150 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
PARTIAL CREMATION. 
Allied somewhat to cremation is a peculiar mode of burial which is 
supposed to have taken place among the Cherokees, or some other tribe 
of North Carolina, and which is thus described by J. W. Foster :* 
Up to 1819 the Cherokees held possession of this region, when, in pursuance of a 
treaty, they vacated a portion of the lands lying in the valley of the Little Tennessee 
River. In 1821 Mr. McDowell commenced farming. During the first season’s opera- 
tions the plowshare, in passing over a certain portion of a field, produced a hollow 
rumbling sound, and in exploring for the cause the first object met with was a shal- 
low layer of charcoal, beneath which was a slab of burnt clay about 7 feet in length 
and 4 feet broad, which, in the attempt to remove, broke into several fragments. 
Nothing beneath this slab was found, but on examining its under side, to his great 
surprise there was the mould of a naked human figure. Three of these burned-clay 
sepulchers were thus raised and examined during the first year of his occupancy, since 
which time none have been found until recently. * * * During the past season 
(1872) the plow brought up another fragment of one of these moulds, revealing the 
impress of a plump human arm. 
Col. C. W. Jenkes, the superintendent of the Corundum mines, which have recently 
been opened in that vicinity, advises me thus: 
“We have Indians all aboutus, with traditions extending back for 500 years. In this 
time they have buried their dead under huge piles of stones. We have at one point 
the remains of 600 warriorsunder onepile, but a grave has just been opened of the fol- 
lowing construction: A pit was dug, into which the corpse was placed, face upward ; 
then over it was moulded a covering of mortar, fitting the form and features. On this 
was built a hot fire, which formed an entire shield of pottery for the corpse. The 
breaking up of one such tomb gives a perfect cast of the form of the occupant.” 
Colonel Jenkes, fully impressed with the value of these archeological discoveries, 
detailed a man to superintend the exhumation, who proceeded to remove the earth 
from the mould, which he reached through a layer of charcoal, and then with a trowel 
excavated beneath it. The clay was not thoroughly baked, and no impression of the 
corpse was left, except of the forehead and that portion of the limbs between the 
ankles and the knees, and even these portions of the mould crumbled. The body had 
been placed east and west, the head toward the east. ‘I had hoped,” continues Mr. 
McDowell, ‘‘ that the cast in the clay would be as perfect as one I found 51 years ago, 
a fragment of which I presented to Colonel Jenkes, with the impression of a part of the 
arm on one side and on the other of the fingers, that had pressed down the soft clay 
upon the body interred beneath.” The mound-builders of the Ohio valley, as has been 
shown, often placed a layer of clay over the dead, but not in immediate contact, upon 
which they builded fires; and the evidences that cremation was often resorted to in 
their disposition are too abundant to be gainsaid. 
This statement is corroborated by Mr. Wilcox : t 
Mr. Wilcox also stated that when recently in North Carolina his attention was called 
to an unusal method of burial by an ancient race of Indians in that vicinity. In 
numerous instances burial places were discovered where the bodies had been placed 
with the face up and covered with a coating of plastic clay about an inch thick. A 
pile of wood was then placed on top and fired, which consumed the body and baked 
the clay, which retained the impression of the body. This was then lightly covered 
with earth. 5 
"* Pre-historic Races, 1873. p. 149. 
tProc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., Nov. 1874, p. 168. 
