BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY


tion regarding burial customs, though it evidently applies to the
rest of the Yazoo tribes as well:
 The Yazoux and the Chacchoumas employ still less ceremony. When their
chief is dead they go into the woods to bury him, just as in the case of ia ordi-
nary man. some on one side, some on the other, the relatives of the deceased
accompanying the convoy and bearing in their hands a pine stick lighted like a
torch. When the body is in the trench all those taking p;rt throw their lighted
torches into it in the same way. after which it is covered with earth. That is
what the entire ceremony is confined to. It is true that it continues more than
six months longer for the relations of tlhe dead and for his friends, who during
all that time go almost every night to utter howls over the grave, and on ac-
count of the difference in their (cies and voices fori a regular chariv;iri.
These ceremonies, as I have said, are common to the chiefs and people. The
only difference which marks the first is that at their head is planted a post on
which is cut with the point of a knife the figure they have worn painted on the
body during life.a
 Below is all the specific information we possess concerning their
religious ideas:
 To this account of my friend I will join this which a savage of the Yazoux
said one day to the Abbe Juif. chaplain of tlhe grant established 1 league from
the village which this nation inhabited. This ecclesiastic having asked of him
one day if he had any knowledge of the manner in which his country had been
made. as well as the first of his ancestors, the savage replied that regarding
the first man lie was not able to tell hiln anything; that in regard to the one
who had made all it was the great Spirit. Minguo-Chitou; that he was good
and did harni to no one; that even if a man should be bad he would always
pardon him. The chaplain on this reply thought the occasion favorable for
speaking to him of God :lad making Ilimi know that this great Spirit which
was so good, having created all things, had consequently made man, and that
the latter, in recognition, ought to pray to him and invoke him. Well. why
pray to him." said the savage. since lie is goodness itself and gives us all
that we have need of? The one whom it is necessary to pray to is the little
spirit, Minguo-pouscoulou, who is bad, since he can make us die, cause us to
be sick. and destroy our goods by storms and templess. It is that one that
it is necessary to invoke in order that he do us no harm." b

 THE TIOUX

 The most that is known of this tribe is told us by Du Pratz. In
his time (1718-1730) they lived in a small village among the Natchez,
who had adopted them, though only into the lowest or Stinkard class.
"They were," says this author, "the feeble remnants of the nation
of the Thioux, which had been one of the strongest in the country,
but the people of which were very quarrelsome, which was the cause,
say the other nations, of their defeat and destruction by the Tchica-
chas, to whom they were never willing to give way, until they no
longer dared to show themselves, being too feeble to oppose the efforts
of their enemies."c

 Dumont. 1Mm. Hist. sur La Lonisian, 246-247.
 SIbid., 104-165.
 Du Pratz, Hist. de La Louisiane, II, 223.


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[BULL. 43