These Being
Very Thick-Plac'd, They Cover Them (Many Times Double) With Bark;
Then They Throw The Earth Thereon, That
Came out of the Grave,
and beat it down very firm; by this Means, the dead Body lies in a
Vault,
nothing touching him; so that when I saw this way of Burial,
I was mightily pleas'd with it, esteeming it very decent and pretty,
as having seen a great many Christians buried without
the tenth Part of that Ceremony and Decency. {Quiogozon Idols.}
Now, when the Flesh is rotted and moulder'd from the Bone,
they take up the Carcass, and clean the Bones, and joint them together;
afterwards, they dress them up in pure white dress'd Deer-Skins,
and lay them amongst their Grandees and Kings in the Quiogozon,
which is their Royal Tomb or Burial-Place of their Kings and War-Captains.
This is a very large magnificent Cabin, (according to their Building)
which is rais'd at the Publick Charge of the Nation, and maintain'd
in a great deal of Form and Neatness. {Idols at the Beds.}
About seven foot high, is a Floor or Loft made, on which lie
all their Princes, and Great Men, that have died for several hundred Years,
all attir'd in the Dress I before told you of. No Person is to have
his Bones lie here, and to be thus dress'd, unless he gives
a round Sum of their Money to the Rulers, for Admittance.
If they remove never so far, to live in a Foreign Country,
they never fail to take all these dead Bones along with them,
though the Tediousness of their short daily Marches keeps them never so long
on their Journey. They reverence and adore this Quiogozon,
with all the Veneration and Respect that is possible for such a People
to discharge, and had rather lose all, than have any Violence or Injury
offer'd thereto. These Savages differ some small matter in their Burials;
some burying right upwards, and otherwise, as you are acquainted withal
in my Journal from South to North Carolina; {Mourning for the Dead.}
Yet they all agree in their Mourning, which is, to appear every Night,
at the Sepulcre, and howl and weep in a very dismal manner, having their Faces
dawb'd over with Light-wood Soot, (which is the same as Lamp-black)
and Bears Oil. This renders them as black as it is possible
to make themselves, so that theirs very much resemble
the Faces of Executed Men boil'd in Tar. {Indians hired to mourn.}
If the dead Person was a Grandee, to carry on the Funeral Ceremonies,
they hire People to cry and lament over the dead Man. Of this sort
there are several, that practise it for a Livelihood, and are very expert
at Shedding abundance of Tears, and howling like Wolves,
and so discharging their Office with abundance of Hypocrisy and Art.
The Women are never accompanied with these Ceremonies after Death;
and to what World they allot that Sex, I never understood,
unless, to wait on their dead Husbands; but they have more Wit,
than some of the Eastern Nations, who sacrifice themselves to accompany
their Husbands into the next World.
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