While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The spirit stays Six122 days before starting on its way.
During these six days a fire must be kept up at the east end of the grave.123
Anybody in the family, man or woman, old or young, may keep
up this fire. All the possessions of the deceased, clothes,
etc. are kept by this fire, hung on a pole. At the close of
the six days things which are unfit for further use are
burned, other things are smoked, and may then be given away
to friends or reltives.124 Members of the household of the deceased who have been
staying at home are
smokedl25 at this time, after which they take a bath in the creek.
Now at noon there is a meal at the grave. The pots are set in a circle, and with
a spoon a man, any one may be chosen, takes some food into his hand from each
pot and puts this food on the middle of the grave, it is for the journey.121
Recurrently, at the same time of year, for two, three, or four years
a feast for the deceased person is made (kanitashnowia'a kiats'abisu,
there is going to be a feast; kia, used to be; Mr. Bisu [Wing])127
and food is taken to the grave, or, as Ingkanish puts it, a beef is killed and a
piece taken to the grave which is encircled clockwise four times. There is much
visiting about in connection with these characteristically Southeastern feasts,128
as acquaintances as well as relatives are entertained. It has become customary
to hold a peyote meeting the night before a death feast. At the feast the next
Ghost dance will be announced.
Of the dead it is said, Ganihaada' (R.), he passed away,
or hayuna (hayu, high, na, locative), "he has gone home" is
White Moon's free translation. At death people go up to the sky.129
Deceased relatives and others are seen in the Ghost dance trance, in fact the
entire "village of the dead" may be seen.130
There is or was a ceremony to bring back the dead. Kanoshtsi'
(Kanosh, French), a doctor who died in 1908,131 had four
sisters, long since dead, who were also doctors and practiced bringing back the
dead,132 with success if they began to work soon after the death. They sent their supernatural
partners after the deceased. They could catch up with the deceased and bring him
back to the body providing he had not passed beyond certain clouds in the sky."'
These women doctors conducted their ceremony "to catch up with the dead" in a
large permanent "grass house."134 Their brother has been heard to say
that had he only paid more attention to his sisters' methods he would have been
as good in practice as they.
That the return of the dead after burial would be far from welcome
is inferable from the notorious case of John Stink, an Osage. One day, after his
burial, he came walking into town with his dogs. People would not have anything
to do with him. So he had to go and live alone. For many years he has been
living alone, with his dogs."' In telling the story of John Stink, White Moon
added: "Once a woman, a White woman, tried to mix me up with him. She wanted me
to tell him she would marry him. She said she was not afraid of him and would
live with him, it would be good for him and good for her." John Stink was rich.
White Moon declined to be mixed up in the case.
122 Four (Ingkanish). The Delaware build a fire at the grave but they
do not keep it up four days like the Caddo nor hold a feast (Pardon). 123 Cp. Dorsey 2: 15, 31, 65. 124 Who are at hand. When the horses and hogs belonging to White
Moon's father, Mr. Blue, were distributed at his death, they, went to his widow
and her son and other relatives. White Moon did not get any because he was not
home. Of Mr. Blue's land eighty acres went to the widow, and eighty were divided
between his two sons. 125 Ingkanish refers to this rite as holding one's hands over the
fire which is between them and the grave, then passing one's hands down one's
face, holding them again over the fire, passing them over heart and body,
holding them to the fire, and passing them over legs, holding them to the fire
and passing them over the face, and finally raising them up to the west. 126 Cp. Harrington, 286, 287. Grave meal among Shawnee, also fire on
grave until fourth day when the spirit departs, when his things are smoked, and
the mourners bathe (Voegelin). 127 See p. 35. 128 Choctaw (Swanton); Shawnee (Voegelin). 129 There was an early belief about a high god in the sky to whom the
dead go (Hatcher, XXXI, 162). Cp. Dorsey 2: 15. 130 Cp. Mooney, 1096, 1102. 131 In 1922 (Ingkanish). He passed on some of his craft to his son.
Little Frenchman who died in 1922 was probably the son of the doctor who died in
1908-three, perhaps four, generations of doctors. 132 Cp. Pawnee, Grinnell, 170; Kiowa, Parsons, 75. 133 According to Wing, "there are two kinds of medicine-men. One kind
has power to doctor and heal the sick; another has the power to prevent any one
from being hurt or. harmed, and can charm away all danger" . . . these are more
powerful and have power to bewitch people far off. "They have a song of death,
and when they sing the song before a dying person they frighten away death and
the person lives. There are few people who ever receive this power, which is
generally given by the sun, moon, stars, earth, or storm, but some very wild and
ferocious animals can also give the power to people" (Dorsey 2: 23). Wing
himself, after White Moon, was of the second class, for he was nei di as
well as konah'. 134 Such as the Wichita now hold dances in. Formerly among both
Wichita and Caddo the "grass house" was a dwelling house. Today most of the
Caddo live in frame houses, "very fine too." Even log cabins (ya'ko) are
rare. Kohu'tsauo, grass house (Ingkanish); kohuthitkwisaiyaba', we had
grass house (White 'loon). 135 In 1939 Willie Longbone, aged 72, a Delaware living near Dewey,
Okla. (not near Caddo) told Dr. Voegelin about John Stink: "The Osage set the
corpse up between two rocks and pile rocks around it. When John Stink died they
set him up like that, with his legs stretched out and moccasins on. But he got
up and put the rocks away and walked away. He came back to camp with his
moccasins on. White doctors had attended him and pronounced him dead. He was
‘buried’ for five or six days. The government made the Osage quit burying in
rocks like that afterwards.
"John Stink lived fifty years after his first ‘death,’ and died last fall
(1938) for good. He was never quite right after his first `death'; he couldn't
talk any more; before that he was like anybody else. He went out in the hills
and slept [lived] there; he ate in a restaurant in town; he always had six dogs
with him."
