94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 71 



Tallapoosa, and Chattalioochee, The Yamasi and others were nearer 

 the coast on the east. The Seminole of Florida were immigrants 

 from the Lower Creek towns on the Chattahoochee and did not enter 

 the peninsula until about the middle of the eighteenth century. Their 

 number was increased from time to time by others from the same 

 towns. Certain members of tliis linguistic group erected great cir- 

 cular town houses, frequently a strong framework of wood covered 

 with clay, in which to conduct their various ceremonies. These were 

 the largest and most imposing structures reared by any of the east- 

 ern tribes. Similar buildings were erected by the neighboring Cher- 

 okee. The majority of these village houses appear to have stood on 

 mounds raised for the purpose. The habitations of these people were, 

 in many instances, frames of either circular or quadrangular form, 

 covered with thatch, or clay applied in a plastic state and allowed 

 to dry and harden. 



THE CIIOCTAW 



Thus the greater part of the southern country was claimed and 

 occupied by tribes belonging to the Muskhogean group, Avho were 

 first encountered by the Spanish explorers of the early sixteenth 

 century, and who continued to occupy the region until removed 

 during the first half of the nineteenth century. For three centuries 

 they are laiown to have remained within the same limited area. 

 On the west were the Choctaw, whose villages extended over a large 

 part of the present State of Mississippi and eastward into Alabama. 

 And to this tribe should undoubtedly be attributed the many burial 

 mounds now encountered within the bounds of their ancient terri- 

 tory, but the remains as now found embedded in a mass of sand and 

 earth forming the mound represent only one, the last, phase of the 

 ceremonies which attended the death and burial of the Choctaw. 

 These as witnessed and described by Bartram were quite distinct. 



"As soon as a person is dead, they erect a scaffold eighteen 

 or twenty feet high, in a grove adjacent to the town, where 

 they lay the corpse lightly covered with a mantle; here it is 

 suffered to remain, visited and protected by the friends and 

 relations, until the flesh becomes putrid, so as easily to part 

 from the bones; then undertakers, who made it their business, care- 

 fully strip the flesh from the bones, wash and cleanse them, smd 

 when dry and purified by the air, having provided a curiously 

 wrought chest or coffin, fabricated of bones and splints, they place 

 all the bones therein; it is then deposited in the bone house, a build- 

 ing erected for that purpose in every town. And wlien this house is 

 full, a general solemn funeral takes place; the nearest kindred or 

 friends of the deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone 

 house, take up the respective coffins, and follow one another in order 

 of seniority, the nearest relations and connexions attending their 



