Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/348

 More than a hundred victims were sometimes sacrificed to the names of the Great Chief.[267] The same horrible ceremonies, in a more {272} limited degree, were also exercised at the death of the lesser chiefs.

At the death of one of their female chiefs, Charlevoix relates, that her husband not being noble was, according to their custom, strangled by the hands of his own son. Soon after, the two deceased being laid out in state, were surrounded by the dead bodies of 12 infants, strangled by the order of the eldest daughter of the late female chief, and who had now succeeded to her dignity. Fourteen other individuals were also prepared to die and accompany the deceased. On the day of interment, as the procession advanced, the fathers and mothers who had sacrificed their children, preceding the bier, threw the bodies upon the ground at different distances, in order that they might be trampled upon by the bearers of the dead. The corpse arriving in the temple where it was to be interred, the 14 victims now prepared themselves for death by swallowing pills of tobacco and water, and were then strangled by the relations of the deceased, and their bodies cast into the common grave, and covered with earth.

The Natchez, together with the remains of the Grigras and Thioux, who had become incorporated with them, did