Saw Indian graves on the plateau of Independence Rock. The Indians
plant a stake on the right side of the head of the deceased and bury
them in a bark canoe. Their children come every year to bring
provisions to the place where their fathers are buried. One of the
graves had fallen in, and we observed in the soil some sticks for
stretching skins, the remains of a canoe, &c., and the two straps
for carrying it, and near the place where the head lay were the
traces of a fire which they had kindled for the soul of the deceased
to come and warm itself by and to partake of the food deposited
near it.
These were probably the Massasauga Indians, then inhabiting the
north shore of Lake Ontario, but who were rather intruders here, the
country being claimed by the Oneidas.
It is not to be denied that the use of canoes for coffins has
occasionally been remarked, for the writer in 1873 removed from the
graves at Santa Barbara, California, an entire skeleton which was
discovered in a redwood canoe, but it is thought that the individual may
have been a noted fisherman, particularly as the implements of his
vocation--nets, fish-spears, &c.--were near him, and this burial was
only an exemplification of the well-rooted belief common to all Indians,
that the spirit in the next world makes use of the same articles as were
employed in this one. It should be added that of the many hundreds of
skeletons uncovered at Santa Barbara the one mentioned presented the
only example of the kind.
Among the Indians of the Mosquito coast, in Central America, canoe
burial in the ground, according to Bancroft, was common, and is thus
described:
The corpse is wrapped in cloth and placed in one-half of a pitpan
which has been cut in two. Friends assemble for the funeral and
drown their grief in _mushla_, the women giving vent to their sorrow
by dashing themselves on the ground until covered with blood, and
inflicting other tortures, occasionally even committing suicide. As
it is supposed that the evil spirit seeks to obtain possession of
the body, musicians are called in to lull it to sleep while
preparations are made for its removal. All at once four naked men,
who have disguised themselves with paint so as not to be recognized
and punished by _Wulasha_, rush out from a neighboring hut, and,
seizing a rope attached to the canoe, drag it into the woods,
followed by the music and the crowd. Here the pitpan is lowered into
the grave with bow, arrow, spear, paddle, and other implements to
serve the departed in the land beyond, then the other half of the
boat is placed over the body. A rude hut is constructed over the
grave, serving as a receptacle for the choice food, drink, and other
articles placed there from time to time by relatives.
_STONE GRAVES OR CISTS._
These are of considerable interest, not only from their somewhat rare
occurrence, except in certain localities, but from the manifest care
taken by the survivors to provide for the dead what they considered a
suitable resting place. In their construction they resemble somewhat, in
the care that is taken to prevent the earth touching the corpse, the
class of graves previously described.
A number of cists have been found in Tennessee, and are thus described
by Moses Fiske:[14]
There are many burying grounds in West Tennessee with regular
graves. They dug them 12 or 18 inches deep, placed slabs at the
bottom ends and sides, forming a kind of stone coffin, and, after
laying in the body, covered it over with earth.
It may be added that, in 1873, the writer assisted at the opening of a
number of graves of men of the reindeer period, near Solutré, in France,
and they were almost identical in construction with those described by
Mr. Fiske, with the exception that the latter were deeper, this,
however, may be accounted for if it is considered how great a deposition
of earth may have taken place during the many centuries which have
elapsed since the burial. Many of the graves explored by the writer in
1875, at Santa Barbara, resembled somewhat cist graves, the bottom and
sides of the pit being lined with large flat stones, but there were none
directly over the skeletons.
The next account is by Maj. J. W. Powell, the result of his own
observation in Tennessee.
The burial places, or cemeteries are exceedingly abundant throughout
the State. Often hundreds of graves may be found on a single
hillside. The same people sometimes bury in scattered graves and in
mounds--the mounds being composed of a large number of cist graves.
The graves are increased by additions from time to time. The
additions are sometimes placed above and sometimes at the sides of
the others. In the first burials there is a tendency to a concentric
system with the feet towards the center, but subsequent burials are
more irregular, so that the system is finally abandoned before the
place is desired for cemetery purposes.
Some other peculiarities are of interest. A larger number of
interments exhibit the fact that the bodies were placed there before
the decay of the flesh, and in many instances collections of bones
are buried. Sometimes these bones are placed in some order about the
crania, and sometimes in irregular piles, as if the collection of
bones had been emptied from a sack. With men, pipes, stone hammers,
knives, arrowheads, &c., were usually found, with women, pottery,
rude beads, shells, &c., with children, toys of pottery, beads,
curious pebbles, &c.
Sometimes, in the subsequent burials, the side slab of a previous
burial was used as a portion of the second cist. All of the cists
were covered with slabs.
Dr. Jones has given an exceedingly interesting account of the stone
graves of Tennessee, in his volume published by the Smithsonian
Institution, to which valuable work[15] the reader is referred for a
more detailed account of this mode of burial.
G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, informs the
writer that in 1878 he had a conversation with an old Moquis chief as to
their manner of burial, which is as follows: The body is placed in a
receptacle or cist of stone slabs or wood, in a sitting posture, the
hands near the knees, and clasping a stick (articles are buried with the
dead), and it is supposed that the soul finds its way out of the grave
by climbing up the stick, which is allowed to project above the ground
after the grave is filled in.
The Indians of Illinois, on the Saline River, according to George Escoll
Sellers,[16] inclosed their dead in cists, the description of which is
as follows:
Above this bluff, where the spur rises at an angle of about 30°, it
has been terraced and the terrace as well as the crown of the spur
have been used as a cemetery; portions of the terraces are still
perfect; all the burials appear to have been made in rude stone
cists, that vary in size from 13 inches by 3 feet to 2 feet by 4
feet, and from 18 inches to 2 feet deep. They are made of
thin-bedded sandstone slabs, generally roughly shaped, but some of
them have been edged and squared with considerable care,
particularly the covering slabs. The slope below the terraces was
thickly strewed with these slabs, washed out as the terraces have
worn away, and which have since been carried off for door-steps and
hearth-stones. I have opened many of these cists; they nearly all
contain fragments of human bones far gone in decay, but I have never
succeeded in securing a perfect skull; even the clay vessels that
were interred with the dead have disintegrated, the portions
remaining being almost as soft and fragile as the bones. Some of the
cists that I explored were paved with valves of fresh-water shells,
but most generally with the fragments of the great salt-pans, which
in every case are so far gone in decay as to have lost the outside
markings. This seems conclusively to couple the tenants of these
ancient graves with the makers and users of these salt-pans. The
great number of graves and the quantity of slabs that have been
washed out prove either a dense population or a long occupancy, or
both.
W. J. Owsley, of Fort Hall, Idaho, furnishes the writer with a
description of the cist graves of Kentucky, which differ somewhat from
other accounts, inasmuch as the graves appeared to be isolated.
I remember that when a school-boy in Kentucky, some twenty-five
years ago, of seeing what was called “Indian graves,” and those that
I examined were close to small streams of water, and were buried in
a sitting or squatting posture and inclosed by rough, flat stones,
and were then buried from 1 to 4 feet from the surface. Those graves
which I examined, which examination was not very minute, seemed to
be isolated, no two being found in the same locality. When the
burials took place I could hardly conjecture, but it must have been,
from appearances, from fifty to one hundred years. The bones that I
took out on first appearance seemed tolerably perfect, but on short
exposure to the atmosphere crumbled, and I was unable to save a
specimen. No implements or relics were observed in those examined by
me, but I have heard of others who have found such. In that State,
Kentucky, there are a number of places where the Indians buried
their dead and left mounds of earth over the graves, but I have not
examined them myself. * * *
According to Bancroft,[17] the Dorachos, an isthmian tribe of Central
America, also followed the cist form of burial.
In Veragua the Dorachos had two kinds of tombs, one for the
principal men, constructed with flat stones laid together with much
care, and in which were placed costly jars and urns filled with food
and wine for the dead. Those for the plebians were merely trenches,
in which were deposited some gourds of maize and wine, and the place
filled with stones. In some parts of Panama and Darien only the
chiefs and lords received funeral rites. Among the common people a
person feeling his end approaching either went himself or was led to
the woods by his wife, family, or friends, who, supplying him with
some cake or ears of corn and a gourd of water, then left him to die
alone or to be assisted by wild beasts. Others, with more respect
for their dead, buried them in sepulchers made with niches, where
they placed maize and wine and renewed the same annually. With some,
a mother dying while suckling her infant, the living child was
placed at her breast and buried with her, in order that in her
future state she might continue to nourish it with her milk.
_BURIAL IN MOUNDS._
In view of the fact that the subject of mound-burial is so extensive,
and that in all probability a volume by a member of the Bureau of
Ethnology may shortly be published, it is not deemed advisable to devote
any considerable space to it in this paper, but a few interesting
examples may be noted to serve as indications to future observers.
The first to which attention is directed is interesting as resembling
cist burial combined with deposition in mounds. The communication is
from Prof. F. W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum of Archæology,
Cambridge, made to the Boston Society of Natural History, and is
published in volume XX of its proceedings, October 15, 1878:
* * * He then stated that it would be of interest to the members, in
connection with the discovery of dolmens in Japan, as described by
Professor Morse, to know that within twenty-four hours there had
been received at the Peabody Museum a small collection of articles
taken from rude dolmens (or chambered barrows, as they would be
called in England), recently opened by Mr. E. Curtiss, who is now
engaged, under his direction, in exploration for the Peabody Museum.
These chambered mounds are situated in the eastern part of Clay
County, Missouri, and form a large group on both sides of the
Missouri River. The chambers are, in the three opened by Mr.
Curtiss, about 8 feet square, and from 4½ to 5 feet high, each
chamber having a passage-way several feet in length and 2 in width,
leading from the southern side and opening on the edge of the mound
formed by covering the chamber and passage-way with earth. The walls
of the chambered passages were about 2 feet thick, vertical, and
well made of stones, which were evenly laid without clay or mortar
of any kind. The top of one of the chambers had a covering of large,
flat rocks, but the others seem to have been closed over with wood.
The chambers were filled with clay which had been burnt, and
appeared as if it had fallen in from above. The inside walls of the
chambers also showed signs of fire. Under the burnt clay, in each
chamber, were found the remains of several human skeletons, all of
which had been burnt to such an extent as to leave but small
fragments of the bones, which were mixed with the ashes and
charcoal. Mr. Curtiss thought that in one chamber he found the
remains of 5 skeletons and in another 13. With these skeletons there
were a few flint implements and minute fragments of vessels of clay.
A large mound near the chambered mounds was also opened, but in this
no chambers were found. Neither had the bodies been burnt. This
mound proved remarkably rich in large flint implements, and also
contained well-made pottery and a peculiar “gorget” of red stone.
The connection of the people who placed the ashes of their dead in
the stone chambers with those who buried their dead in the earth
mounds is, of course, yet to be determined.
It is quite possible, indeed probable, that these chambers were used for
secondary burials, the bodies having first been cremated.
In the volume of the proceedings already quoted, the same investigator
gives an account of other chambered mounds which are, like the
preceding, very interesting, the more so as adults only were inhumed
therein, children having been buried beneath the dwelling-floors:
Mr. F. W. Putnam occupied the rest of the evening with an account of
his explorations of the ancient mounds and burial places in the
Cumberland Valley, Tennessee.
The excavations had been carried on by himself, assisted by Mr.
Edwin Curtiss, for over two years, for the benefit of the Peabody
Museum at Cambridge. During this time many mounds of various kinds
had been thoroughly explored, and several thousand of the singular
stone graves of the mound builders of Tennessee had been carefully
opened. * * * Mr. Putnam’s remarks were illustrated by drawings of
several hundred objects obtained from the graves and mounds,
particularly to show the great variety of articles of pottery and
several large and many unique forms of implements of chipped flint.
He also exhibited and explained in detail a map of a walled town of
this old nation. This town was situated on the Lundsley estate, in a
bend of Spring Creek. The earth embankment, with its accompanying
ditch, encircled an area of about 12 acres. Within this inclosure
there was one large mound with a flat top, 15 feet high, 130 feet
long, and 90 feet wide, which was found not to be a burial mound.
Another mound near the large one, about 50 feet in diameter, and
only a few feet high, contained 60 human skeletons, each in a
carefully-made stone grave, the graves being arranged in two rows,
forming the four sides of a square, and in three layers. * * * The
most important discovery he made within the inclosure was that of
finding the remains of the houses of the people who lived in this
old town. Of them about 70 were traced out and located on the map by
Professor Buchanan, of Lebanon, who made the survey for Mr. Putnam.
Under the floors of hard clay, which was in places much burnt, Mr.
Putnam found the graves of children. As only the bodies of adults
had been placed in the one mound devoted to burial, and as nearly
every site of a house he explored had from one to four graves of
children under the clay floor, he was convinced that it was a
regular custom to bury the children in that way. He also found that
the children had undoubtedly been treated with affection, as in
their small graves were found many of the best pieces of pottery he
obtained, and also quantities of shell-beads, several large pearls,
and many other objects which were probably the playthings of the
little ones while living.[18]
This cist mode of burial is by no means uncommon in Tennessee, as it is
frequently mentioned by writers on North American archæology.
The examples which follow are specially characteristic, some of them
serving to add strength to the theory that mounds were for the most part
used for secondary burial, although intrusions were doubtless common.