s[103] gives a tradition current among the Yurok of
California as to the use of fires:

After death they keep a fire burning certain nights in the vicinity
of the grave. They hold and believe, at least the "Big Indians" do,
that the spirits of the departed are compelled to cross an extremely
attenuated greasy pole, which bridges over the chasm of the
debatable land, and that they require the fire to light them on
their darksome journey. A righteous soul traverses the pole quicker
than a wicked one, hence they regulate the number of nights for
burning a light according to the character for goodness or the
opposite which the deceased possessed in this world.

Dr. Emil Bessels, of the Polaris expedition, informs the writer that a
somewhat similar belief obtains among the Esquimaux.

Figure 47 is a fair illustration of a grave-fire; it also shows one of
the grave-posts mentioned in a previous section.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Grave Fire.]

_SUPERSTITIONS._

An entire volume might well be written which should embrace only an
account of the superstitious regarding death and burial among the
Indians, so thoroughly has the matter been examined and discussed by
various authors, and yet so much still remains to be commented on, but
in this work, which is mainly tentative, and is hoped will be
provocative of future efforts, it is deemed sufficient to give only a
few accounts. The first is by Dr. W. Mathews, United States Army,[104]
and relates to the Hidatsa:

When a Hidatsa dies, his shade lingers four nights around the camp
or village in which he died, and then goes to the lodge of his
departed kindred in the "village of the dead." When he has arrived
there he is rewarded for his valor, self-denial, and ambition on
earth by receiving the same regard in the one place as in the other,
for there as here the brave man is honored and the coward despised.
Some say that the ghosts of those that commit suicide occupy a
separate part of the village, but that their condition differs in no
wise from that of the others. In the next world human shades hunt
and live in the shades of buffalo and other animals that have here
died. There, too there are four seasons, but they come in an inverse
order to the terrestrial seasons. During the four nights that the
ghost is supposed to linger near his former dwelling, those who
disliked or feared the deceased, and do not wish a visit from the