The following is my translation of an article called: Indianergräbe von Prof Dr K Weide, Leipzig. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1913, Heft 1, Seiten 19-24. The original article was accompanied by a number of illustrations, but they've presently got appointments elsewhere.
Mind your language
I'm sticking with the terms current in 1913, as far as I know them. It's possible there could be difficulties with names unfamiliar to me. It should also be appreciated that some words are out of date.
I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Indian graves by Prof Dr K Weide, Leipzig
The care that a people provide for their dead is as good an indication of their level of civilisation as the form of their society and economy, their technology and science, for the height of their culture. At the end of the 18th century, the Omaha still provided for their chief with the proud tradition of sitting him upon his favourite steed, and burying both on the banks of the Missouri until the earth reached over the head dress of the hero. The mound was over 2m high and had a diameter of 8m. Thus could the warrior still ride out onto the old hunting grounds even during death.

That the Indian is extremely pious towards their departed loved ones is not to be denied, and this contradicts the images of rawness and violence that are called up by our impressions of the red man. Their original and ethically lowest way of handling the dead is simply setting the body out, the uncourageous and unemotional disposal of the deceased into the bush, on the prairie, for the dogs and carnivores to eat. Only a few tribes in North America practice this; for example the Tinneh or Athapascans, the northern language group of the Indians, and the Assiniboian, a branch of the large Dakota family. In each of these cases, their apparently so raw method has its cause in the Arctic climatic conditions that make a burial, in our sense, that of the body of the deceased being placed beneath the surface of the Earth, simply not possible due to the constantly rock hard frozen ground; with the Assiniboian, however, it would be thought insulting to the brave to have placed them on some raised scaffolding, as was usual with 'scaffold burials', as, it is thought, they are capable of protecting themselves even when dead. It is this, more than the harsh climatic conditions, which forbids the Tinneh, and also the Eskimos, from any real grave. In the winter, the dead are taken out into the snow where they will soon fall to wild animals; in summer, they are placed in very shallow pits covered by small stones and plates, but this covering is mostly so light that a fox can removed it without difficulty.

These shallow graves are also generally the rule for the Indians east and west of the Mississippi, but the sites were surrounded by fences or bits of wood or covered with genuine roofs, or covered by significant heaps formed from earth or stones. The bones in so called bone pits end up a bit deeper in the ground, mass graves for bones, relocated from individual graves, to lie in company. However, these bone pits were certainly not deep, barely 80cm; and the uppermost layer of bones was almost exposed to daylight. The reason for this secondary communal assemblage of skeletal remains a certain time after the first disposal lies in the Indian philosophy; as the members of the tribe lived tightly knit lives with one another on Earth prior to their entry into the eternal hunting grounds, then the same needs would also exist after their deaths. A 'fest of the souls' was seen as part of one's duty in order to suitably fulfil the wish for unity among the dead.

A similarly very appealing and favourable trait of North American Indians is their dependence upon their homeland. The Kalapuya in the Willamette Valley have themselves been brought back to the tribal ceremony from any distance, and the Nadowessi, known from Schiller's poem, brought their dead from the previous year near to a cave by the Saint Anthony Falls in the spring, so as to give them their final resting place. "So that your body will not remain lying on the fields for the animals", as it states in a eulogy written down by Carver, "so we want to bring you to lie with the bodies of your ancestors, in the hope that your spirit will feed with their spirits, and will be ready to receive ours, when we also arrive in the land of the souls."

A double burial was very common. In the widespread area of the Mounds, variously formed hills of earth which cover the whole east of the United States to the Mississippi and beyond, there are many bone mounds, hills which often contain the remains of hundreds of dead laid together and piled up and, as for further to the northeast, there was also a fest of the souls. The peoples on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, such as the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho and Minitari and the Mandan of the upper Missouri and the Objibway, left bodies to decompose on high trees and scaffolding, and the bones were then taken to a convenient burial place or carried to the long used tribal cemetery. For the Iroquois, this final resting place was the earlier house of the deceased or a small bark house next to it, which have been erected for this purpose. The bones of many generations were stored in them. If one were forced to leave the old place, through whichever circumstances, or if times were uncertain, then the skeletons of the whole community were collected and taken to a common third grave.

It was often similar in southern North America. The Tschoktah appointed a particular man, the bone-picker, who would clean the bones from flesh remains with his finger nails 2-4 months after the death of a tribal member. The meat went to a fire, the bones were then first taken to a bone house and later, in accordance with the rank of the departed, after a year or more, finally buried. By the Natchez, the body was dried in a closed container on high posts, so that the dried bones could later be taken in a casket and placed with the others in the temple of the tribe. The highest ranking victims, who had been strangled at the death of the tribal chief, had the flesh stripped from their arms and waist bones, the remains were dried in a kind of ditch, and they were then transported in a basket to the temple, so that they could rest alongside the remains of their ruler.

The most fascinating custom is the impermanent 'scaffold burial', as it is so far removed from our customs; this was practiced by many tribes in North America to the west and east of the Mississippi, and only varied in that some tribes preferred placing the coffin in trees whereas other tribes built scaffolds. The latter had to occur wherever tree growth was absent, such as the prairies; that had the advantage that the beloved deceased could be kept as near as possible to the camp, whereas the tree grave was dependant upon the availability of forests and trees. The illustrations (not available!) 1, 2 and 3 lead us through the stages of the construction of such a scaffold grave of the Sioux, and come from the German Prince Max. zu Wied* and the American Yarrow**; illustrations 4 and 5 show a couple of tree graves. The scaffolds usually consisted of four, often forked poles rammed into the ground, and these held the weight of the coffin and body. The scaffolds could reach 3m in height for the
Sioux, Iowa, For and Iroquois, 3 to 5m for the Huron and even 6 to 7 for the Tschoktah. In all cases, it had to be high enough to keep the body away from wild animals and out of the reach of people. Tree graves, which were not beset with the difficulties of building scaffolds and shortages of necessary materials, could well have reached much greater heights. The Quakiutl and Vancouver hung their dead between 6-25m above the ground, and the Meskwaki, a long lost remnant of the Satik and For Indians in the State of Iowa, secured a chief with leather bands 70 feet high in an elm, according to an 1872 Globus report. The body remained up there for 2 years. It was also reported that of the same Meskwaki that women were buried in a sitting position, and in such a manner, that the lower part of the body was covered by soil while the torso and head remained free. The bones were left like that untouched for 5 years. If a man were buried in a similar way, then his firearm remained clasped in the bones of his hands until the shoulders began to lean, and it finally fell. Schiller's Nadoweissier also sat erect on a mat, and he was given provisions for his needs and happiness on his long journey to the eternal hunting grounds.

(* Prince Maximilian zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nordamerika in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834, Koblenz, 1839-41, 2 Textbände und 1 Atlas.
** HG Yarrow, Mortuary customs of the North American Indians, Further contributions, 1st Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington 1881.)

Of ethnopsychological interest is our Illustration 3, which shows the female family members and relatives of a Dakota chief at a recent scaffold grave. They are mourning in accordance with local custom, in that they are walking on the stony ground without the protection of their moccasins and leggings, as they sing their sorrowful songs of mourning. Here, beneath the encased remains of the departed, they are cutting off their hair, often down to the roots, which was otherwise not done under any circumstances, they are cutting at their breasts and hurting their heads against the ground. The men also cut and beat themselves in a similar manner, sank into loneliness and fasted for 2-3 days. Theodor Preuß*** plausibly showed that such self-mutilations have to do with the idea, that that these self-inflicted wounds bring purity in the eyes of the dead, and demonstrates that they are innocent of causing the death. Preuß recognised a moderating trend in the infliction of self-mutilation, in that it had originally apparently gone far enough to end in suicide. A transitional stage is the frequently encountered custom of cutting off finger bones; the final link in the chain of self-mutilation as a comparatively insignificant attack, as shown in our picture.

(*** Th. Preuß, Menschenopfer und Selbstverstümmlung in Amerika, Bastianzeitschrift, Berlin, 1896.)

The very opposite of the high scaffold burials are the earth burials and caves. Graves, in our usual sense of the word, are found only in the southern half of the American continent, and the most common form of this method is the burial of the deceased below the ground of their own hut. In many cases, the bereaved carry on living as normal despite the body resting, perhaps only shallowly, beneath the surface.

Cave graves are found in almost all parts of the North American landmass, but they appear to reach their maximum density in the west, in California and the neighbouring areas to the south. Heinrich Schurtz sees this way of laying the dead to rest as not being something primary, original, as one may well be tempted to assume but rather, it is more of a kind of hangover: the people would have originally have lived in the caves, but they later settled in the free nature. It has only remained conservative for the dead: one at least gives them their final home, which one had otherwise long since vacated.

Two further types of conservation for the body of the departed are smoking and mummification. The limestone caves of Tennessee and Kentucky provide conditions for dehydration themselves, but many tribes from Louisiana, Florida and Virginia did dry out the corpse over fire or used artificial techniques, like the Ancient Egyptians, by removal of the inner organs, the injection of liquids into the body system and comparable things. According to Preuß+, the treatment of kings and chiefs in Virginia was unique. One first cut the skin along the back and, if possible, pulled it completely off. Then, one separated the meat from the bones without injuring the cartilage, so that the limbs could be kept intact. After a short drying period of the remains by the sun, one placed them back into the skin, filled any empty spaces with sand, and sewed the tear together again until nothing appeared amiss with the body. The meat would be thoroughly dried and then laid at the feet of the corpse.

(+ Th. Preuß, Die Begräbnisarten der Amerikaner und Nordasiaten, Königsberg, 1894.)

Cremation of the dead has also been practiced by the Indians of North America. The rulers of the Aztec and the Tschitschimek were taken to the flames in the court of the temple. The Tlingit of the northwest coast soaked a pyre with oil for their chiefs, while the poor laid the ashes of their dead into an isolated sound, so as to spare the high costs of an official cremation. One burned the houses of dead priests over their bodies in Florida; the Yuma dug a precise hole of a person-width and length, filled it with thin wood, and laid the deceased upon it. A pile of wood was erected over them reaching a metre in height, and openings were for draughts were made with a club. Elsewhere, as with the Tolkotin in our Illustration 6, one built a simpler pyre for the dead as in the Indian subcontinent. A complete cremation by such an arrangement would naturally not be achieved, but that was not the sought objective. With the Tolkotin, for example, the widow had to be able to collect up the large bones, so as to roll them into a covering of tree bark and carry them with her on her back for a few years. The ashes were laid in a grave that she had to keep free of weeds. The Californians are supposed to have danced around the fire making devilish noises, and to have stabbed the burning body with sticks in order to allow the soul to leave. With the Kokopa, an old man used a stick to remove the eyes of the flame-licked corpse, and held them up for the fortune of the soul of the deceased person, as he prayed to the Sun.

A rare type of funeral in North America is the water grave. The Cherokee more commonly threw their dead into the river than they buried them. In Skull Valley in Utah, the Goshute sank corpses with the help of stones into springs, or they held them under with sticks. According to Ovido, chieftains of the Chibcha were laid in gold platted coffins and then sunk into the water.

There was something reminiscent of the funeral style of the old Vikings, where the deceased was sat in a boat, or the likeness of one, and sent out to the sea or onto another body of water. For the Indians of Oregon and Washington, the funeral shown in Illustration 7 was typical. One provided the deceased with all his goods and possessions, and also killed the slaves so that they could serve their master in the beyond. A chapter of maternal tragedy is finally depicted in Illustration 8. The child of the young Chinook mother is dead. She does not want to separate it from its cradle, in which it was destined to travel towards the future, and yet the sides below are sharpened into a keel and make the cradle look more like a boat, and she watches in pain and sorrow as her dead darling is swept out onto the holy lake.

North America provides only a few parallels with our burial customs; the 'gravestones', in as far as this term is appropriate for the wooden posts made by the Dakota and western Chippewa, were set at the feet of chiefs at their final graves, after tribal members had taken them there from the scaffolds. These posts are named adjedati and were made from cedar or other wood, and they bore an inscription which looked much like the one shown in Illustration 9. If the deceased was a warrior, then the script would mainly depict his totem, the symbolic animal of his clan from which, they believed, they were descended or in some way related; there would also be numbers and further symbols, information about the individual's journey along the war path, and the number of scalps they had carried away from successful fights. Eagle or falcon feathers were attached to the top of the posts, and also the gained scalps themselves along with various other offerings. Since the brave tribes have been driven from the prairies into demarcated reservations, flags from the factories of business-minded Yankees flutter above the graves in the stead of falcon feathers and scalps. There is no room left today for heroic deeds and heroic cults.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.