SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 139

grave. Each one names his degree of relationship. If he were the father of a
family the wife cries, My dear husband, ah how I regret you !" The children
cry, My dear father! The others, My uncle! My cousin! etc. The
nearest relatives continue this ceremony for three months; they cut off their
hair in sign of grief; they abstain from painting the body, and are never found
at any assembly for festivity.a
 All the people of the universe have always had great respect for the dead,
and history even teaches us of deeds which prove that certain nations have
pushed their superstitions in this particular to the point of extravagance.
Those of my readers who regard the natives of Louisiana as savages perhaps
can not imagine that they are capable of erecting other tombs to the dead than
the stomachs of the nearest relations.
 Of all the people of which I have hitherto spoken, however, there is not
one which does not pay much religious attention to the dead All, indeed, have
their particular manner on these occasions, but all either bury them or place
them in tombs and carefully carry food to them for some time, a custom which
they have without doubt preserved from their original country-I mean the
Orient. Besides, one ought not to be astonished that they take care of the
dead, since they have temples which are signs that they have a kind of re-
ligion, and all the peoples who have a little religion have never failed to
render the last duties to the dead, and everywhere those who did not do it
have been regarded as bad relatives, and those to whom sepulcher was not
given were esteemed unhappy and in fact were punished by this dishonor.b
 The following descriptions of the mortuary ceremonies over the
bodies of Suns have been recorded. The first was given to Gravier
by the French youth whom Iberville left in 1700 to learn the Natchez
language, and the second details the obsequies of a grand chieftainess
of which the author P6nicaut claims to have been a witness in 1704.
The accounts from Charlevoix and Le Petit also record the funeral
rites of a female Sun, and although they were written later, seem to
refer to the same funeral. The two last describe the rites observed
at the death of the Tattooed-serpent,c great war chief of the Natchez
and brother of the great Sun. Through some strange error, strange
in a man who must have met the Tattooed-serpent personally, Dumont
describes him as the great Sun and his brother as the head war chief.
Du Pratz is supported in this, however, by the Memoir of De Riche-
bourg." Nevertheless, the mistake has been copied by many subse-
quent writers.
 The Frenchman whom M. d'Iberville left there to learn the language
told me that on the death of the last chief they put to death two women,
three men, and three children. They strangled them with a bowstring, and this
cruel ceremony was performed with great ponip, these wretched victims deem-
ing themselves greatly honored to accompany their chief by a violent death.
There were only seven for the great chief who died some months before.' His

 Le Petit in Jes. Rel.. LXVII[, 157.
 SDi Pratz. Hist. de La Louisiane, II1, 20-21.
 ''The French form of his name, Ncrpeti I'Piqu:, is usually mistranslated Stung Serpent.
 d See p. 19)9.
 e This would seem to have been the chief referred to in IDe ,Motigny's letter of August
25, 10)), for whom he then says : 0 persons were put lo death.-Compte Itendu Cong.
Internat. des Amer., 15th sess. I, 49.