Category Archives: North American Native Cultures

Suicide was rare among the Mandan. The only instances remembered by Mandan informants were immediately following the last smallpox epidemic. When a household had been nearly exterminated, the remaining females frequently took their lives. Crow Heart thought that suicides were buried and that their spirits did not reach the spirit world.

[#17] Mandan: “Smallpox and the End of a Household,” from Alfred W. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1950, p. 100.

Red Robe’s two sons were killed by the Crows quite a while back; their father in his grief stood before his lodge in mourning and called out, “All of my horses are for those who take them.” He threw the whole herd away, not keeping even one for himself to ride upon.

The Dog Soldiers went out to herd his horses together, because they simply were not going to see the old man afoot. “No one is going to take these horses,” they said. Then they sent an old man to see Red Robe.

“Your sons died like men,” this messenger reminded him. “They died the glorious death, not in bed sick. Why don’t you take back some ponies?”

“No,” Red Robe replied, “Maiyun [the Supernatural] wanted my sons to die in battle and it wants that I should be afoot awhile.” Whatever they said, they could not budge him.

Finally, four soldier troops [the Elk, Bowstring, Dog, and Fox] decided to go talk to him. He had been a good man in the tribe and here he was destitute. When the camp moved, he was the last to come along. He had nothing to camp with, but just stayed in the open. This on three or four months when the soldiers got together. They all came to Red Robe, but one or two did the talking for them all. “We are begging you to do what we ask you—we are not alone—see them all—every company among us is here. We still have your horses. Come in among the people.”

Still he was unmoved by all their pleading. At last Two Twists, a chief of the Bowstring Soldiers, came forward. “Say yes,” he implored the old man. “Say yes, and we will promise you to go to war against the Crows wherever they may be. Say yes, and I’ll get revenge for you whatever the risks. If they be in breastworks, I’ll drive them out.”

“I accept,” the bereaved old man finally answered. “I did not want to take those horses back after giving them away. It’s like taking back a thing given to a friend.”

“No, it is not like that to us,” the soldiers all assured him.

So Red Robe came into camp. In the days which followed after, Two Twists prepared his pipe, taking it to all the soldier societies. Everyone smoked, whole troops pledging themselves to vengeance on the Crows. When all was ready the societies moved to the raid in a body. Women and children went too, for the whole tribe was on the march. Two Twists was the leader of them all.

When they had come close to the enemy, Two Twists rode about the camp accompanied by his crier, who called for the people to listen. Two Twists spoke in this vein. “Look at me now. Soon I am about to follow the two sons of Red Robe. My friends, behold me; I shall never return from this raid.”

The women all came out of their lodges to gaze at him. They sang him many heartening songs of which one was this—“Only the rocks lie here and never move. The human being vapors away.” That night Two Twists sang the war songs of the Bowstring Soldiers.

The people were anxious to face the enemy, but the chiefs held them in. In the meantime the Crow scouts had spotted the Cheyennes and warned their camp. That night they built a breastwork of all their tipis arranged in a semi-circle.

The next morning Two Twists was out in the camp again. “I sing for the last time,” he cried. “People, behold me! This is my last time to walk on earth.”

From all around folks brought him feathers, to help him in the thing he was to do. They tied them to his war bonnet, to his horse’s mane, and to its tail.

At last the fighters went toward the Crow camp. Two Twists led them, armed only with a saber. When they were before the enemy, he ordered his followers to hold back; he had his promise to fulfill. And so they all watched as he rode out alone toward the waiting enemy.

Straight at the tipis and into the breastwork he charged, slashing off the head of a Crow warrior as he broke through. He wheeled about, charging into the thick of them again, working havoc where his sword fell. The Crows shot, but missed and missed. Then our people saw Two Twists disappear among them in hand-to-hand struggle.

Then the Cheyennes charged into the Crows killing them on all sides. Red Robe’s wife charged with an ax. Wherever she found a Crow dead or wounded she split his skull to smear the blood of the enemy upon her face and arms [pantomimed by the informant with proper gusto]. Red Robe joined in by cutting the arm from a dead Crow. He carried it into the scalp dance to scare the women with. E-E-E-E—he would hit them in the back with it; they would run screaming­­.

Two Twists was not killed, and from his deeds he derived the greatest honor. People said he had done his work; they would never let him do so again; he need not fulfill his vow to die. Back in camp, Two Twists sent for Red Robe and his two wives and children. He himself stripped them of their mourning rags and dressed them well. Many things were given to the women, and now Red Robe took back his horses. They, too, participated in the victory joy of the camp.

Red Robe went back to his lodge and in his turn sent for a crier to get Two Twists. Red Robe was accepting felicitations from everybody. To each person who came to greet him he gave a horse. He painted the faces of all adult comers with black charcoal—the symbol of joy in the death of the enemy. Of all his horses he kept only a few for himself, and this time he was not stopped by the soldiers.

At the end, he adopted Two Twists for his son. Two Twists was not a tribal chief then, only the leader of a soldier society; later he was made a big chief, but on that one occasion he had charge of the whole tribe. He had wanted to wear the Medicine Hat in the battle, and he had told the keeper he wished to wear it, but the keeper gave no answer. It was the keeper’s wife who refused him. “You are going to war never to return. I do not think it right for us to give you the Hat. You will get it bloody; you would bring us great trouble; blood on the Hat would mean blood for all the tribe.”

Suicide is self-inflicted homicide and very much a cultural fact expressing definite social patterns rather than a mere individual urge. While to the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest the notion of self-slaughter is so alien that one is reliably informed that the Pueblo imagination cannot even formulate a conception of the act, among the Cheyennes, as with the other Plains Indians, suicide played an important social role. Death courted on the field of battle could be sought as an act of great public service… as a means of self-effacement when life appeared empty and point less, and above all as a face-saving and protest device with legal repercussions; so also, death by self-violence…

…Death was not thus the inevitable result of the declared intentions to die in battle. And the Cheyennes did not demand it when the end to be served by the announcement of the intention had been fulfilled. But what a difference is seen in the social reaction to the circumstances under which death was missed without honor. … (One thinks of the Crow woman’s warning to her brother, “If men become Crazy Dogs and are not killed, they become a laughing stock, they are said to be worthless.”)

Possessed of more fortitude …was the maiden of whom High Forehead’s father-in-law told him long ago. Her lover was killed charging through the enemy. She dressed in her best elk-tooth dress and walked backward off a cliff, singing with her face to the camp, of the greatness of her love and the barrenness of life without him whom she loved alone.

Touching, too, is the story of the old blind man, Spit, who at the Wagon-Box Fight with the United States Army said he was always looking for just such a chance to die, for he was tired of only half seeing his way; where were the soldiers? Young ones took his hand, lined his face toward the firing enemy. Serene, he walked toward death, until a bullet brought it to him. Whenever we led Walks Last by the hand, he in his blindness muttered, “If only I had been brave as a youth, I would never have come to this.” He would have died in glory, in his prime.

Cheyenne suicide as a legal, or better, extra-legal proceeding, involved more than shame or grief or weariness or glory; it was an appeal, direct and extreme, to justice beyond the law—and so, in its groping way, for better law.

[#16]   Cheyenne: “Two Twists in Battle,” from Karl N. Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way: Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941, pp. 3-6, 158—165.

Although the squaws are very ill treated by all Indians, it is said they are treated much worse by the Sioux than any other tribe, whence it follows that mothers frequently destroy their female children, alleging as a reason, that it is better they should die than continue a life so miserable as that to which they are doomed. Amongst the Sioux women, it is also said, suicide is not unfrequent, and the mode which they adopt to put an end to their existence, is, by hanging themselves. They are of opinion that suicide is displeasing to the father of life, and believe it will be punished in the land of spirits by their ghosts being doomed for ever to drag the tree on which they hung themselves: for this reason they always suspend themselves to as small a tree as can possibly sustain their weight.

[# 15] The Sioux: John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, p. 109.

Suicide was a rare event among the Arapaho. A person who committed suicide, it was believed, would not enter the same place in life after death as did other Arapaho. “That’s what they claimed.”

In the very early days very old people sometimes asked to be left behind to die when the camp moved. If the old person had only distant relatives, the wish was sometimes granted; near relatives were never known to do so. A Southern informant related one such instance:

Our old people tell how persons who were a hundred years or older would ask to be left to die when camp was moving. They tell of a woman who was left like that at her own request at a place in Wyoming, now called Hell’s Half Acre (east of Casper, between Casper and Hudson). We were still with the Northern Arapaho at this time. On the following morning when the men went to look for her, she could not be found. She had disappeared. There were no tracks of her own or of any beasts to be found. It was thought that maybe a beast had devoured her. She was never heard of again. It was after that that the peculiar formations in the cave at Hell’s Half Acre began to be formed.

Most informants were agreed that only persons who committed suicide had died in a bad state since they had not had time to again become good persons… Some informants, however, said that suicides did not continue to live after death. Still others said that they did, but only after they had roamed on earth longer than the conventional 4 days… Arnold Woolworth, an 80-year-old Southern man, said: … The only ones we thought did not live on were those that had committed suicide…

Rarely did anyone commit suicide. A person doing so was thought not to enter the place in life after death to which other Arapaho went.

…Since all adult persons were believed to have premonition of death 4 days before it occurred, the only persons who did not have the opportunity to be good persons when death overtook them were suicides. Suicides were, therefore, denied happiness after death.

[#14] Arapaho: “The Rarity of Suicide; When the Camp Moved,” from M. Inez Hilger, Arapaho Child Life and its Cultural Background 
Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1952, pp. 104, 161, 225, 228.

When the condition of an elderly person became hopeless, he was, usually “thrown away” by all except his most faithful relatives and friends; and sometimes even they would desert him. This was not due so much to lack of affection and sympathy as from fear of the evil spirits and his ghost, which were believed to have taken possession of his body. When he felt death drawing near, he made disposition of all of his property and retired to a quiet spot to die. After making medicine in preparation, and old man might take his own life, and at least one case is known where a man took the life of his wife by cutting her throat because she was hopelessly ill and lonely.

[#13] Comanche: “Elderly Persons ‘Thrown Away’”, from Ernest Wallace and Edward Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches. [field dates 1933, 1945] Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1952, p. 149.

After sailing eighty leagues from the capital of Louisiana, we arrived at the Natchez post, which was an important one twenty years ago but is insignificant today. The fort is situated on a high point overlooking the Mississippi. The Natchez, who lived here formerly, were a very important people. They had several villages ruled by individual chiefs, who in turn were governed by the great chief of the entire nation. All of these chiefs were called “Suns,” and all five hundred of them were related to the Great Sun, their sovereign, who wore on his chest a picture of the sun from which he claimed descent. Ouachil, the name under which the sun was worshipped, means “very great fire” or “supreme fire.”

The ceremonies of this sun cult were rather august. The high priest arose before sunrise and walked solemnly at the head of his people. He carried a calumet, and, in order to honor the sun, blew the first puff of smoke in its direction. Staring at the sun’s first rays and extending his arms towards the sky, each worshiper howled in turn after the high priest. Then they all prostrated themselves. The women brought their children to this ceremony and made them assume the positions required by the rite.

At harvest time in July, the Natchez had a very important celebration. They first blackened their faces, took purifying baths, and fasted until three in the afternoon. The oldest man in the nation then offered God the first fruits of the harvest.

They had a temple in which burned an eternal flame. The priests, who were very careful to keep the fire going, were permitted to use the wood of only one type of tree. If, by chance, the fire went out, the horrified nation put the responsible priests to death. This happened very rarely because the guardian priests, pretending to light their pipes, would ask for “profane” fire, since they could not use the “sacred” fire for this purpose, and would then rekindle the flame.

When the sovereign died, his wives and several of his subjects were put to death so that they could accompany him to the grave. The lesser Suns carefully followed the same custom. According to the law, when a female relative of the Suns died, her husband was put to death too. Here is the story of an Indian named Etteacteal, who was unwilling to submit to this law. He had married into the Sun family, an honor which almost ended in disaster for him. When his wife fell sick and seemed to be dying, he fled down the Mississippi in a pirogue and arrived in New Orleans. He gained the protection of Governor de Bienville by becoming his hunter. The governor interceded for him with the Natchez, who stated that Etteacteal had nothing to fear since the funeral ceremony had already taken place without him and he no longer of any use.

Etteacteal, thus reassured, dared to make several trips to his nation without taking up permanent residence there. He happened to be there at the time of the death of Bitten Snake, a relative of his late wife and brother of the Chief Sun. It was decided that he would have to pay his debt. Since Monsieur de Bienville had been recalled to France, the Natchez chief decided that the letters of reprieve granted to Etteacteal were null and void, and he had him seized. In the war chief’s cabin, where he was put with the other victims to be sacrificed to Bitten Snake, Etteacteal gave way to his feelings of grief. The dead man’s wife was to be sacrificed, too, but she watched the preparations for her death calmly and seemed eager to join her husband in death. Hearing Etteacteal’s groans, she said to him, “Aren’t you are a warrior?” He answered, “Yes, I am.” She replied. “Still, you are crying. Life is dear to you! Since you feel that way, it’s not right for you to come with us. Go off with the women.” Etteacteal said, “Certainly life is dear to me. I should like to walk upon this earth until the death of the Great Sun; then I would die with him.” The woman answered, “Go away, I tell you. It is not right for you to come with us and for your heart to remain behind on earth. Again I say, go away so that I shall not have to look at you.”

Etteacteal did not wait for her to repeat her order; he took off like a bolt of lightning. Three old women, two of whom were relatives of his, tired of life because of their age and their infirmities, offered to pay his debt. None of them had been able to walk for a long time. Etteacteal’s two relatives had hair which was no grayer than that of 55-year-old French women. The other woman was 120 years old and had very white hair, a rarity among the Indians. None of the three had very wrinkled skin. They were put to death early in the evening, one at bitten Snake’s door, the other two in the temple square.

The generosity of these women redeemed Warrior Etteacteal’s life. His honor, which had been blemished by his fear of death, was restored to him. He lived in peace from that time on, and, profiting by the education he received during his stay among the French, he became a witch doctor and used his knowledge to fool his fellow tribesmen.

The day after this execution, they began to prepare the procession. At the appointed hour, the leader of the ceremony, dressed in the ornaments appropriate to his rank, appeared at the door of the cabin out of which came the victims who were to accompany the prince to the Land of the Spirits. These were his two wives, his chancellor, his physician, his favorite servant, and some old women who had volunteered to be sacrificed.

The favorite wife went up to the Chief Sun, who was with several Frenchmen, to say good-by to them. She ordered that the Suns, who were her children, be brought to her and she spoke these words to them: “My children, this is the day when I must tear myself from your arms to follow the footsteps of your father to the Land of the Spirits. If I were to yield to your tears, I would fail in my duty and my love. I have done enough for you by bearing you next to my heart and nursing you at my breasts. Should you who were formed of his blood and fed with my milk be shedding tears? Rejoice in the fact that you are Suns and warriors. You must set examples of firmness and valor for the entire nation. I have provided for all your needs by obtaining friends for you. My friends and the friends of your father are also yours. I leave you among them. They are the French, who have tender hearts and are generous. Be worthy of their esteem by not disgracing your race. Always deal with them honestly and never ask their help for base reasons.”

“And you, Frenchmen,” she added, turning toward our officers, “I leave my orphaned children in your hands. They will know no other father but you; you must protect them.”

She then arose and, followed by her group, entered her husband’s cabin with surprising firmness.

A noble lady, who decided to accompany Bitten Snake to the other world because of her friendship for him, voluntarily joined the number of victims. The Europeans called her Gloria because of her majestic bearing, her proud look, and the fact that she would bother with only the most distinguished Frenchmen. They felt her loss keenly. She was familiar with many herbs which she used to save the lives of a good number of our sick. This moving sight filled them with grief and horror. The dead man’s favorite wife then arose and said to them with a smile on her lips: “I die without fear; my last moments are not marred by grief. I leave my children in your hands. When you see them, noble Frenchmen, remember that you loved their father and that to the very grave he was a sincere and true friend of your nation, which he loved more than his own life. It has pleased the Master of Life to call him, an in a little while I shall go to join him. I shall tell him that I saw your hearts grieve at the sight of his body. Do not mourn, for we shall be friends in the Land of the Spirits for even a longer time than here. There is no death there.” [At the appointed time of the ceremony, the victims swallowed balls of tobacco to numb their senses. Then they were strangled and laid out on mats, with the favorite on the right, the other wife on the left, and then all the other victims according to their rank.]

These sad words brought tears to the eyes of all the French. They did all that they could to keep the Chief Sun from killing himself. He was inconsolable at the death of his brother to whom he used to delegate the burdens of government. He became furious when his attempts were resisted. He held his rifle by the breech, while the Sun who was his heir held it by the lock, causing the powder to spill out. The cabin was full of Suns, nobles, and the Esteemed, all of whom were trembling, but the Frenchmen reassured them by having all the Chief Sun’s arms hidden and by filling the barrel of his rifle with water so that it could not be used for some time. When the Suns saw that their chief’s life was assured, they thanked the French by shaking hands with them without saying a word. There was a deep silence, for grief and respect restrained the great number of people who were present.

During this ceremony, the Chief Sun’s wife was sized with fear. When she was asked if she were sick, she answered in a loud voice, “Yes, I am.” She continued more softly, “If the French leave, my husband and all the Natchez will die. Please stay, brave Frenchmen, for your word has the force of arrows. Who would have dared do what you have done? You are true friends to him and his brother.”

According to the law, the Chief Sun’s wife would have been forced to follow her husband to the grave; that was doubtless the reason for her fear and her gratitude to the French who wanted him to live.

The Chief Sun held his hand out to the officers and said , “My heart is so heavy that my eyes, although they are open, did not see that you were standing. My mouth did not open to tell you to be seated. Excuse my deep grief.”

The French replied that it was unimportant, that they were going to leave him alone, but that they would no longer be friends if he did not give the order to light the fires again, first lighting his own in their presence. [The chief sun had given the order to extinguish all fires. This is done only when the sovereign himself dies]. They also said that they would not leave him until his brother had been buried.

He shook hands with all the Frenchmen and said, “Since all the chiefs and the noble officers want me to remain on this earth, so be it; I will not kill myself. Let all the fires be lighted again immediately. I shall wait for death to unite me with my brother. I am already old, and until my death, I shall walk with the French. If not for them, I would have gone off with my brother and the paths would have been covered with dead bodies.”

[#12]   The Natchez: Jean-Bernard Bossu’s Travels in the Interior of North America 1751-1762, trans. and ed. Seymour Feiler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962, pp. 31-37).

I have heard the speaker, on these occasions, after quoting the war actions of their distinguished chieftains, who fell in battle, urging them as a copy of imitation to the living—assure the audience, that such a death, in defence of their beloved land, and beloved things, was far preferable to some of their living pictures, that were only spending a dying life, to the shame and danger of the society, and all of their beloved things, while others died by their virtue, and still continue a living copy. Then, to soften the thoughts of death he tells them, they who died in battle are only gone to sleep with their beloved forefathers; (for they always collect the bones) ―and mentions a common proverb they have, Neetak Intάhāh, “The days appointed, or allowed him, were finished.” And this is their firm belief; for they affirm, that there is a certain fixt time, and place, when, and where, every one must die, without any possibility of averting it. They frequently say, “Such a one was weighed on the path, and made to be light;” ascribing life and death to God’s unerring and particular providence; which may be derived from a religious opinion, and proverb of the Hebrews, that “the divine care extended itself, from the horns of the unicorn, to the very feet of the lice.” And the more refined part of the old heathens believed the like. The ancient Greeks and Romans, who were great copiers of the rites and customs of the Jews, believed there were three destinies who presided over human life, and had each of them their particular office; one held the distaff of life, while another spun the thread, and Atropos cut it off: a strong but wild picture of the divine fire, light, and spirit. When Virgil is praising the extraordinary virtue of Ripheus, who was killed in defence of his native city, Troy, he adds, Diis aliter visumest, ―submitting to the good and wise providence of the gods, who thought fit to call him off the Stage. However, he seems to be perplexed on the subject; as he makes fate sometimes conditional;

^________Similis si cura fuisset,

            Nec pater omnipotens Trojam nec fata vetabant

            Stare, ^______

“If the usual proper care had been taken, neither Jupiter nor fate would have hindered Troy from standing at this time.” But if the time of dying was unalterably fixed, according to the Indian system, or that of our fatalists, how would its votaries reconcile the scheme of divine Providence? which must be in conformity to truth, reason, and goodness, ―and how explain the nature of moral good and evil? On their principle, self-murder would be a necessary act of a passive being set on work by the first mover; and his obligations would be proportionable, only to his power and faculties; which would excuse the supposed criminal from any just future punishment for suicide. But religion, and true reason, deny the premises, and they themselves will not own the consequence.

Though the Indians do not use salt in their first-fruit-oblation till the forth day; it is not to be doubted but they formerly did. They reckon they cannot observe the annual expiation of sins, without bear’s oil, both to mix with that yearly offering, and to eat with the new sanctified fruits; and some years they have a great deal of trouble in killing a sufficient quantity of bears for the use of this religious solemnity, and their other sacred rites for the approaching year; for at such seasons they are hard to be found, and quite lean. The traders commonly supply themselves with plenty of this oil from winter to winter; but the Indians are so prepossessed with a notion of the white people being all impure and accursed, that they deem their oil as polluting on those sacred occasions, as Josephus tells us the Jews reckoned that of the Greeks. An Indian warrior will not light his pipe at a white man’s fire if he suspects any unsanctified food has been dressed at it in the new year. And in the time of the new-ripened fruits, their religious men carry a flint, punk, and steel, when they visit us, for fear of polluting themselves by lighting their pipes at our supposed Loak ookproose, “accursed fire,” and spoiling the power of their holy things. The polluted would, if known, be infallibly anathamatized, and expelled from the temple, with the women, who are suspected of gratifying their vicious taste. During the eight days festival, they are forbidden even to touch the skin of a female child: if they are detected, either in cohabiting with, or laying their hand on any of their own wives, in that sacred interval, they are stripped naked, and the offender is universally deemed so atrocious a criminal, that he lives afterwards a miserable life. Some have shot themselves dead, rather than stand the shame, and the long year’s continual reproaches cast upon them, for every mischance that befalls any of their people, or the ensuing harvest, ― a necessary effect of the divine anger, they say, for such a crying sin of pollution.

About the year 1738, the Cheerake received a most depopulating shock, by the small pox, which reduced them almost one half, in about a year’s time: it was conveyed in to Charles-town by the Guinea-men, and soon after among them, by the infected goods. At first it made slow advances, and as it was a foreign, and to them a strange disease, they were so deficient in proper skill, that they alternately applied a regimen of hot and cold things, to those who were infected. The old magi and religious physicians who were consulted on so alarming a crisis, reported the sickness had been sent among them, on account of the adulterous intercourses of their young married people, who the past year, had in a most notorious manner, violated their ancient laws of marriage in every thicket and broke down and polluted many of the honest neighbours bean-plots, by their heinous crimes, which would cost a great deal of trouble to purify again. To those flagitious crimes they ascribed the present disease, as a necessary effect of the divine anger; and indeed the religious men chanced to suffer the most in their small fields, as being contiguous to the town-house, where they usually met at night to dance, when their corn was out of the stalks; upon this pique, they shewed their priest-craft. However, it was thought needful on this occasion, to endeavor to put a stop to the progress of such a dangerous disease: and as it was believed to be brought on them by their unlawful copulation in the night dews, it was thought most practicable to try to effect the cure, under the same cool element. Immediately, they ordered the reputed sinners to lie out of doors, day and night, with their breast frequently open to the night dews, to cool the fever: they were likewise afraid, that the diseased would otherwise pollute the house, and by that means, procure all their deaths. Instead of applying warm remedies, they at last in every visit poured cold water on their naked breasts, sung their religious mystical song, Yo Yo, &c. with a doleful tune, and shaked a calabash with the pebble-stones, over the sick, using a great many frantic gestures, by way of incantantion. From the reputed cause of the disease, we may rationally conclude their physical treatment of it, to be of a true old Jewish descent; for as the Israelites invoked the deity, or asked a blessing on everything they undertook, so all the Indian Americans seek for it, according on the remaining faint glimpse of their tradition.

When they found their theological regimen had not the desired effect, but that the infection gained upon them, they held a second consultation, and deemed it the best method to sweat their patients, and plunge them into the river, ―which was accordingly done. Their rivers being very cold in summer, by reason of the numberless springs, which pour from the hills and mountains―and the pores of their bodies being open to receive the cold, it rushing in through the whole frame, they immediately expired: upon which, all the magi and prophetic tribe broke their old consecrated physicpots, and threw away all the other pretended holy things they had for physical use, imagining they had lost their divine power by being polluted; and shared the common fate of their country. A great many killed themselves; for being naturally proud, they are always peeping into their looking glasses, and are never genteelly drest, according to their mode, without carrying one hung over their shoulders: by which means, seeing themselves disfigured, with hope of regaining their former beauty, some shot themselves, others cut their throats, some stabbed themselves with knives, and others with sharp-point canes; many threw themselves with sullen madness into the fire, and there slowly expired, as if they had been utterly divested of the native power of feeling pain.

I remember, in Tymάse, one of their towns, about ten miles above the present Fort Prince-George, a great head-warrior, who murdered a white man thirty miles below Cheeòwhee, ²⁴⁷ as was proved by the branded deerskins he produced afterward―when he saw himself disfigured by the small pox, he chose to die, that he might end as he imagined his shame. When his relations knew his desperate design, they narrowly watched him, and took away every sharp instrument from him. When he found he was balked of his intention, he fretted and said the worst things their language could express, and shewed all the symptoms of a desperate person enraged at his disappointment, and forced to live and see his ignominy; he then darted himself against the wall, with all his remaining vigour, ―his strength being expended by the force of his friends opposition, he fell sullenly on the bed, as if by those violent struggles he was overcome, and wanted to repose himself. His relations through tenderness, left him to his rest―but as soon as they went away, he raised himself, and after a tedious search, finding nothing but a thick and round hoe-helve, he took the fatal instrument, and having fixed one end of it in the ground, he repeatedly threw himself on it, till he forced it down his throat, when he immediately expired. ―He was buried in silence, without the least mourning.

[#11] Cherokee: “Varieties of Shame: Date of Death, Pollution, and the Disfigurement of Smallpox,” from James Adair, The History of the American Indians, ed. Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005, pp. 90-91, 152, 252-53.   Originally published: London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1775.

And our belief is that for anyone who will destroy his own life, his spirit will always be earth-bound. My father [Edward Cornplanter, speaker and ritual holder in Newtown longhouse who recited the Code of Handsome Lake to Arthur C. Parker] used to say that the spirit [of a suicide] will just wander around where the [waterhemlock] plants grow, and it will always be expecting another person to follow its example. Indians [Senecas] believe it is a sin to take one’s own life, to shorten the span of days which the Great Spirit has given to each one of us; therefore as a punishment he shall not go on the path to the spirit-world, but shall always remain on earth among the plants which he took for death.

A maple leaf is the thickness of the partition between us and the dead. A person who has died of violence―witchcraft poisoning, suicide, and murder remains earth-bound until judgment day.

[#10] The Seneca: William N. Fenton, Iroquois Suicide: A Study in the Stability of a Culture Pattern, Bureau of American Ethnology Anthropological Papers, No. 14 (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, 1941, p. 89).

“‘Now it is said that your people must change certain customs. It has been the custom to mourn at each recurring anniversary of the death of a friend or relative. It is said that while you are upon the earth you do not realize the harm that this works upon the departed.

 “‘Now moreover it is said that when an infant is born upon the earth with which the parents are dissatisfied, it knows and says, “I will return to my home above the earth.’”

[#9]   “The Code of Handsome Lake,” section 67, from Parker on the Iroquois, ed. William N. Fenton (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968, pp. 56-57).

Trouble seldom comes single.  My son John, was a doctor, considerably celebrated amongst the Indians of various tribes, for his skill in curing their diseases, by the administration of roots and herbs, which he gathered in the forests, and other place where they had been planted by the hand of nature.

While at Squawky Hill he got into the company of two Squawky Hill Indians, whose names were Doctor and Jack, with whom he drank freely, and in the afternoon had a desperate quarrel, in which his opponents,(as it was afterwards understood,) agreed to kill him.  The quarrel ended, and each appeared to be friendly.  John bought some spirits, of which they all drank, and then set out for home.  John and an Allegany Indian were on horseback, and Doctor and Jack were on foot.  It was darkwhen they set out.  They had not proceeded far, when Doctor and Jack commenced another quarrel with John, clenched and dragged him off his horse, and then with a stone gave him so severe a blow on his head, that some of his brains were discharged from the wound.  The Allegany Indian, fearing that his turn would come next, fled for safety as fast as possible.

John recovered a little from the shock he had received, and endeavored to get to an old hut that stood near; but they caught him, and with an ax cut his throat, and beat out his brains, so that when he was found the contents of his skull were lying on his arms.

Next morning, Esq. Clute sent me word that John was dead, and also informed me of the means by which his life was taken, I had now buried my three sons, who had been snatched from me by the hands of violence, when I least expected it.

Although John had taken the life of his two brothers, and caused me unspeakable trouble and grief, his death made a solemn impression upon my mind, and seemed, in addition to my former misfortunes, enough to bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.  Yet, on a second thought, I could not morn for him as I had for my other sons, because I knew that his death was just, and what he had deserved for along time, from the hand of justice.

John’s vices were so great and so aggravated, that I have nothing to say in his favor: yet, as a mother, I pitied him while he lived, and have ever felt a great degree of sorrow for him, because of his bad conduct…

John left two wives with whom he had lived at the same time, and raised nine children.  …Doctor and Jack having finished their murderous design, fled before they could be apprehended, and lay six weeks in the woods back of Canisteo.  They then returned and sent me some wampum by Chongo, (my son-in-law,) and Sun-ge-waw (that is Big Kettle) expecting that I would pardon them, and suffer them to live as they had done with their tribe.  I however, would not accept their wampum, but returned it with a request, that, rather than have them killed. They would run away and keep out of danger.

On their receiving back the wampum, they took my advice, and prepared to leave their country and people immediately.  Their relatives accompanied them a short distance on their journey, and when about to part, their old uncle, the Tall Chief, addressed them in the following pathetic and sentimental speech: “Friends, hear my voice!—when the Great Spirit made Indians, he made them all good, and gave them good corn-fields; good rivers, well stored with fish; good forest, filled with game and good bows and arrows.  But very soon each wanted more than his share, and Indians quarrelled with Indians, and some were killed, and others were wounded.  Then the Great Spirit made very good word, and put it in every Indians breast, to tell us when we have done good, or when we have done bad; and that word has never told a lie.

“Friends!  Whenever you have stole, or got drunk, or lied, that good word has told you that you were bad Indians, and made you afraid of good Indians; and made you ashamed and look down.

Friends!  Your crime is greater than all those: — you have killed an Indian in a time of peace; and made the wind hear his groans, and the earth drink his blood.  You are bad Indians!  Yes, you are very bad Indians; and what can you do?  If you go into the woods to live alone, the ghost of John Jemison will follow you, crying, blood!  blood! and will give you no peace!  If you go to the land of your nation, there that ghost will attend you, and say to your relatives, see my murderers!  If you plant, it will blast your corn; if you hunt, it will scare your game; and when you are asleep, its groans, and the sight of an avenging tomahawk, will awake you!  What can you do?  Deserving of death, you cannot live here; and to fly from your country, to leave all your relatives, and to abandon all that you have known to be pleasant and dear, must be keener than an arrow, more bitter than gall, more terrible than death!  And how must we feel?—Your path will be muddy; the woods will be dark; the lightnings will glance down the trees by your side, and you will start at every sound!  Peace has left you, and you must be wretched.

Friends, hear me, and take my advice.  Return with us to your homes.  Offer to the Great Spirit your best wampum, and try to be good Indians!  And, if those whom you have bereaved shall claim your lives as their only satisfaction, surrender them cheerfully, and die like good Indians.  And—“Here Jack, highly incensed, interrupted the old man, and bade him stop speaking or he would take his life.  Affrighted at the appearance of so much desperation, the company hastened towards home, and left Doctor and Jack to consult their own feelings.

As soon as they were alone, Jack said to Doctor, “I had rather die here, than leave my country and friends!  Put the muzzle of your rifle into my mouth, and I will put the muzzle of mine into yours, and at the given signal we will discharge them, and rid ourselves at once of all the troubles under which we now labor, and satisfy the claims which justice holds against us.”

Doctor heard the proposition, and after a moment’s pause, made the following reply: ― “I am as sensible as you can be of the unhappy situation in which we have placed ourselves.  We are bad Indians.  We have forfeited our lives, and must expect in some way to atone for our crime: but, because we are bad and miserable, shall we make ourselves worse?  If we were now innocent, and in a calm reflecting moment should kill ourselves, that act would make us bad, and deprive us of our share of the good hunting in the land where our fathers have gone!  What would Little Beard [a Chief who died in 1806] say to us on our arrival to his cabin?  He would say ‘Bad Indians!  Cowards!  You were afraid to wait till we wanted your help!  Go (Jogo) to where snakes will lie in your path; where the panthers will starve you, by devouring the venison; and where you will be naked and suffer with the cold!  Jogo, (go,) none but the brave and good Indians live here!’  I cannot think of an act that will add to my wretchedness.  It is hard enough for me to suffer here, and have good hunting hereafter―worse to lose the whole.”

Upon this, Jack withdrew his proposal.  They went on about two miles, and then turned about and came home.  Guilty and uneasy, they lurked about Squawky Hill near a fortnight, and then went to Cattaraugus, and were gone six weeks.  When they came back, Jack’s wife earnestly requested him to remove his family to Tonnewonta; but he remonstrated against her project, and utterly declined going.  His wife and family, however, tired of the tumult by which they were surrounded, packed up their effects in spite of what he could say, and went off.

Jack deliberated a short time upon the proper course for himself to pursue, and finally, rather than leave his old home, he ate a large quantity of muskrat root, and died in 10 or 12 hours.  His family being immediately notified of his death, returned to attend the burial, and is yet living at Squawky Hill.

Nothing was ever done with Doctor, who continued to live quietly at Squawky Hill till sometime in the year 1819, when he died of Consumption.

[#8] James E. Seaver. A narrative of the life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Also available online from the Internet Archive.