To close the subject of subterranean burial proper, the following
account of urn-burial in Foster[37] may be added:
Urn-burial appears to have been practiced to some extent by the
mound-builders, particularly in some of the Southern States. In the
mounds on the Wateree River, near Camden, S.C., according to Dr.
Blanding, ranges of vases, one above the other, filled with human
remains, were found. Sometimes when the mouth of the vase is small
the skull is placed with the face downward in the opening,
constituting a sort of cover. Entire cemeteries have been found in
which urn-burial alone seems to have been practiced. Such a one was
accidentally discovered not many years since in Saint Catherine’s
Island, off the coast of Georgia. Professor Swallow informs me that
from a mound at New Madrid, Mo., he obtained a human skull inclosed
in an earthen jar, the lips of which were too small to admit of its
extraction. It must therefore have been molded on the head after
death.
A similar mode of burial was practiced by the Chaldeans, where the
funeral jars often contain a human cranium much too expanded to
admit of the possibility of its passing out of it, so that either
the clay must have been modeled over the corpse, and then baked, or
the neck of the jar must have been added subsequently to the other
rites of interment.[38]
It is with regret that the writer feels obliged to differ from the
distinguished author of the work quoted regarding urn-burial, for
notwithstanding that it has been employed by some of the Central and
Southern American tribes, it is not believed to have been customary, but
_to a very limited extent_, in North America, except as a secondary
interment. He must admit that he himself has found bones in urns or
ollas in the graves of New Mexico and California, but under
circumstances that would seem to indicate a deposition long subsequent
to death. In the graves of the ancient peoples of California a number of
ollas were found in long used burying places, and it is probable that as
the bones were dug up time and again for new burials they were simply
tossed into pots, which were convenient receptacles, or it may have been
that bodies were allowed to repose in the earth long enough for the
fleshy parts to decay, and the bones were then collected, placed in
urns, and reinterred. Dr. E. Foreman, of the Smithsonian Institution,
furnishes the following account of urns used for burial:
I would call your attention to an earthenware burial-urn and cover,
Nos. 27976 and 27977, National Museum, but very recently received
from Mr. William McKinley, of Milledgeville, Ga. It was exhumed on
his plantation, ten miles below that city, on the bottom lands of
the Oconee River, now covered with almost impassible canebrakes,
tall grasses, and briers. We had a few months ago from the same
source one of the covers, of which the ornamentation was different
but more entire. A portion of a similar cover has been received also
from Chattanooga, Tenn. Mr. McKinley ascribes the use of these urns
and covers to the Muscogees, a branch of the Creek Nation.
These urns are made of baked clay, and are shaped somewhat like the
ordinary steatite ollas found in the California coast graves, but the
bottoms instead of being round run down to a sharp apex; on the top was
a cover, the upper part of which also terminated in an apex, and around
the border, near where it rested on the edge of the vessel, are indented
scroll ornamentations.