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
_Mounds of stone._--Two such mounds have been described already in
the county of Perry. Others have been found in various parts of the
country. There is one at least in the vicinity of Licking River, not
many miles from Newark. There is another on a branch of Hargus’s
Creek, a few miles to the northeast of Circleville. There were
several not very far from the town of Chillicothe. If these mounds
were sometimes used as cemeteries of distinguished persons, they
were also used as monuments with a view of perpetuating the
recollection of some great transaction or event. In the former not
more generally than one or two skeletons are found; in the latter
none. These mounds are like those of earth, in form of a cone,
composed of small stones on which no marks of tools were visible. In
them some of the most interesting articles are found, such as urns,
ornaments of copper, heads of spears, &c., of the same metal, as
well as medals of copper and pickaxes of horneblende; * * * works of
this class, compared with those of earth, are few, and they are none
of them as large as the mounds at Grave Creek, in the town of
Circleville, which belong to the first class. I saw one of these
stone tumuli which had been piled on the surface of the earth on the
spot where three skeletons had been buried in stone coffins, beneath
the surface. It was situated on the western edge of the hill on
which the “walled town” stood, on Paint Creek. The graves appear to
have been dug to about the depth of ours in the present times. After
the bottom and sides were lined with thin flat stones, the corpses
were placed in these graves in an eastern and western direction, and
large flat stones were laid over the graves; then the earth which
had been dug out of the graves was thrown over them. A huge pile of
stones was placed over the whole. It is quite probable, however,
that this was a work of our present race of Indians. Such graves are
more common in Kentucky than Ohio. No article, except the skeletons,
was found in these graves; and the skeletons resembled very much the
present race of Indians.
The mounds of Sterling County, Illinois, are described by W. C.
Holbrook[20] as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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