Selections from the American Poets/The Indian Burying-ground

by Philip Morin Freneau

For other versions of this work, see The Indian Burying-Ground.

Layout 2

THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND.

In spite of all the learned have said,I still my old opinion keep;The posture that we give the dead,Points out the soul's eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands:The Indian, when from life released,Again is seated with his friends,And shares again the joyous feast.^[1] His imaged birds and painted bowl,And venison for a journey dressed,Bespeak the nature of the soul,Activity, that knows no rest.

His bow for action ready bent,And arrows with a head of stone,Can only mean that life is spent,And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,No fraud upon the dead commit;Observe the swelling turf, and say,They do not lie, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains,On which the curious eye may trace(Now wasted half by wearing rains)The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires,Beneath whose far-projecting shade(And which the shepherd still admires)The children of the forest played! There oft a restless Indian queen(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair),And many a barbarous form is seen,To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,In habit for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues,The hunter and the deer, a shade! And long shall timorous fancy seeThe painted chief and pointed spear,And Reason's self shall bow the kneeTo shadows and delusions here.

1. The North American Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture; decorating the corpse with wampum, the images of birds, quadrupeds, &c.; and, if that of a warrior, with bows, arrows, tomahawks, and other military weapons.