knife, or, as in earlier days, with a flint. Hired mourners
are employed at times who are in no way related to the
family, but who are accomplished in the art of crying for
the dead. These are invariably women. Those nearly related
to the departed, cut off the long locks from the entire
head, while those more distantly related, or special
friends, cut the hair only from one side of the head. In
case of the death of a chief, the young warriors also cut
the hair, usually from the left side of the head.

After the first few days of continued grief, the mourning is
conducted more especially at sunrise and sunset, as the
Comanches venerate the sun; and the mourning at these
seasons is kept up, if the death occurred in summer, until
the leaves fall, or, if in the winter, until they reappear.

It is a matter of some interest to note that the preparation of the
corpse and the grave among the Comanches is almost identical with the
burial customs of some of the African tribes, and the baling of the body
with ropes or cords is a wide and common usage of savage peoples. The
hiring of mourners is also a practice which has been very prevalent from
remotest periods of time.


_GRAVE BURIAL._

The following interesting account of burial among the Pueblo Indians of
San Geronimo de Taos, New Mexico, furnished by Judge Anthony Joseph,
will show in a manner how civilized customs have become engrafted upon
those of a more barbaric nature. It should be remembered that the Pueblo