Native American Sioux Indian Chief, Funeral Scaffold

Burial customs varied widely from tribe to tribe. The ancient mound-building Hopewell societies of the Upper Midwest placed the dead in lavishly furnished tombs. Southeastern tribes practiced secondary bone burial. They dug up their corpses, cleansed the bones, and then reburied them. The Northeast Iroquois saved skeletons of the deceased for a final mass burial that included furs and ornaments for the dead spirits use in the afterlife. Northwest coastal tribes put their dead in mortuary cabins or canoes fastened to poles. Further south, California tribes practiced cremation. In western mountain areas tribes often deposited their dead in caves or fissures in the rocks. Nomadic tribes in the Great Plains region either buried their dead, if the ground was soft, or left them on tree platforms or on scaffolds. Voyage dans l'interieur de l'Amerique du Nord, execute pendant les annees 1832-34. Karl Bodmer (February 11, 1809 - October 30, 1893) was a Swiss printmaker, lithographer, painter, illustrator and hunter. He accompanied the German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied on his Missouri River expedition. Bodmer was hired as an artist to record images of cities, rivers, towns and peoples they saw along the way, including the many tribes of Native Americans along the Missouri River and in that region

Picture No

12696526

Media ID

47671753

Size

4050px x 3297px (4.3MB)

Credit

LOC/Rare Books Selections/Science Source/Mary Evans