Ouâbi : or the virtues of nature :: :: University of Virginia Library

The strong convulsions shake his lab'ring form,
Hard, and with pain, the loit'ring blood retires;
Thus sinks the oak, when loud tornados storm,
The kingly lion with such pangs expires.

Cold to the heart, the peerless sachem falls,
No heav'nly pow'rs the fleeting breath restrain,
No human aid his parted soul recals,
Whose life was VIRTUE, and whose fate was PAIN.

Now wailing sorrow murmurs thro the glade,
While to the tomb, where sleep his glorious race,
Erect, as when a subject tribe obey'd,
The mourn'd Ouâbi's sacred form they place.

Thus the great soul to realms of light ascends!
Down at his feet the conq'ring hatchet stands,
O'er his high head the spreading bow extends,
The lustral coin adorns his lifeless hands!

While to the spot, made holy by his shade,
His faithful tribe with annual care return
And, as the solemn obsequies are paid,
In pious love, and humble rev'rence mourn.

Each lonely Illinois, who wanders by,
Will with the hero's fame his way beguile,
In fond devotion bend the suppliant eye,
And add one pillar to the sacred pile.

There shall he rest! and if in realms of day,
The GOOD, the BRAVE, diffuse a light divine,
Redoubled splendor gilds the brighten'd ray,
Which bids Ouâbi's NATIVE VIRTUES shine!

Their tombs, or rather cemetaries, are of great extent, and of curious construction, and to which the living pay the utmost veneration.

Governor Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

The posture in which they bury their dead is either sitting or standing upright, believing that when they rise, they must inhabit heaven in the same posture in which they are buried.

They not only believe in the immortality of the soul, but also of the bodies of men and animals, and even of their warlike arms, and other inanimate things; and for this reason it is a custom with them to bury with their chiefs, his hatchet at his feet, with the handle perpendicular, his bow unstrung over his head, and a coin (made, according to William Penn, of a fish's bone highly polished) in his hand.

At stated periods the Indians revisit the sepulchres or cemetaries of their chiefs, and perform certain rites and ceremonies not precisely known to the Anglo-Americans. Governor Jefferson, in his Notes, gives one instance of this custom.

These sepulchres or cemetaries are raised to a very great heighth above the surface of the earth, by immense piles of stones. [See Gov. Jefferson's Notes.] And to prevent their being levelled by time, it is a religious duty for every one of the same nation, who accidentally passes it, to add one stone in reverence to the pile. [See Mr. Noah Webster's Letters to the Rev. Ezra Stiles]—who says, “Rowland remarks that this custom exists among the vulgar Welsh to this day, the same kind of mounts being scattered over the west of England and Wales.”