Iroquois

Bodies were buried in shallow graves and then later exhumed. The bones were preserved and brought by relatives to a central burial following a mourning feast. The bodies were accompanied by presents for the spirits.

Navajo

Like the pygmies, fear led them to destroy the house of the dead person, and then relatives burned the body. On their way back home, they were careful to take a circuitous route that prevented the spirit from following them and stood in smoke to purify themselves.

Dakota

When someone dies in a Dakota Indian tribe, there is mourning and wailing. The women gash their legs and arms until blood flows (Turner, 79). The men blacken their face with ash. After the wailing, the Dakotas prepare people for a scaffold burial. The deceased is dressed in fine clothes. They also paint the dead’s face red, the color of life (Turner, 80). They also believe that the dead are reborn, or have a life after death, as shown by their coloring the dead red.

The Dakota build platforms on the outside of their camp. The dead are placed on these platforms with all of their favorite things (Turner, 81). This shows both caring for the dead, and also fear that they might want to come back if something is forgotten.

Sometimes, if the dead is a child and was very treasured, the parents will keep a "ghost lodge" for the child’s spirit (Turner, 82). There are a lot of ceremonies involved in this, and the parents must devote a lot of time and effort if they decide to make a ghost lodge, but the Indians feel it honors the spirit, and helps the tribe. In the lodge is kept a lock of the dead’s hair, along with their favorite possessions and a feeding bowl (Turner, 82). The poor and starving of the tribe can also eat from the bowl (Turner, 83). Generosity is the way of the Dakotas. In this burial practice, they not only honor the dead, but also help the less fortunate of the tribe.

Inca (Andes)

The Inca also mummified their dead, using ice, leading to a great deal of investigation. Priests would have surrounded the body in symbolic objects. The Inca also partook of human sacrifice.

Aztecs

A priest would deliver a formalized speech over the newly dead person, following a ritual to ease their path to the next level of existence. Water was trickled onto the head as during a baptism, and words of mourning pronounced. Papers were laid on the corpse which were intended to aid the person to pass through the hazardous journey they faced.

Mexico

Mexicans are "seduced by death." To the American eye, their culture is steeped with morbidity: there's the life-death drama of the bullfight; the Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos observances and folkart, replete with skeletons and bloody crucifixes; the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato; and the pervasive death themes within the works of such muralists as Orozco, Jose Guadalupe Posada,, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. This death-rich cultural tradition reflects the fusion of Indian and Catholic legacies, the former includes the heritage of human sacrifices practiced by the Mayans and Aztecs.

Such phenomena, despite their surface appearances, are not necessarily features of a death-accepting culture. In a country historically marked by unstable, corrupt, authoritarian regimes, it is interesting to note how honoring the dead has given individuals license to comment on the living. There is a satirical magazine that is published in even the smallest hamlet that owns a print shop. This publication, called LA CALAVERA (the skull), is filled with satirical poetic eulogies of living members of the community, ranging from the town drunk to the mayor's wife.

The famous skeletal caricatures of Posada served to raise political consciousness in Mexico before the revolution. In sum, it is not simply the case that life is so miserable that death is preferable. In fact, the festive death rituals are neither positive nor negative, but rather "an existential affirmation of the lives and contributions made by all who have existed...(and) the affirmation of life as the means for realizing its promise while preparing to someday die" (Ricardo Sanchez, 1985, "Day of the Dead Is Also about Life," San Antonio Express-News, Nov.1). They reflect not only Mexico's cultural heritage but also its fusion with economic and political exigencies.