Catawba

“[A] death in the Nation triggered an elaborate ritual that involved fasting, wakefulness, a taboo on speaking the name of the deceased, and blowing ashes on the dead person to appease the spirit. If the spirit was satisfied, it would return after three days to drink from a pot of water placed at the head of the corpse; rippling water in the pot signaled that the deceased would not trouble the living.”

James Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 264–265.