Note 329 — Chapter XXV · ACCOUNT OF THE MANDAN INDIANS (continued 2)

These burial scaffolds were noted by most travellers on the Missouri, and Catlin gives a drawing of a Mandan cemetery, in North American Indians, i, pp. 89-92. Bradbury, in our volume v, p. 160, describes a scaffold in detail. According to James's Long's Expedition, our volume xv, pp. 66, 67, the Omaha buried their dead. The burial customs of all the Dakotan tribes would appear to have been fluctuating, inclining to aerial sepulture. Of late years, on the Fort Berthold reservation, this method is declining; and during the smallpox epidemic of 1838 the Mandan buried their dead; see Audubon's Journals, ii, pp. 14, 15. On the entire subject consult H. C. Yarrow, Introduction to Study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians (Washington, 1880); and "Further Contributions to the study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians," in United States Bureau of Ethnology Report, 1879-80, pp. 87-203.—Ed.