Christie, the King's Servant
CHRISTIE, THE KING'S SERVANT A Sequel to 'Christie's Old Organ' By MRS. O.F. WALTON AUTHOR OF 'CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN' 'A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES' 'THE KING'S CUPBEARER' 'SHADOWS' ETC ETC [Illustration]
tells the dead man's relations and the rest of the
spectators who that dead person was, and of the great feats
performed in his lifetime, all that he speaks tending to the
praise of the defunct. As soon as the flesh grows mellow and
will cleave from the bone they get it off and burn it,
making the bones very clean, then anoint them with the
ingredients aforesaid, wrapping up the skull (very
carefully) in a cloth artificially woven of opossum's hair.
The bones they carefully preserve in a wooden box, every
year oiling and cleansing them. By these means they preserve
them for many ages, that you may see an Indian in possession
of the bones of his grandfather or some of his relations of
a longer antiquity. They have other sorts of tombs, as when
an Indian is slain in that very place they make a heap of
stones (or sticks where stones are not to be found); to this
memorial every Indian that passes by adds a stone to augment
the heap in respect to the deceased hero. The Indians make a
roof of light wood or pitch-pine over the graves of the
more distinguished, covering it with bark and then with
earth, leaving the body thus in a subterranean vault until
the flesh quits the bones. The bones are then taken up,
cleaned, jointed, clad in white-dressed deerskins, and laid
away in the _Quiogozon_, which is the royal tomb or
burial-place of their kings and war-captains, being a more
magnificent cabin reared at the public expense. This
Quiogozon is an object of veneration, in which the writer
CHRISTIE, THE KING'S SERVANT A Sequel to 'Christie's Old Organ' By MRS. O.F. WALTON AUTHOR OF 'CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN' 'A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES' 'THE KING'S CUPBEARER' 'SHADOWS' ETC ETC [Illustration]