Burial-ifounds.—These memorials are not less observable in the New than in the Old World. The latest researches go to show that the lofty mounds containing hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of earth which are met with in the Ohio Valley were heaped over the dead body of some chieftain. Those which the earlier investigators called "mounds of observation" or "signal mounds," on account of their position on some commanding eminence, have been shown to cover funeral pyres, and to be, in fact, sepulchral mounds. The Grave Creek mound, situated about twelve miles below Wheeling, \Vest Virginia, was originally about eighty feet in height. A shaft sunk some years ago from the summit to the base revealed beyond a doubt that it was originally a funeral monu ment. The same is true of most of the other high conical mounds of the Ohio Valley and the Southern States; the lower quadrilateral and terraced mounds were thrown up as foundations for buildings. (See Vol. I. p. 215, pl. 39.) Many of these burial-mounds are called "communal sepulchres." They contain the bones not of one person or of a few only, but of hun dreds. A study of the mortuary customs of the later Indian tribes dis closes their origin. It was usual for each gens of the tribe to have its own separate burial-place. The corpse was interred provisionally near the spot where the death took place, but at certain periods all these scat tered remains were disinterred, and the bones cleaned and carried to the general tomb of the gens. With many tribes this tomb was constructed as a mound upon the surface of the ground, the remains being covered with the soil adjacent. (See gels, Vol. I. p. 135.) Indian Graveyards. —Other tribes chose as their places of sepulture islands or river-meadows, where the earth was soft, and interred their dead in large graveyards. This mode prevailed on the northern Atlantic coast, and such "Indian graveyards" are still recognized on the banks of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. Some of them cover six or eight acres of ground, and from the Indians' habit of depositing with the dead many weapons and utensils, these old graveyards have returned rich har vests to collectors.
Other means of disposing of the dead were employed with equal formality. Some tribes, as the Nanticokes, never buried the bones, but preserved them in an ossuary, and when they moved their villages carried these sacred relics with them; others, as the Choc taws, kept the bones in chests in their houses for a long time before depositing them in the earth; many tribes of the \Vest placed the dead on scaffolds or suspended them on the branches of trees, a mode known as "aerial sepulture" (see Vol. I. pl. 37); while others sought out cav erns or natural grottos, and made these the repositories of the bones of their ancestors. This latter custom prevailed to a certain extent among the ancient inhabitants of Tennessee and Kentucky, the widespread lime stone formations of that region offering numerous and suitable caverns for the purpose. The corpses found in them appear to have been mum mified, and were subsequently wrapped in numerous folds of native cloth. This need not surprise us, as the early French writers on Louisiana tell us that several of the tribes who dwelt there were accustomed to mum mify the bodies of their chiefs by drying them over a slow fire. In a
remote part of the continent, Alaska, several tribes continued until a late day to swathe the corpse in numerous bandages and to deposit it in a cave. Probably in both cases some obscure belief in the resurrec tion of the body was what prompted to the custom, as we know was the case in Peru, where a like ceremony was carried out in much detail. (Comp. pp. Io4, 135; see also Vol. I. pl. 50.) Stone Coffins.—A noteworthy employment of stone by some tribes of the Mississippi Valley was as a material for coffins. From about the fortieth parallel southward, and especially in the State of Tennessee, this custom widely prevailed. A large flat stone was chosen as the base, similar ones for the sides and top, and smaller ones for the ends, of a rude cist. (Comp. pl. 3.) When the stones were not of proper sizes they were roughly hewn to fit. The coffin with its contents was placed in an exca vation and covered with the soil, or it was laid upon the surface and the neighboring earth thrown around it. Sometimes several layers of the cists were placed one over the other, and the whole covered with soil, thus forming a mound; but more commonly they were placed separately in the earth. In sonic parts of Tennessee great numbers of these stone coffins have been unearthed, representing the dead of a large population or of many generations.
The coffins were constructed to suit the size of the bodies, and occa sionally all the babes were placed in one part of the cemetery, apart from the adults. Their little sarcophagi gave foundation to the story repeated by various older writers of a race of pigmies having once inhab ited that region.
The area of the stone coffin-makers extended into Northern Georgia, where in the Nacoochee Valley a number of these relics have been ex humed. Their antiquity is not extremely remote. In sonic of these stone coffins objects of European manufacture have been found, and this, although of rare occurrence, renders it certain that some at least of the tribe who had this custom were living on the spot after the Discovery. It may also be noted that the region where most of these relics have been found was far from being thickly peopled at the time of our first authentic accounts concerning it; therefore their origin may be considered an enigma which still awaits solution.
Shell-heaps. —The kitchen-middens of Denmark (see p. 42) have their exact parallels in the United States in similar piles of shells, bones, and other refuse which are found in great numbers along the Atlantic coast and the bays which indent it. These shell-heaps vary from one or two to fifteen feet in height, and sometimes are so extensive as to cover ten or fifteen acres of land. They are composed of oyster, clam, conch, and turtle shells, and of fish-bones; occasionally they contain the bones of men and of other annuals. Intermixed with these are numerous frag ments of pottery, stone axes, chisels, awls, punches, arrow-heads, mortars, net-sinkers, beads, pipes, ornaments, and the other waste products of an aboriginal community.