578 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
earth brought a short distance.”* To judge from this description, 
these graves do not differ from the so-called ‘ stone graves” of Ten- 
nessee, and it need not surprise us therefore to hear that although 
these “Indians do not pretend to any correct knowledge of the tumuli 
or mounds that are occasionally met with in their country,” yet “ there 
are other elevations differing materially from the mounds - - - 
which were formerly, and are at present, exclusively devoted to bury- 
ing their dead,” and which ‘“ are composed of stones and earth, placed 
in such a manner as to cover and separate one dead body from an- 
other,” + precisely as was the case in the stone grave mounds of the 
Cumberland Valley. ¢ 
Nor is this the only kind of mound that the Osages are said to have 
erected within the historic period, nor are they the only people of the 
Daheotah stock who have been accustomed thus to bury their dead. 
Featherstonhaugh tells us that upon the unexpected death of one of 
their chiefs called by the French Jean Defoe, which took place whilst 
all the men of the tribe were hunting in a eee country, ‘ his friends 
buried him in the usual manner, with his weapons, his earthern pot, 
and the usual accompaniments, and raised a small mound over his 
remains. When the nation returned from the hunt, this mound was 
enlarged at intervals, every man assisting to carry materials, and thus 
the accumulation of earth went on for a long period, until it reached its 
present height, when they dressed it off at the top in a conical form. 
The old chief further said that he had been informed and believed that 
all the mounds had a similar origin.”§ According to Lewis and Clarke, 
the Omahas, about the beginning of this century, erected a mound 12 
feet in diameter and 6 feet high over the body of their chief, Black- 
bir I and Catlin tells us that at the Red we Stone Quarry can be 
Orr 
Captiv aie p, 355. See one in succeeding pages for a cece of other modes 
of disposing of their dead temporarily as well as permanently. Similar stone graves 
have been found at Augusta, Ky., and, according to Squier (Abor, Mon. New York, 
p. 129), glass beads and iron rings were found in some of them. 
tl.c., pp. 307 and 308. 
{For an account of these graves and mounds, see the Reports of the Peabody 
Museum of American Archeology, cte., vol. 11, pp. 305 and 261 et seq.: Cambridge, 
1880. 
§ Excursion through the Slave States, pp. 70-71. The old chief further said 
that “the tradition had been steadily transmitted down from their ancestors, 
that the Whahsash (Osages) had originally emigrated from the East in great num- 
bers, the population being too dense for their hunting grounds; he described the 
forks of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, and the falls of the Ohio, where 
they had dwelt some time, and where large bands had separated from them, and 
distributed themselves in the surrounding country.” This mound is probably the 
same one which Beck (Gazetteer of Missouri, p. 308) describes as being ‘one of the 
largest mounds in this country, thrown up on this stream within thirty or forty 
years, by the Osages, near the great Osage village, in honor of one of their deceased 
chiefs.” 
|| Lewis and Clarke, vol. 1, p. 43: Philadelphia, 1814. Catlin, vol. 1, p. 5, visited 
this mound about 1832, and brought away the skull of the Omaha chief. See his 
