WHEN an Omawhaw dies, his kinsmen and friends assemble around his body, and bewail their loss with loud lamentation, weeping, and clapping of hands. Ong-pa-ton-ga, being once on a visit to St. Louis, observed a number of cattle gathering about a spot, where one of their kind had been recently slaughtered, smelling the blood, and pawing the earth; he said they behaved very like his own people, on the death of a relative.
They suffer the deceased to remain but a short time previously to interment, and often bear the body to the grave, before the warmth of vitality is entirely dissipated. The body is enveloped in a bison robe, or blanket, which is secured by a cord. It is then carried to the grave on the shoulders of two or three men, and followed by the greater portion of the mourners, without any order. The grave is an oblong square, of sufficient length, and four or five feet deep. The body is placed in the grave, and { 2} with it a pair or two of mockasins, some meat for food, and many little articles and comforts, the gifts of affection, to be used on the long journey which the deceased is supposed to be about to perform, in order to arrive at the Wa-noch-a-te, or town of brave and generous spirits. The grave is then filled with earth, and a small tumulus is raised over it, proportioned in magnitude to the dignity of the deceased. The relatives bedaub their persons with white clay, scarify themselves with a flint, cut out pieces of their skin and flesh, pass arrows through their skin; and, if on a march, they walk barefoot at a distance from their people, in testimony of the sincerity of their mourning.
For a considerable time, they nightly visit the grave of the deceased, to lament over it. A sorrowing relative may be seen, of a bleak wintry night, bending over the grave, clad in a scanty robe, which scarcely conceals the middle of the back, as an additional self-punishment and unequivocal manifestation of grief.
For the death of a brave warrior, or of a chief, the lamentation is more general, and many of those who visit the body previous to its removal, present to it blankets, bison robes, breech-cloths, and mockasins, which are sometimes thus accumulated in considerable numbers; of these presents, part is retained by the orphans, if any, but the greater number is entombed with the body. Over the grave of a person of this description, a kind of roof or shelter is constructed, of pieces of wood reared against each other, and secured at top, then sodded over with grass sod.