Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/194

 1 8 2 On the defcent of the American Indians from the Jews*

When they celebrated thefe funeral rites of the above chieftain, they laid the corpfe in his tomb, in a fitting pofture, with his face towards the eaft, his head anointed with bear's oil, and his face painted red, but not ftreaked with black, becaufe that is a conftant emblem of war and death ; he was dreft in his fined apparel, having his gun and pouch, and trufty hiccory bow, with a young panther's fkin, full of arrows, along fiJe of him, and every other ufeful thing he had been pofiefied of, that when he rifes again, they may ferve him in that tracl: of land which pleafed him beft before he went to take his long fleep. His tomb was firm and clean in-fide. They covered it with thick logs, fo as to -bear feverai tiers of cyprefs-bark, and fuch a quantity of clay as would confine the pu trid fmell, and be on a level with the reft of the floor. They often fleep over thofe toaVbs-, which,- with the loud wailing of the women at the dufk ot the evening, and dawn of the day, on benches clofe by the tombs, muft awake the memory of their relations very often : and if they were killed by an enemy, it helps to irritate and fet on fuch revengeful tempers to re taliate blood for blood.

The Egyptians either embalmed, or buried, their dead : other heathen nations imagined that fire purified the body ; they burned therefore the bo dies of their dead, and put their afhes into fmall urns, which they religioufly kept by them, as facred relicks. The Tartars called Kyrgejfi, near the frozen fea, formerly ufed to hang their dead relations and friends upon trees, to be eaten by ravenous birds to purify them. But the Americans feem evidently to have derived their copy from the Ifraelites, as to the place where they bury their dead, and the method of their funeral cere monies, as well as the pcrfons with whom they are buried, and the great expences they are at in their burials. The Hebrews buried near the city of Jerufalem, by the brook Kedron ; and they frequently hewed their tombs out of rocks, or buried their dead oppofite to their doors, implying a filcnt leflbn of friendship, and a pointing caution to live well. They buried all of one family together j to which cuftom David alludes, when he fays, " gather me not with the wicked :" and Sophronius faid with regard to the like form, " noli me tangere, haeretice, neque vivum nee mortnum." But they buried ftrangers apart by themfelves, and named the place, Kebhare Galeya, " the burying place of ftrangers." And thefe rude Americans are ib ftiongly partial to the fame cuftom, that they imagine if any of us

were

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