MOURNING AND BURIAL, SOUTHEAST (CHOCTAW)

Mourning and Burial, Southeast (Choctaw)

As with so many other customs in the Southeast, mourning and mortuary practices were never uniform. In the Adena culture, concentrated farther north in the Ohio River Valley, while most dead persons were cremated, specific individuals were selected to be encased in log tombs that were subsequently covered by mounds of dirt. These varied traditions gave way to Hopewell and then Mississippian cultures. While it is true that the Yuchi buried their dead in individual stone-lined coffins in restful-appearing positions, facing west, the same tribe sometimes buried them under the floors of their houses, placed them on scaffolds in the woods, or cremated them on a funeral pyre. Others reused these tombs, often placing two individuals in them.

Sometimes the dead were buried where they fell: the eighty-five-year-old Choctaw chief Puckshenubbe collapsed en route to Washington in October 1824. In other cases, tribal and family burial grounds were used. Cherokee chiefs had caves made into tombs on the borders of the lands they ruled (present-day Blount County, Alabama). Moshulatubbee, the last grand chief of the Choctaws, was buried in 1838 under a pile of stones near the spring on his farm in the Choctaw Nation West (now LeFlore County, Oklahoma). The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Yuchi, and other groups continued the various traditions of burial mounds (for example, at Ft. Walton Beach in northwest Florida). The environs of Nashville with its numerous mounds served as a popular “City of the Dead,” a kind of Native Jerusalem where as many as eight distinct tribes made pilgrimages. Such mixed traditions, obviously expressive of individual preferences and changing fashions, just like today, beggar any attempts, however studious and well meaning, of the federal government and state archaeologists to assign pre-Columbian human remains or funerary artifacts to the “relevant tribal culture.” Many tribes also buried the placenta or afterbirth.

This entry specifically describes Choctaw mourning and burial customs, which illustrate the region’s great variety and continual synthesis of traditions, notwithstanding the different origins and lack of uniformity even within that large group, probably the most populous one at the time of European contact. “The sun was the supreme being, and fire, its mate, gave the sun information about human activities,” according to Choctaw historian Kidwell. “It had the power of life and death, which explains its importance in the funeral customs of the Choctaws. A dead body was exposed to the rays of the sun on a raised platform and allowed to decay, thus giving itself back to the supreme power.” The deceased were scaffolded in their best clothing and painted in an elaborated and personal fashion, so that the sun would recognize them. Often a favorite weapon or (in the case of a woman) her beauty stone or household heirloom was included on the bier. A period of mourning followed for family members. Signs of mourning included cutting the hair (which represented accumulated memories), assuming a negligent appearance, not remarrying, staying segregated by sex, and being seen only by other clansmen. It did not entail visits to the scaffold, usually rather distant in the woods. In fact, the family was expected to have little to do with the burial. After about a year, the bone picker, a revered figure of the Turkey Buzzard Society, scraped the bones clean with his long fingernails, a sign of rank and power, then prepared a feast for the entire village “only wiping his filthy, bloody hands on grass,” according to a French eyewitness in the eighteenth century. The cleaned bones were wrapped, often painted with red ochre, placed in a special willow reliquary, and hung or shelved in the communal or clan bone-house. A coastal Virginian ossuary appears in John Smith’s drawings. Periodically, the relics were brought out and made part of a mourning ceremony, ballplay, or other tribal occasion.

Males and females in the Turkey Buzzard Cult were venerated and trusted, never feared, since their powers were benign and beneficial, unlike most witchcraft. Often they were also healers. Only they could perform the Turkey Buzzard Dance at festivals. Significantly, their totem animal fed only on carrion and did not kill for its meat as did the owl, eagle, hawk, panther, and other carnivores.

Choctaws divided themselves into two moieties, or iksa. When Great Spirit created people, he placed half of them on the north side of the mother mound Nanih Waiyah and half on the west side. These two groups were the kashapa okla or imoklasha and the okla inholahta or hattak inhaolahta, the “younger brother” group and the “elder brothers.” Your mother’s iksa determined which moiety was yours, and you were expected to marry into the opposite one. The interdependence of the two was also observed in death. When the charnel house was full, the opposite iksa carried the reliquaries to a nearby burying ground, piled up the bones, and covered them with a mound, using the reliquaries now as baskets to carry earth. Some rather recent burial mounds of this type may be seen along the Natchez Trace Parkway.

From the middle to late nineteenth century, the Choctaw favored burying their dead directly in the ground. The deceased was buried in a seated position. Seven men placed seven red poles about the grave, with thirteen hoops of grapevines and a small white flag. Mourning went on for several weeks as the family performed the required thirteen cries for the dead. Then a feast and dance were given in the dead person’s honor.

Like most indigenous people in North America, the Choctaws believed that it took four days for a soul to become embodied in a person, and four days for that soul to be prepared for its long and final journey. Ghosts were pitiful spirits somehow lost or stuck in this world, often because their deaths went unavenged. Witches had the ability to steal a person’s dying spirit and thus increase their power, defying death. In some traditions, the entire town sang a funeral dirge to direct the released spirit to the other world. Listening to this chorus, the spirit went away from the music until it could no longer hear sounds of the living. The words of such a song by the Tihanama (a tribe often hired to conduct funerals) may be translated as follows: Blanket him (her) with spirit/ Raise everything to the highest sky.

These lyrics are sung over and over to a sad tune, often all night, with the participants beating sticks together but no other accompaniment, until the priest senses that the spirit has taken its departure, at which moment the concluding verse is sung to a different melody, only once: May he (she) never have need for anything again, forever and ever.

Like the Yuchi, Natchez, and other surrounding tribes, the Choctaw believed in four distinct spirits, one of which remained in the bone marrow after death and one of which went to an afterworld, conceived of as a beautiful gathering place in the west with good hunting, perpetual games, and plenty of food (legend’s “happy hunting ground”). The Milky Way was the path toward the Creator, and its multitudinous stars were said to be the souls of the ancestors. Reincarnation was assumed without thinking. Newborns often received the name of a recently passed uncle or aunt in the hope or recognition that they would also carry the elder one’s spirit. Once a relative was dead and mourned, his or her name was never spoken again. This taboo was so strong among the Choctaw that Indian agents could not force mothers to name their dead children on claims forms.

Many traditional Indians today dismiss the issue of repatriation by saying, “Leave them be; they’ve already been mourned.” In practice, most Indians of old had a thousand taboos about death and would go to great lengths to avoid even the subject. For instance, it was unlucky to see an owl, and wise to avoid cemeteries with a wide detour. None of the clothing or effects of a dead person were kept, for fear of contagion. Suicides were usually not honored with a proper funeral, as they were considered to have squandered their life and cheated their families and community. It was believed that the time and place of everyone’s death was foreordained. This belief gave warriors courage in battle but caused a lot of superstitions concerning graveyards, journeys, and funerals.

When the Choctaw first encountered the English, they could not understand why the Europeans had left the bones of their ancestors across the ocean. It horrified them to see how casually and unfeelingly the white people dealt with death. The reason why many Natives buried their parents in the floors of their lodges—a practice that continues among the Maya in Central America—was to remain close to them. Death was a part of life, and the dead were still members of the community. Thus the Choctaw and many other tribal cultures throughout the Americas practice a symbolic cannibalism. Whenever a new fire is kindled, the ashes of the ancestors are mingled with it and inhaled in its smoke by the descendants. Among the Yanomami, a soup containing a small amount of finely ground dust of the deceased person’s remains is served. The intent is to keep a person’s spirit and power within the living circle of the community.

If tribes had a “heaven,” they also had a concept closely approximating the Christian idea of hell, for they believed in divine retribution, though they had no corresponding devil figure. A very bad person’s spirit did not automatically go to the happy hunting ground to join his kinsmen; it was judged by the Master of Breath, then sentenced to torments commensurate with the pain he had wrongfully inflicted on others throughout his life. This punishment might last for hundreds of years, while the ghost wandered in this world. At the end of those experiences, the soul was dispersed, never to be reborn. To the Native mind, that was the worst fate imaginable—not only to die unmourned but also for one’s spirit to be destroyed. This apparently had a cautionary effect on most people.

Donald Panther-Yates