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
The discoveries made by Mr. Gillman would seem to indicate that the
people whose bones he excavated resorted to a process of partial
cremation, some examples of which will be given on another page. The use
of crania as receptacles is certainly remarkable, if not unique.
The fact is well-known to archæologists that whenever cremation was
practiced by Indians it was customary as a rule to throw into the
blazing pyre all sorts of articles supposed to be useful to the dead,
but no instance is known of such a wholesale destruction of property as
occurred when the Indians of Southern Utah burned their dead, for Dr. E.
Foreman relates, in the American Naturalist for July, 1876, the account
of the exploration of a mound in that Territory, which proves that at
the death of a person not only were the remains destroyed by fire, but
all articles of personal property, even the very habitation which had
served as a home. After the process was completed, what remained
unburned was covered with earth and a mound formed.
A. S. Tiffany[55] describes what he calls a cremation-furnace,
discovered within seven miles of Davenport, Iowa.
* * * Mound seven miles, below the city, a projecting point known as
Eagle Point. The surface was of the usual black soil to the depth of
from 6 to 8 inches. Next was found a burnt indurated clay,
resembling in color and texture a medium-burned brick, and about 30
inches in depth. Immediately beneath this clay was a bed of charred
human remains 6 to 18 inches thick. This rested upon the unchanged
and undisturbed loam of the bluffs, which formed the floor of the
pit. Imbedded in this floor of unburned clay were a few very much
decomposed, but unburned, human bones. No implements of any kind
were discovered. The furnace appears to have been constructed by
excavating the pit and placing at the bottom of it the bodies or
skeletons which had possibly been collected from scaffolds, and
placing the fuel among and above the bodies, with a covering of
poles or split timbers extending over and resting upon the earth,
with the clay covering above, which latter we now find resting upon
the charred remains. The ends of the timber covering, where they
were protected by the earth above and below, were reduced to
charcoal, parallel pieces of which were found at right angles to the
length of the mound. No charcoal was found among or near the
remains, the combustion there having been complete. The porous and
softer portions of the bones were reduced to pulverized bone-black.
Mr. Stevens also examined the furnace. The mound had probably not
been opened after the burning.
This account is doubtless true, but the inferences may be incorrect.
Many more accounts of cremation among different tribes might be given to
show how prevalent was the custom, but the above are thought to be
sufficiently distinctive to serve as examples.
_PARTIAL CREMATION._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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