' 36 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 71 



or fighting, were inscribed witli red or black paint. The graves 

 were placed npon mounds in the prairie, this situation having doubt- 

 less been selected as being the highest and least likely to be over- 

 flowed." (Keating, (1), I, pp. 244-245.) 



The use of ancient mounds as places of burial by later Indians, 

 as witnessed near Prairie du Chien, was followed extensively 

 throughout the upper Mississippi Valley and elsewhere. In the 

 spring of 1900 the Ojibway living on the south shore of Mille Lac, 

 Minnesota, were utilizing the summits of ancient mounds for this 

 purpose, and on one mound standing near the village of Sagawamick 

 were thirteen very recent graves, covered with the box-like covers of 

 hewn logs, on one end of which was cut or painted the totem of the 

 deceased. Some were surrounded by stakes, designed to protect the 

 burial. This site was once occupied by the Mdewakanton, by whom 

 the mounds were evidently reared. Later they were driven south- 

 ward by the Ojibway, and this became the principal village of the 

 Misisagaikaniwininiwak. This will explain the origin of the many 

 shallow burials, a foot or more below the surface, encountered in 

 mounds east of the Mississippi. 



A small sketch of several scaffolds, resembling that described by 

 McKenney, appeared in Lahontan's narrative in 1703. This is re- 

 produced in figure 2, This form of scaffold may have been found 

 throughout the Algonquian country bordering Lake Superior and 

 Lake Huron, and was probably that mentioned by Charlevoix, only 

 a few years after Lahontan. * 



CREMATION 



More than a century before McKenney made his tour of the Lakes 

 and stopped at Detroit during the month of June, 1826, Charlevoix 

 traversed much of the same on his way to the country of the Illinois, 

 and thence down the Mississippi. At that time the Missisauga, a 

 tribe closel}^ related to the Chippewa, and of which they may be 

 considered a subtribe or division, lived on the shores of Lake St. 

 Clair and the vicinity, and here Charlevoix saw their scaffold burials. 

 Eeferring to the several tribes with whom he had come in contact, 

 he wrote: "When an Indian dies in the time of hunting, his body 

 is exposed on a very high scaffold, where it remains till the departure 

 of the company, who carry it with them to the village. There are 

 some nations who have the same custom, with respect to all their 

 dead; and I have seen it practised among the Missisaguez at the 

 Narrows, The bodies of those who are killed in war are burnt, 

 and the ashes carried back, in order to be deposited in the sepulchres 

 of their ancestors. These sepulchres, among those nations who are 

 best fixed in their settlements, are a sort of burial grounds near the 

 village." (Charlevoix, (1), II, p. 189.) This was written in 1721. 



