troy as far as
practicable their recollection of the dead. They frequently speak of
death as a sleep, and of the dead as asleep or having gone to sleep
at such a time. These customs are gradually losing their hold upon
them, and are much less generally and strictly observed than
formerly.

Figure 15 furnishes a good example of scaffold burial. Figure 16,
offering of food and drink to the dead. Figure 17, depositing the dead
upon the scaffold.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Depositing the Corpse.]

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--Tree-burial.]

A. Delano,[66] mentions as follows an example of tree-burial which he
noticed in Nebraska.

* * * During the afternoon we passed a Sioux burying-ground, if I
may be allowed to use an Irishism. In a hackberry tree, elevated
about twenty feet from the ground, a kind of rack was made of broken
tent poles, and the body (for there was but one) was placed upon it,
wrapped in his blanket, and a tanned buffalo skin, with his tin cup,
moccasins, and various things which he had used in life, were placed
upon his body, for his use in the land of spirits.

Figure 18 represents tree-burial, from a sketch drawn by my friend Dr.
Washington Matthews, United States Army.

John Young, Indian agent at the Blackfeet Agency, Montana, sends the
following account of tree-burial among this tribe:

Their manner of burial has always been (until recently) to inclose
the dead body in robes or blankets, the best owned by the departed,
closely sewed up, and then, if a male or chief, fasten in the
branches of a tree so high as to be beyond the reach of wolves, and
then left to slowly waste in the dry winds. If the body was that of
a squaw or child, it was thrown into the underbrush or jungle, where
it soon became the prey of the wild animals. The weapons, pipes,
&c., of men were inclosed, and the small toys of children with them.
The ceremonies were equally barbarous, the relatives cutting off,
according to the depth of their grief, one or more joints of the
fingers, divesting themselves of clothing even in the coldest
weather, and filling the air with their lamentations. All the sewing
up and burial process was conducted by the squaws, as the men would
not touch nor remain in proximity to a dead body.

The following account of scaffold burial among the Gros Ventres and
Mandans of Dakota is furnished by E. H. Alden, United States Indian
agent at Fort B