To these harmless offerings the northern tribes often
added a dog slain on the grave; and doubtless the skeletons of these
animals in so many tombs in Mexico and Peru point to similar customs
there. It had no deeper meaning than to give a companion to the spirit
in its long and lonesome journey to the far off land of shades. The
peculiar appropriateness of the dog arose not only from the guardianship
it exerts during life, but further from the symbolic signification it so
often had as representative of the goddess of night and the grave.
Where a despotic form of government reduced the subject almost to the
level of a slave and elevated the ruler almost to that of a superior
being, not animals only, but men, women, and children were frequently
immolated at the tomb of the cacique. The territory embraced in our own
country was not without examples of this horrid custom. On the lower
Mississippi, the Natchez Indians brought it with them from Central
America in all its ghastliness.
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