rave their guns,
bows and arrows, tobacco, and if they have it a blanket, moccasins,
and trinkets of various kinds. One or more horses are killed over or
near the grave. Two horses and a mule were killed near Black Hawk's
grave. They were led up near and shot in the head. At the death of a
Comanche chief, some years ago, I am told about seventy horses were
killed, and a greater number than that were said to have been killed
at the death of a prominent Kiowa chief a few years since.

The mourning is principally done by the relatives and immediate
friends, although any one of their own tribe, or one of another
tribe, who chances to be passing, will stop and moan with the
relatives. Their mourning consists in a weird wail, which to be
described must be heard, and once heard is never forgotten, together
with the scarifying of their faces, arms, and legs with some sharp
instrument, the cutting off of the hair, and oftentimes the cutting
off of a joint of a finger, usually the little finger (Comanches do
not cut off fingers). The length of time and intensity of their
mourning depends upon the relation and position of the deceased in
the tribe. I have known instances where, if they should be passing
along where any of their friends had died, even a year after their
death, they would mourn.

The Shoshones, of Nevada, generally concealed their dead beneath heaps
of rocks, according to H. Butterfield, of Tyho, Nye County, Nevada,
although occasionally they either burn or bury them. He gives as reasons
for rock burial: 1st, to prevent coyotes eating the corpses; 2d, because
they have no tools for deep excavations; and 3d, natural indolence of
the Indians--indisposition to work any more than can be helped.

The Pi-Utes, of Oregon, bury in cairns; the Blackfeet do the same, as
did also the Acaxers and Yaquis, of Mexico, and the Esquimaux; in fact,
a number of examples might be quoted. In foreign lands the custom
prevailed among certain African tribes, and it is said that the ancient
Balearic Islanders covered their dead with a heap of stones, but this
ceremony was preceded by an operation which consisted in cutting the
body in small pieces and collecting in a pot.

CREMATION.

Next should be noted this mode of disposing of the dead, a common custom
to a considerable extent among North American tribes, especially those
living on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, although we