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
Colonel Jenkes, fully impressed with the value of these
archeological discoveries, detailed a man to superintend the
exhumation, who proceeded to remove the earth from the mould, which
he reached through a layer of charcoal, and then with a trowel
excavated beneath it. The clay was not thoroughly baked, and no
impression of the corpse was left, except of the forehead and that
portion of the limbs between the ankles and the knees, and even
these portions of the mould crumbled. The body had been placed east
and west, the head toward the east. “I had hoped,” continues Mr.
McDowell, “that the cast in the clay would be as perfect as one I
found 51 years ago, a fragment of which I presented to Colonel
Jenkes, with the impression of a part of the arm on one side and on
the other of the fingers, that had pressed down the soft clay upon
the body interred beneath it.” The mound-builders of the Ohio
valley, as has been shown, often placed a layer of clay over the
dead, but not in immediate contact, upon which they builded fires;
and the evidence that cremation was often resorted to in their
disposition are too abundant to be gainsaid.
This statement is corroborated by Mr. Wilcox:[57]
Mr. Wilcox also stated that when recently in North Carolina his
attention was called to an unusual method of burial by an ancient
race of Indians in that vicinity. In numerous instances burial
places were discovered where the bodies had been placed with the
face up and covered with a coating of plastic clay about an inch
thick. A pile of wood was then placed on top and fired, which
consumed the body and baked the clay, which retained the impression
of the body. This was then lightly covered with earth.
It is thought no doubt can attach to the statements given, but the cases
are remarkable as being the only instances of the kind met with in the
extensive range of reading preparatory to a study of the subject of
burial, although it must be observed that Bruhier states that the
ancient Ethiopians covered the corpses of their dead with plaster
(probably mud), but they did not burn these curious coffins.
Another method, embracing both burial and cremation, has been practiced
by the Pitt River or Achomawi Indians of California, who
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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