206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



call for an elaborate mythology to invest its rulers with the neces- 

 sary civil power to hold the society together, and wield its com- 

 bined strength against its foes from behind the walls that pro- 

 tected its women and children, and to till the soil and make its 

 wares. The pottery, of which there must have been great quanti- 

 ties, from cooking-pots over twenty inches in diameter down to 

 drinking-pots not over three inches in diameter, seems to have 

 all been made from clay taken from three or four pits, and all 

 baked in a single kiln. 



There was probably some division of labor among them ; some 

 making pots, others tilling the fields, while still others made tools 

 of various sorts, and still others may have followed the chase for 

 meat-supplies. All the birds of which I found bones are migra- 

 tory, and are found in that locality only during the period of the 

 year in which the crops would need attention. The same is true 

 of some of the fish upon which they fed. 



"Whatever led to cannibalism among them fixed the habit so 

 permanently in their lives as to lead them to relish human flesh. 

 Every part of the body seems to have been eaten, which would not 

 be true of those cannibals that eat their enemies for revenge or in 

 religious sacrifices. In those cases they seldom eat more than small 

 portions selected according to the demand of some superstition 

 that does not apply to all of the body, even to the marrow. 



The fact that such ornaments as the shell beads, which must 

 have been highly prized by their owners, were thrown with the 

 bones into the common garbage-heap of the village would seem 

 to indicate that the person eaten, and whose bones and ornaments 

 found a common fate among the bones of food-animals, was alien 

 to the eaters. 



Then, too, very wide differences of anatomical conformations 

 exist between the bones in the garbage-heap and those buried in 

 the burial mounds adjacent to the village. This confirms the no- 

 tion that the victims eaten must have been taken by the chase, or 

 as prisoners of war. The bones indicate all ages, from children 

 of tender years to aged men and women. There seems to have 

 been no discrimination as to the age and sex of the victim, as 

 is generally the case when a human body is eaten in religious or 

 social orgies. Such are the facts in confirmation of this habit 

 having existed among a people of a high order of barbarism. 



The manner in which, and the length of time it was practiced 

 by them, would indicate as its cause the development of a relish 

 for human flesh through a scarcity of food. The very fact that 

 they were populous, and subsisting in a latitude that has hard and 

 long winters, together with the uncertainties of the returns from 

 their primitive agriculture, would confirm the notion that hunger 

 was its cause, and that its pressure never was unf elt until the relish 



