while he tells the dead man's
relations and the rest of the spectators who that dead person was,
and of the great feats performed in his lifetime, all that he speaks
tending to the praise of the defunct. As soon as the flesh grows
mellow and will cleave from the bone they get it off and burn it,
making the bones very clean, then anoint them with the ingredients
aforesaid, wrapping up the skull (very carefully) in a cloth
artificially woven of opossum's hair. The bones they carefully
preserve in a wooden box, every year oiling and cleansing them. By
these means they preserve them for many ages, that you may see an
Indian in possession of the bones of his grandfather or some of his
relations of a longer antiquity. They have other sorts of tombs, as
when an Indian is slain in that very place they make a heap of
stones (or sticks where stones are not to be found); to this
memorial every Indian that passes by adds a stone to augment the
heap in respect to the deceased hero. The Indians make a roof of
light wood or pitch-pine over the graves of the more distinguished,
covering it with bark and then with earth, leaving