XLVI REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. 



north to the large truncated pyrauiid of the youth, the .stone 

 cami, the house site, etc., stratified and unstratified; and the 

 collaborators of the Bureau of Ethnology have collected an 

 immense treasury of pottery, celts, pipes, gorgets, flint and 

 bone implements, discoidal stones, copper articles, engraved 

 shells and toys, and ornaments of many kinds, which will be 

 invaluable to students of ethnology. 



Incidentally, as strongly pointing to the conclusions to 

 which the explorations lead. Dr. Thomas introduces a summa- 

 tion of testimony tending to show that the ruined cities of 

 Palenque, Copaii, and Uxmal were founded and built not by 

 an extinct ancient race but by the ancestors of the sturdy 

 Mayas who still possess Central America, and that the 

 deserted pueblos and cliif-dwellings of New Mexico and Ari- 

 zona are referable to the ancestors of the sedentary tribes who 

 still cluster on the arid plains and mesas of that section. If 

 this be true it follows as a corollary that they could not have 

 constructed the mounds of eastern America in the tifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. 



The ultimate conclusions resulting from the explorations 

 chronicled in this volume may briefly be stated as follows : 



1. Nothing found in the mounds justifies the opinion that 

 they are uniformly of great antiquity. 



2. The mound-builders comprised a number of tribes bear- 

 ing about the same relations and having about the same cul- 

 ture-status as the Indian tribes inliabiting the corresponding 

 area when it was first visited by Europeans. 



3. The custom of removing the flesh before burial prevailed 

 extensively among the northern mound-builders, and was not 

 uncommon in the south. 



4. None of the mounds were built for religious or sacred 

 purposes, but some religious ceremony was often performed 

 at the burial, involving the use of fire, perhaps in cremation. 

 There is no evidence that human sacrifice was practiced. 



5. In some southern districts, especially in the bottom lands 

 of the lower Mississippi, it was customary to erect dwellings 

 on low mounds, apparently artificial, and, when deaths oc- 



