418 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Mortars made in small cobbles sometimes resemble bowls, or even 

 cups. Certain forms from the Hudson valley are small and no 

 heavy pestle could have been used in them. 



The people who used stone mortars very likely as frequently used 

 forms made of wood. Wooden mortars continue in use today among 

 the New York Iroquois. 



Mortuary customs. The New York Indians had several methods 

 of disposing of the remains of the dead. The simplest disposal w r as 

 to place the corpse in a shallow pit or grave and to cover it with 

 earth. This is simple interment. A second method was to wrap 

 the body in skins and place it on the ground, inside of a small bark 

 house or skin tent. A third method was to wrap the body and place 

 it in the branches of a tree or on a scaffold. Another method was 

 to cremate it, and still another to place it in a canoe or submerge it in 

 the water. Secondary disposals were to remove the bones of the 

 dead from trees, graves, or grave houses and place them in individual 

 bundles for reburial, or in large ossuaries or pits where numerous 

 remains were deposited. 



Bodies of the dead were placed in graves according to fixed cus- 

 toms. Most of the earlier interments were in the flexed position ; 

 that is, the corpse was doubled up on one side, the knees being drawn 

 toward the chin and the hands put together beneath the cheek. This 

 position is a universal one employed by most primitive peoples. A 

 few burials were made with the corpse placed in a sitting position, 

 the skull being uppermost and near the top of the ground. Such 

 burials are rare in New York. Many persons mistake the flexed 

 posture for the sitting posture. Stone grave burials are usually 

 straight, the body being extended and on the back. Some midcolon- 

 ial or late colonial burials are also straight. Early burials have few 

 artifacts with them, the exceptions being mound and stone grave 

 interments. The early Iroquois buried little of stone or bone with 

 their dead but after the opening of the European period lavished 

 their material possessions upon them that the spirits of the objects 

 might go with the departed. 



Many graves have pits above them, indicating watch fires. The 

 Iroquois in some instances kept the watch fire burning for ten days. 

 Both the Algonkian and the Iroquois believed in ghosts and in the 

 influence of departed spirits. The spirits of evil persons were 

 thought to become even more terrible after death. Some spirits, it 

 was thought, entered the bodies of birds or animals. (See 

 Ossuaries.) 



