Section II, 1922 [73] Trans. R.S.C. 



The Westmount ^^Stone-lined Grave'' Race 

 • {An Archaeological Note) 



By W. D. LiGHTHALL, LL.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1922) 



A paper by the writer, entitled "Hochelagans and Mohawks," 

 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1899, contains 

 a cut of an Indian grave then recently opened, with twelve others, on 

 the south-eastern slope of Mount Royal at Westmount Upper Level, 

 Montreal. The remark accompanying the cut was that the skeletons 

 were "buried in the Mohawk fashion." In 1898 I had published in 

 pamphlet form a more detailed, though hasty, account of my dis- 

 covery of thig group under the title, "A New Hochelagan Burying- 

 ground." The notiion that they were Hochelagan or Mohawk — the 

 two terms being in reality about identical in this connection — was 

 drawn from the existence, about a mile to the eastward, of the 

 site of the Town of Hochelaga visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535 

 and destroyed by Algonkins and Hurons probably somewhere about 

 1560. Later reflection tended to throw doubt on the connection of 

 the skeletons with the Hochelagan race. More especially it became 

 clear that the method of burial — the bodies being each covered with 

 two or three pairs of rough slabs of limestone meeting over the body 

 in A shape — was different from any Mohawk or other Huron- Iroquois 

 form as far as I could find. I have come to the conclusion that the 

 burying-ground is probably that of an Algonkin people, and, moreover, 

 one unlike the known Algonkin tribes of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa 

 Valleys, for these buried their dead without stone-lined graves, but 

 oftenest covered by logs or small slab cabins. The Westmount 

 method of sepulture resembles that of certain early Algonkin tribes 

 of Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and South-western New 

 York. A valuable work was published in 1920 by the Smithsonian 

 Institution Bureau of Ethnology, entitled "Native Cemeteries and 

 Forms of Burial East of the Mississippi," the author being David I. 

 Bushnell, jr.. Its illustrations show several stone-lined graves in the 

 States mentioned, some of the forms of stone-lining approaching the 

 Westmount form. Mr. Bushnell remarks at page 44: 



"Stone-lined graves — that is, small excavations which were lined 

 or partly lined with natural slabs of stone — ^have been encountered in 

 great numbers in various parts of the Mississippi Valley. They are 



