cabbagingcove:

Postmortem photograph of two brothers - died within 2 days of each other, cause not noted. 

Timber-log constructed Ho-chunk grave house. Photographed ca. 1900 by Charles von Schaick, in Black River Falls, WI.

Representative Herbert C. Dreger, shot to death on South Murray street. His funeral was widely attended…by KKK members in full uniform.

And no one batted an eye.

Hindu remains on logs awaiting cremation via funerary pyre. This photograph was taken in a city along a tributary river to the Ganges, so cremains were able to be deposited right there, and would not have to be transported to the Ganges over land.

Unknown date, but the spelling of “Hindu” uses a “u” at the end instead of “oo”. Not sure when that changeover happened, and when I looked, I couldn’t find a date that the spelling “hindoo” became a pejorative. So yeah. Sometime after that. Still an early photograph.

1832 funeral scaffold for a Sioux chief near Fort Pierre.

Though above-ground burials were not uncommon in burial huts, it was less common to expose the body to the elements. The body was probably kept here ceremonially, as a place of reverence, for a few days before a large funerary gathering. 

Stereoview of the funeral of Abraham Lincoln, 1865.