Burial tree

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A burial tree or burial scaffold is a tree or simple structure used for supporting corpses or coffins. They were once common among the Balinese, the Naga people, certain Aboriginal Australians, and some North American First Nations.

Video Burial tree

North America First Nations

Burial tree

A number of Native Americans used a burial tree as the last resting place for a dead relative, either as the general rule (along with a scaffold) or as an alternative to a grave.

The corpse was wrapped up carefully in a robe or blankets and either placed in a fork of the tree or tied to a heavy branch. Both grown persons and small children were laid to rest in this way. A burial tree could carry more than one dead. It seems any tree was proper. Cottonwood is mentioned by travelers on the great plains, as well as pine and cedar. The dead could be placed from around six feet up in the tree to close to the top. Some of the belongings of the deceased were often placed near the corpse.

Scaffold

A burial scaffold was usually made of four upright poles or branches, forked at the top. This foundation carried a sort of bier, where the dead body was laid to rest out of reach of wolves. The preferred location was on a hill. Relatives would often place some of the belongings of the dead on the platform or around the scaffold.

The poles reached "a mans height above ground" (six to eight feet). One scaffold described had poles painted black and red in horizontal stripes. An 1849 Nebraska traveler saw a scaffold made of lodge poles rested against each other at the top and with two biers half way down.

An Ojibwe man would get his arms and other personal effects with him on the scaffold along with food, eating utensils and tobacco. The personal effects of an Indian woman was laid with her in an open pine box (likely made by a carpenter) situated on a scaffold put up near Fort Laramie in 1866. The heads and tails of her two ponies were fastened to respectively the eastern and the western poles.

Among the Crow, the dead was wrapped in a robe and placed on the bier with the feet to the east. Much later, the bones could be collected and placed in a rock gap.

The Mandan Indians positioned the dead body 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 the scaffold rotten and on the ground, the bones were wrapped in a hide and buried in the refuse at the Mandan village or in a riverbank. The skull would be placed among other clan skulls arranged in circles on the ground near the scaffolds. Newborns, who died unnamed, were not considered members of the society and hence placed in trees (or buried) away from the common burial ground outside the village.

Maps Burial tree

See also

• Sky burial
• Tower of Silence

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References

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External links

Media related to Tree burials at Wikimedia Commons

Source of the article : Wikipedia