Belief_In_After_Life_Native_Americans

Belief In After Life:Native Americans Among Native Americans images and practices surrounding death are vivid, concrete, and different. Cultural differences were rooted deep in the period before Columbus. Native Americans had their own death rituals and practices. In addition to ceremony and practice Native Americans had traditions concerning the origins of death. They projected various notions of how the body was animated and they maintained complex traditions about a land of the dead. The Huron, north of Lake Ontario, used communal graves to bury those that had died in past years. Both the prominent and common people were buried together. Property was set aside in anticipation of the ritual of resuscitation. At the end of this ritual, the dead gained new life as others took their names and responsibilities, some of the names of important chiefs becoming clan or lineage titles. The Mandan of North Dakota held great respect for their dead. When a prominent woman died the family immediately began preparation. The woman was dressed in her finest clothes and her favorite possessions were placed with her body. She was oiled and her face painted. She then was wrapped in bison hide and secured with leather thongs. The body was then carried to an area dead, death, spirit, spirits, land, people, native, believed, traditions, after, village, time, plains, others, died, body, woman, while, traveled, surrounding, placed, place, peoples, northern, mandan, became, americans, american, white, way, scaffold, river, rituals, ritual, relatives, practices