Indian Burying Ground, The, is a poem by the American poet and journalist Philip Freneau. In his lifetime, Freneau was best known as the poet of the American Revolution (1775-1783) because of his prolific creation of patriotic, anti-British verse in the years surrounding the revolution. But Freneau is better remembered today for his nonpolitical verse, and especially for poetry in the style of the Romantic poets. The Romantic poets of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s valued emotion, sensation, the beauty of nature, and the power of the imagination.
“The Indian Burying Ground” shows Freneau’s admiration for the ways of Indigenous (native) American peoples, sometimes called “Indians.” The poem was published in 1788, in the collection entitled Miscellaneous Works. In his poem, Freneau refers to the Indigenous custom of burying the dead sitting up, finding it symbolic of an active spirit. Rather than being laid to rest for “the soul’s eternal sleep,” the dead hunter is prepared for a continuing journey.
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. 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 see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason’s self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.
Freneau’s defense of Indigenous American peoples was notable at a time when few people questioned colonial domination of an area’s original inhabitants. But his romanticized view of the Indigenous American living in harmony with nature is typical of his era. Concepts of the “noble savage” had become popular in Europe in the 1700’s during the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. Such ideas largely started with the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who popularized the idea of humanity returning to an earlier innocence (see Rousseau, Jean-Jacques). Freneau’s idealized picture of “children of the forest” is similar to such ideas.
Philip Freneau’s poetry stands out as the most significant American verse of its period. No other poet of the same stature emerged between the Puritan poets of the 1600’s and the great American writers of the 1800’s.
For more information on Freneau, see Freneau, Philip.
