r modes of expression. The Moravian
Brethren give the grounds of this belief with great clearness: "That
they hold the soul to be immortal, and perhaps think the body will rise
again, they give not unclearly to understand when they say, 'We Indians
shall not for ever die; even the grains of corn we put under the earth,
grow up and become living things.' They conceive that when the soul has
been a while with God, it can, if it chooses, return to earth and be
born again."[255-1] This is the highest and typical creed of the
aborigines. But instead of simply being born again in the ordinary sense
of the word, they thought the soul would return to the bones, that these
would clothe themselves with flesh, and that the man would rejoin his
tribe. That this was the real, though often doubtless the dimly
understood reason of the custom of preserving the bones of the deceased,
can be shown by various arguments.

This practice was almost universal. East of the Mississippi nearly every
nation was accustomed, at stated periods--usually once in eight or ten
years--to collect and clean the osseous remains of those of its number
who had died in the intervening time, and inter them in one common
sepulchre, lined with choice furs, and marked with a mound of wood,
stone, and earth. Such is the origin of those immense tumuli filled with
the mortal remains of nations and generations which the antiquary, with
irreverent curiosity, so frequently chances upon in all portions of our
territory. Throughout Central America the same usage obtained in various
localities, as early writers and existing monuments abundantly testify.
Instead of interring the bones, were they those of some distinguished
chieftain, they were deposited in the temples or the council-houses,
usually in small chests of canes or splints. Such were the
charnel-houses which the historians of De Soto's expedition so often
mention, and these are the "arks" which Adair and other authors, who
have sought to trace the descent of the Indians from the Jews, have
likened to that which the ancient Israelites bore with them on their
migrations. A widow among the Tahkalis was obliged to carry the bones of
her deceased husband wherever she went for four years, preserving them
in such a casket handsomely decorated with feathers.[256-1] The Caribs
of the mainland adopted the custom for all without exception. About a
year after death the bones were cleaned, bleached, painted, wrapped in
odorou