148 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Lbull. 71 



The Siouaii tribes of piedmont Virginia, or some of these tribes, 

 may have followed customs not unlike those of the Hurons a ad Neu- 

 ters, but instead of depositing the accumulated remains in great pits 

 they were placed on the surface and covered over with earth, later 

 another layer of bones and another mass of earth, until a mound many 

 feet in height was formed. 



The southern country was occupied for the most part by tribes of 

 the Muskhogean linguistic family. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, and 

 Creeks were members of this group. The Choctaw dead were first 

 exposed mitil the flesh could easily be removed, when the bones were 

 collected, cleaned, and placed in baskets or other receptacles, then de- 

 posited in a " bone-house," a structure resembling the Temple of the 

 ancient tribes of Virginia. Later, on a day chosen for the ceremony, 

 the remains were carried from the "bone-houses" and placed on 

 the surface, in the form of a pyramid, and when so arranged all 

 were covered by a mass of earth, thus accounting for the numerous 

 «mall mounds standing in the country once occupied by their many 

 towns and villages. In some instances the bones were placed in 

 earthenware vessels, which are now found containing the crumbled 

 remains, although the great majority were in baskets or wrapped 

 in skins, all traces of which have long since disappeared. But very 

 different were the customs of the Chickasaws and Creeks, who 

 usually buried their dead, soon after death, beneath the floor of the 

 house in which they had died. In some instances the houses were 

 then abandoned or destroyed by fire, but at other times they con- 

 tinued to be occupied by the survivors. 



Among some tribes, both in the north and in the far south, when 

 it became necessary for the inhabitants of a town to remove to a 

 new locality, their dead would be transported from the old to the 

 new^ settlement, a trait which proves the reverence in which they 

 held the memory of the departed. 



Only one instance can be cited where objects found in contact with 

 burials had apparently been made especially for the purpose of being 

 placed in the graves. This refers to the small thin earthenware 

 vessels discovered in the stone graves in Missouri, as described. 

 These small, delicately formed bowls would have been of no prac- 

 tical use to the living, being very fragile and composed solely of 

 clay without the usual admixture of pulverized shell or sand, and 

 consequently they may be considered as mortuary bowls, fashioned 

 to hold the offerings to the dead, to be placed in the graves with the 

 remains. 



Such, briefly told, were the burial customs of the native tribes who 

 once occupied the region from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, but of 

 whom all traces are now disappearing. 



