YARROW. ] CREMATION-FURNACE. 149 
not in the least compressed, the well-defined supraciliary ridges, and the superior 
border of the orbits, presenting a quadrilateral outline, were also particularly noticed. 
The lower facial bones, including the maxillaries, were wanting. On consulting such 
works as are accessible to him, the writer finds no mention of any similar relies having 
been discovered in mounds in Florida orelsewhere. For further particulars reference 
may be had toa paper on the subject read before the Saint Louis meeting of the Amer- 
ean Association, August, 1878. 
The discoveries made by Mr. Gillman would seem to indicate that the 
people whose bones he excavated resorted to a process of partial crema- 
tion, some examples of which will be given on another page. The use 
of crania as receptacles is certainly remarkable, if not unique. 
The fact is well-known to archzologists that whenever cremation was 
practiced by Indians it was customary as a rule to throw into the blazing 
pyre all sorts of articles supposed to be useful to the dead, butno instance 
is known of such a wholesale destruction of property as occurred when 
the Indians of Southern Utah burned their dead, for Dr. E. Foreman 
relates, in the American Naturalist for July, 1876, the account of the 
exploration of a mound in that Territory, which proves that at the death 
of a person not only were the remains destroyed by fire, but all arti- 
cles of personal property, even the very habitation which had served 
asahome. After the process was completed, what remained unburned 
was covered with earth and a mound formed. 
A. 8. Tiffany* describes what he calls a cremation-furnace, discovered 
within seven miles of Davenport, Iowa. 
* * * Mound seven miles below the city, a projecting point known as Eagle Point. 
The surface was of the usual black soil to the depth of from 6 to 8 inches. Next was 
found a burnt indurated clay, resembling in color and texture a medium-burned brick, 
and about 30 inches in depth. Immediately beneath this clay was a bed of charred 
human remains 6 to 18 inches thick. This rested upon the unchanged and undis- 
turbed loess of the bluffs, which formed the floor of the pit. Imbedded in this floor of 
unburned clay were a few very much decomposed, but unburned, human bones. No 
implements of any kind were discovered. The furnace appears to have been con- 
structed by excavating the pit and placing at the bottom of it the bodies or skeletons 
which had possibly been collected from scaffolds, and placing the fuel among and 
above the bodies, with a covering of poles or split timbers extending over and resting 
upon the earth, with the clay covering above, which latter we now find resting upon 
the charred remains. The ends of the timber covering, where they were protected by 
the earth above and below, were reduced to charcoal, parallel pieces of which were 
found at right angles to the length of the mound. No charcoal was found among or 
near the remains, the combustion there having been complete. The porous and softer 
portions of the bones were reduced to pulverized bone-black. Mr. Stevens also ex- 
amined the furnace. The mound had probably not been opened after the burning. 
This account is doubtless true, but the inferences may be incorrect. 
Many more accounts of cremation among different tribes might be 
given to show how prevalent was the custom, but the above are thought 
to be sufficiently distinctive to serve as examples. 
- *Proc. Dav. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1867~76, p. 64. 
