PREHISTORIC CANNIBALISM IN AMERICA. 205 



The only implements of a warlike nature found in the garbage- 

 heap were in the topmost strata, from which fact I would infer 

 that their early occupation of this place had been a peaceful one, 

 with the introduction of wars with rival tribes at a later date, 

 forcing them to learn warfare as an art of defense. 



The shrinking of the village site from so large an area to so 

 small a one as the last walled in for more sure defense indicates 

 the rapid depopulation of the village and increased danger of as- 

 sault. 



In one quarter of what I regard as the second epoch of the 

 community I estimated as many as two thousand foundations of 

 tepees. In that same portion of the village site, Dr. Lapham, in 

 1853, or about that time, took out of a grave in one of their 

 temple foundations fragments of cloth made from vegetable fiber. 

 They seem to have been a comparatively civilized people, among 

 whom agriculture and manufacturing were carried on, and great 

 order displayed in laying out their village and defending it with 

 walls and other devices. 



Of their cannibalism there can be no doubt after these discov- 

 eries. Had they been slain and eaten by their enemies, or by other 

 tribes conquering them, their bones would not have been mingled 

 with those of beasts, birds, and fishes taken in the same locality, and 

 evenly distributed through eight feet of accumulating silt carried 

 from the hills by a stream that only had water in it at extremely 

 wet and short periods of the year, where the accumulation is not 

 over three inches in a century, since the timber has all disappeared, 

 and the plow has turned the soil every year for about forty years. 



That the flesh of those bodies was eaten there can be no doubt, 

 for no savage would go to the trouble to mutilate the dead bodies 

 of friend or foe, to the extent of separating all the joints with a 

 knife, chopping the bones three or four inches long, and splitting 

 all those and only those containing marrow, and then finally 

 mixing them with the bones of the animals he undoubtedly used 

 as food, and throwing them into one common heap. 



The diversity of the skeletons as indicated in their texture 

 and physiological configurations would suggest to my mind that 

 the persons eaten were probably taken prisoners in battles, with 

 possibly some of their own number eaten as a sacrifice in their 

 festivals and orgies, of which they must have had many, as indi- 

 cated by the temple-like structures that existed among the variety 

 of structures built by them. Their social life must have been 

 highly developed, to hold them together in one village, and to 

 create such strong defenses as its walls indicate, and to carry their 

 industries to so high a degree of perfection as is indicated by the 

 relics referred to above. 



The government of so large a body of primitive people would 



