“After cremation was discontinued, the Sekani revived an old custom, probably never entirely abandoned, of covering the dead man with the brush hut that had sheltered him during his last days and then deserting the locality for a period.  Persons of influence were buried in coffins raised on platforms or trees.

Fort McLeod natives told me that the hollow log or coffin was often closed with groundhog robes instead of with a board, and that it sometimes was set on two posts carefully smoothed so that no mice or other animals could climb up and desecrate the corpse.  The custom was abandoned half a century ago, when the natives adopted the ordinary Christian method of burial in the ground"” (Jenness, 1937: p.59).
Website developed and maintained by Nathan Paul Prince
a member of the McLeod Lake Indian Band
Created July 2006    Revised December 2008

McLeod Lake Tse'Khene First Nation
TRADITIONAL BURIAL METHOD

The McLeod Lake First Nations traditionally cremated their deceased.

“The corpse, clothed in the garments of everyday life, rested on four large logs, over which four other logs were then laid.  The ankles of women were bound together with red willow roots twisted into rope; those of men were unbound

After the fire had burned down the calcined bones were wrapped in spruce bark and buried in sandy ground.  Often the wife carried them on her back to a good burial place near an old campsite or on familiar hunting territory; and sometimes, to display her grief, she crushed them to powder and carried them suspended from her neck inside a moose-skin bag, which she embroidered on both sides with porcupine quills.  These practices, borrowed by the Sekani from the Carriers during the first quarter of the nineteenth century or a litter earlier and continued until the end of its second quarter.