Burial tree

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Tree burial or scaffolding burial is a tree or simple structure used to support corpses or coffins. They were common among the Balinese, the Dragons, some Australian Aboriginal tribes, and some of the First Countries of North America.

Video Burial tree

First North American Countries

Funeral tree

A number of Native Americans use burial trees as the final resting place for relatives who died, either as a general rule (along with scaffolding) or as an alternate grave.

The corpse is carefully wrapped in a robe or blanket and placed on a branch of a tree or tied to a heavy branch. Both adults and young children are laid out this way. The funeral tree can carry more than one dead. Maximilian zu Wied saw a burial tree with stems and red-painted branches between Indian Assiniboine. Looks like there's a right tree. Cottonwood is mentioned by tourists on the plains, as well as pine and cedar. The dead can be placed from about six feet above the tree to near the top. Some of the deceased's belongings are often placed near the corpse.

Scaffold

A burial scaffold is usually made of four columns or upright branches, branched off at the top. The foundation carries a kind of bier, where the corpse is laid to rest out of the reach of the wolf. The preferred location is on the hill. Relatives will often place some of the belongings of the dead on the platform or around the scaffolding.

The pole reaches "the height of man on the ground" (six to eight feet). A remarkable high scaffold carrying the Sisseton Sioux corpse is estimated to be 18 feet above the ground. One scaffold depicted has poles that are painted black and red in horizontal lines. A Nebraska traveler in 1849 saw a scaffold made of cottage pillars leaning against each other at the top and with two biers halfway down.

An Ojibwe man will get his arms and personal items with him on the scaffold along with food, cutlery and tobacco. This practice may only be used as a temporary solution when death occurs away from the common grave ground with graves and markers. The bark of the birch tree serves as an option to wrap the skin of the body between Ojibwe.

In the 18th century, Choctaw put the dead on scaffolding as the first step in the burial process. A few months later, the bone pickers stripped the meat off the bone. The skeleton was then cleansed and piece by piece inserted into a kind of small coffin and lastly placed in a special bone house of the Indian city.

The personal effects of an Indian woman were placed with him in an open pine box (possibly made by a carpenter) located on a scaffold that was installed near Fort Laramie in 1866. The head and tail of both pounds were tied to the eastern and west poles.

Among the Crows, the dead were wrapped in robes and placed on a bier with feet on the east. Long later, the bones could be collected and placed in a crevice.

The Mandan Indians positioned the corpses on the scaffold with the feet to the southeast, so the spirit was directed to the old Mandan country around Heart River, North Dakota. With its rotting scaffolding and on the ground, the bones are wrapped in leather and buried in a trash can in the village of Mandan or on the riverbank. The skull will be placed between the skulls of other clans arranged circularly on the ground near the scaffolding. Newborns, who die namelessly, are not considered members of society and are therefore placed in trees (or buried) away from public graveyards outside the village.

Reasons for burials in trees and on scaffold

During the winter, the Ponca Indians often replace the grave with scaffolding because of the frozen soil. Lakota concludes the reason why the scaffold is higher than the grave, "(1) An animal or person may walk on the grave, (2) the dead may lie in mud and water after rain or snow; (3) the wolf may dig up the corpses and eat them. "With the dead stationed in scaffolding or in trees, relatives could easily speak to the deceased.

Maps Burial tree

Gallery

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See also

• Sky burial
• Tower of Silence

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References

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External links

Media related to Tree burial in Wikimedia Commons

Source of the article : Wikipedia