BDSHNELL] NATIVE CEMETERIES AN"D FORMS OF BURIAL 107 



they place the corpse on a scaffold, covered with notched logs to secure 

 it from being torn by wild beasts", or fowls of prey; when they 

 imagine the flesh is consumed, and the bones are thoroughly dried, 

 they return to the place, bring them home, and inter them in a very 

 solemn manner. . . . The Indians use the same ceremonies to the 

 bones of their dead, as if they were covered with their former skin, 

 flesh, and ligaments. It is but a few days since I saw some return 

 with the bones of nine of their people, who had been two months 

 before killed by the enemy. They were tied in white deerskins, 

 separately; and when carried by the door of one of the houses of 

 their family, they were laid down opposite to it, till the female rela- 

 tions convened, with flowing hair, and wept over them about half 

 an hour. Then they carried them home to their friendly magazines 

 of mortality, wept over them again, and then buried them with the 

 usual solemnities; putting their valuable effects, and as I am in- 

 formed, other convenient^ things in along with them." (Adair, (1), 

 pp. 180-181.) 



Wlien the Spanish expedition led by De Soto crossed the southern 

 country during the years 1539-1541, the Chickasaw were evidently 

 living in the vicinity of the present Union and Pontotoc Counties, in 

 the northern part of the State of Mississippi, a region they continued 

 to occupy for many generations. Traces of an inclosure surrounding 

 a group of mounds is standing in the southern part of Union County, 

 and may not be very ancient, as objects of European origin have 

 been recovered from several of the mounds. Small pits were discov- 

 ered beneath certain mounds of the group, as in "Mound 8 . . . 

 Six feet north of the center, in the original soil, was a hole 18 inches 

 across and 11 inches deep, the sides burnt hard as brick, filled with 

 charcoal and dirt. Seven feet northeast of the center was a similar 

 but smaller hole. The gray layer' at the bottom was undisturbed over 

 both these spots, showing that the mound was built after this part of 

 the field had been occupied." (Thomas, (1), pp. 276-277.) 



This makes it quite evident the mounds were erected on an old 

 village site. A trench was cut through a section of another mound 

 of the group, that designated as No. 1, and was carried " down to 

 underlying red clay which was so hard as to be difficult to loosen with 

 a pick. In this clay two holes had been dug 6 feet apart, one north 

 of the other. Each was a foot across and 3 feet deep, rounded at the 

 bottom, and filled with a shiny gray ooze. In the one to the south 

 was found a piece of slmll bone, in the northern one nothing but the 

 soft mud or slime. Fourteen feet from the center were two similar 

 holes, one 11 inches across and 3 feet deep, the other 3 feet south of 

 it of the same depth and 18 inches across. . . . No traces of bones 

 were found in these." (Op. cit., p. 271.) 



