THE PROBLEM OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. 19 



room for doubt regarding tlieir identity.' Nor is tliis similarity limited 

 to the customs in the broad and general sense, but it is carried down to 

 the more minute and striking peculiarities. 



Among the general features in wliicn resemblances are noted are tlie 

 following: 



The mound-builders were accustomed to dispose of their dead in many 

 different ways; their modes of sepulture were also quite varied. The 

 same statements will apply with equal force to the Indians. 



"The commonest mode of burial among North American Indians," 

 we are informed by Dr. H. C. Yarrow",^ "has been that of interment in 

 the ground, and this has taken place in a number of ways." The dif- 

 ferent ways he mentions are, in pits, graves, or holes in the ground; 

 in stone graves or cists; in mounds; beneath or in cabins, wigwams, 

 houses or lodges, and in caves. 



The most common method of burial among the mound-builders was 

 by inhumation also, and all the different ways mentioned by Dr. Yar 

 row as practiced by the Indians were in vogue among the former. It 

 was supposed for a long time that their chief and abnost only i)lace of 

 depositing their dead was in the burial mounds, but more thorough 

 explorations have revealed the fact that near most mound villages are 

 cemeteries, often of considerable extent. 



The chief value of this fact in this connection is that it forms one 

 item of evidence against the theory held by some antiquarians that the 

 mound-builders were Mexicans, as the usual mode of disposing of the 

 dead by the latter was cremation.^ According to Brasseur de liour- 

 bourg the Toltecs also practiced cremation.* 



Removal of the flesh before bttrial. — This practice appears to have been 

 followed quite geuerall}^ b}^ both Indians and mound-builders. 



That it was followed to a considerable extent by the mound builders 

 of various sections is shown by the following evidence: 



The confused masses of human bones frequently found in mounds 

 show by their relation to each other that they must have been gathered 

 together after the flesh had been removed, as this condition could not 

 possibly have been assumed after burial in their natural state. In- 

 stances of this kind are so numerous and well known that it is scarcely 

 necessary to i)resent any evidence in support of the statement. The 

 well-known instance referred to by Jefferson in his "Notes on Yirgiuia"-"' 



' Evidence bearing on this point will be found in the paper ou The Burial Mounds 

 of the Northern Sections, by C. Thomas, in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau 

 of Ethuolog}^. 



-First Annual Report Bureau of Etbuology, Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80 

 (1881), p. 93. 



'Clavigero, Hist. Mex., Culleii's transl., I, 325 ; Torqucniada, Mouarq. lud., I, p. CO, 

 etc. 



^H. II. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 2, 1882, p. 609. 



^Fourth Am.ed., 1801, p. 143; p. 146, in 8th ed. 



