26 King, Folk-loi-e of t lie North Avierican Indians. 



with her body, and to bury them in the tomb unburnt 

 was of no manner of use.* 



We do not know when or where cremation first 

 originated. We find both practices at different periods 

 in the history of the same people : we also find both 

 practices going on simultaneously in the same people. 

 In ancient Greece, burial was the practice of the Mycen- 

 ean age, as the tombs described prove. In the poems of 

 Homer, cremation is the mode of disposing of the dead.j- 

 Later on, burial again became the general rule. Cremation 

 was no doubt expensive. Professor Ridgway has recently 

 argued that the Achaeans of the Homeric age were of a 

 different race from the native Greeks, — one of the fair- 

 haired marauding tribes of Central Europe, who conquered 

 and settled down in Greece, and brought the practice of 

 cremation and belief in another world amongst a popula- 

 tion which practised burial, and believed that the spirits of 

 the dead remained in the tomb. Still, the Achaeans in 

 Homer may have burned their dead for special reasons. 

 Plinyij: suggests that burning was adopted in the case of 

 Rome because the bodies of those who died and were 

 buried in foreign wars were sometimes disinterred. The 

 Greeks of the Homeric age were on foreign service. They 

 could not send their dead home, and to bury them in 

 foreign soil might leave them exposed to insult. The 

 Mengwes of North America burned the bodies of those 

 who died on the field of battle and collected the ashes, 

 just as the Achaeans in the Homeric age did. The 

 Hurons burned the bodies and brought home the bones of 

 those who died out of their own country. We are also 

 told that the souls of those who died in war formed a 



• Ildt., v., 92. 



t The word Tctpyjuv in Homer may be a relic of a process of em- 

 balming. 



X Nat. Hist., vii., 187. 



