A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American IndiansYarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
History
A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians
Yarrow, H. C. (Harry Crécy)
Indians of North America -- Funeral customs and rites
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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