A
wíkokegá is a
Manashin ossuary, literally translating to "house of the dead" The taiga between Veiama and the Tarku Mountains is dotted with overgrown hills hiding ancient burial chambers.
Funerary Customs
Traditional
Before the Forest, Manashins were nomadic. They rotated between larger villages in the winter and herding caribou across the taiga throughout the summer. The terrain was rocky and frequently covered in ice, making burial deep in the ground difficult. Instead, they dug a shallow grave of only a foot or two deep, and then covered the body in stones. In regions with especially hard ground, they didn't dig at all.
These stone graves were made wherever the deceased happened to die. These cairns were positioned off the trails and behind camps. Then they were left for 5 years, which was enough time for all three of the person's souls to move on to the
Otherworld. They dug up the grave and gathered the deceased's bones, careful to collect every last finger bone.
The bones were then carried with the band until they circled back to their wíkokegá, located near the winter villages. These were cylindrical buildings made of stone, 5 - 10 feet in diameter, with earth piled up around the sides to create a hill with a hole in the middle. A wooden lid kept animals, snow, and rain out of the ossuary.
The bones are deposited into the opened in the top of the wíkokegá, which is their final resting place. Bone would gather here for generations, until the chamber completely filled up. Then, a stone lid was placed on the ossuary, and turf grows over it. A old wíkokegá looks just like a small grassy hill.
Each clan had their own wíkokegás, and only members of the same clan could disturb a cairn and collect the bones. If a band came across a cairn that was not theirs and they did not know the identity of the person, they would wait 5 years to see if anyone came to collect them. Then in the 6th year, they posthumously adopted the person into their clan in order to inter their bones in their own wíkokegá.
Modern
Manashins today live in sedentary villages year-round. The Forest has driven them from their vast regions to herd and isolated them on islands. The ancient wíkokegás - sacred monuments still visited by priestesses or those seeking connection to their ancestors - were left behind to be overtaken by the Forest.
Today, they practice a modified version of their traditional customs. The dead still remain in cairns for 5 years, but these cairns are now in fields outside of villages. New wíkokegás have been constructed next to these fields, but so far none have been filled enough to be closed and grown over.
Wíkokegáshöwách
A special type of ossuary is the
wíkokegáshöwách, the "house of the dead bear" Villages and large camps had one to hold the bones of killed bears, which are revered by the Manashins. Bears are the only animal other than humans to go to the Otherworld upon death. When a bear is killed, it is skinned and butchered for its fur and meat, and so not left to decompose in a cairn.
As soon as the meat is off the bones, the hunter who killed the bear takes the the bones to the nearest wíkokegáshöwách. If they are especially far away from one, they will take only the skull with them until they reach a place to inter it.
Bears very rarely reach the protected islands of the modern
Manashin Confederation, but they do cross the ice in the fall and spring occasionally. Additionally, hunters braving the forest sometimes come across them and are forced to kill them if they attack. For this reason, all communities of decent size have newly built wíkokegáshöwách on their islands.
Reapers - bears who have been mutated into monsters by the Forest - are given the same respect when killed. It is hoped that giving them a proper burial with their kin will release their soul from the Forest's grip and allow them to enter the Otherworld.
