Native American Burial and Funeral Customs

Native American funeral traditions and rituals differed from tribe to tribe. The one belief that is common among Native American tribes that influences death rituals is the focus on helping the deceased be comfortable in the afterlife or protecting them in the afterlife.

Burial customs varied widely from tribe to tribe.

Arctic tribes, simply left their dead on the frozen ground for wild animals to devour. The ancient mound-building Hopewell societies of the Upper Midwest, by contrast, placed the dead in lavishly furnished tombs.

Southeastern tribes practiced secondary bone burial. They dug up their corpses, cleansed the bones, and then reburied them. The Northeast Iroquois, before they formed the Five Nations Confederation in the seventeenth century, saved skeletons of the deceased for a final mass burial that included furs and ornaments for the dead spirits’ use in the afterlife.

Northwest coastal tribes put their dead in mortuary cabins or canoes fastened to poles. Further south, California tribes practiced cremation. In western mountain areas tribes often deposited their dead in caves or fissures in the rocks.

Nomadic tribes in the Great Plains region either buried their dead, if the ground was soft, or left them on tree platforms or on scaffolds.

Central and South Atlantic tribes embalmed and mummified their dead. But during outbreaks of smallpox or other diseases leading to the sudden deaths of many tribe members, survivors hurriedly cast the corpses into a mass grave or threw them into a river.

Modern day Native Americans may continue to incorporate some aspects of ancient death rituals, handed down from their ancestors, in a modern funeral service.