ACCOUNT OF HUMAN REMAINS FROM PATAGONIA. 427 



The sitting posture in which these bodies are found, and which is peculiar to 

 the tribes that inhabited the countries comprised* in the ancient Inca empire, 

 indicates that they were not intendcid to be buried under ground, but to be 

 deposited in some sitixation where they might be accessibU) to their friends. 

 Some implement of domestic or warlike use is generally found in the immediate 

 neighborhood of the body, as, in the present case, the rude attempt at a cutting 

 ■instrument, fashioned out of stone, and the dish, consisting of the outer shell 

 of a kind of calabash. 



There are not wanting those who, determined on adapting all things to their 

 favorite theories, choose to discover analogies between tlie mummies of Egypt 

 and South America, and to deduce therefrom the direct connexion of these tribes 

 with, if not their descent from, the inhabitants of the Old World. Nothing 

 can be more vague or void of foundation. The one is the result of an artificial 

 refined religious superstition, the other has been forced upon man as a conse- 

 quence of peculiar local circumstances. The only analogy between them is 

 that they are both intended as an homage to the dead. The feeling that led 

 the Pharaohs to build pyramids, and the Moguls to erect mausoleums, is the 

 same that induced our rude savage to lay these harmless utensils at the feet 

 of his departed friend. 



In the rainless regions of the west coast, nearly all of which are contained 

 within the Inca empire, many local circumstances combined to direct our 

 attention to this otherwise anomalous method of treating the dead. Tlie atmos- 

 phere is excessively dry, the soil impregnated with alkaline matter, nitre, and 

 soda, in varied combinations, almost everywhere in abundance, thus modifying 

 the process of putrid fermentation, so as to render it exceedingly slow, or to 

 suspend it entirely. Animals may be seen lying unchanged in many parts of tlie 

 country for years after their death, and what more natural than a desire to 

 preserve the dead when it could be done so easily? In Chili proper, on the 

 other hand, and in Araucania, which intervene between Peru and Patagonia, 

 tradition and actual observation proves that the custom of thus preserving the 

 dead has never prevailed. Indeed, without the employment of artificial means 

 it would be impracticable, and the aborigines of these districts buried their dead 

 in the manner as practiced by the majority of nations. 



On these premises how is it to be explained that the mummies recur in the 

 isolated locality where the one before us, and several others, have been found, 

 separated as they are from the mummy races by a large intervening space and 

 a people that differ entirely from them in this important social feature ? And 

 how can v/e account for the connexio^ which this peculiar cus'tom would lead 

 us to suspect between the Inca Indian and the remote Patagonian ? 



The dimensions of the bones of our mummy arc considerably above the 

 average of those of the surrounding tribes, and even of the majority of the 

 present inhabitants of Patagonia. The skeleton measures, even in its present 

 shrivelled condition, fully five feet five and a half inches English, which, allow- 

 ing for the disappearance of the vertebral cartilages, would give, during life, a 

 height of something like five feet eight inches, thus almost justifying the some- 

 what poetical epithet of "gigantic," as applied to the Patagonians in general. 

 The fair proportions of the lower extremities are particularly striking, as con- 

 trasted with the generally abnormal shortness of these members amongst the 

 Araucanian Indians. The entire individual gives the impression of having 

 belonged to a race superior, in bone and muscle, to its neighbors as well as 

 descendants. 



The existence of such a race, distinguished by so striking a physical organ- 

 ization, in an isolated corner of the continent, under circumstances certainly 

 not favorable to growth, having to struggle Avith every kind of privation and 

 to subsist on the poorest of aliments, is a phenomenon which has not attracted 

 the attention of scientific men in the degree it merits. The Inca Indians, (or 



