THOMAS.] MOUND-BUILDERS AND INDIANS. 665 



l)uried (ir covered with earth (for the bones are very rarely ciiarreil), and 

 that immediately a monnd was thrown over the ruins. The mode of 

 burial in houses was common among the Muskoki or Creeks' and the 

 Chickasaws.'^ 



(J. C. .Jones says that the Indians of Georgia " often interred beneath 

 the floor of the cabin and then burnt the hut of the deceased over his 

 head.'" In PI. xlii, copied from De Ery, the houses of the deceased, as 

 before stated, are being burned, although the burial appears to be tak- 

 ing place outside the village inclosure. It also appears that in some 

 cases the mound so made was afterwards used as a dwelling site by the 

 same or some other people, as it is not unusual to find two, and even 

 three, beds at different depths. 



That the houses of the Indians occupying this region, when first vis- 

 ited by whites, were very similar to those of the mound-builders is evi- 

 dent ft'ora the statements of the early writers, a few of which are given 

 here. 



La Harpe, speaking of the tribes in some parts of Arkansas, says: 

 " The Indians build their huts dome-fashion out of clay and reeds." 

 Schoolcraft says the Pawnees formerly built similar houses. In Iber- 

 ville's Journal ^ it is stated that the cabins of the Bayagoulas were round, 

 about 30 feet in diameter and plastered with clay to the height of a 

 man. Adair says " They are lathed with cane and plastered with mud 

 from bottom to tox>, within and without, with a good covering of straw." 



Henri de Tonty, the real hero of the French discoveries on the Mis- 

 sissippi, says the cabins of the Tensas were square, with the roof 

 dome-shaped; that the walls were plastered with clay to the height of 

 V2 feet and were 2 feet thick.* 



A description of the Indian square houses of this southern section by 

 Bu Pratz'^ is so exactly in point that I insert a translation of the whole 

 passage : 



The cabins of the u,itive8 .are all perfectly square, none of them are less than fifteen 

 feet in extent in every direction, but there are some which are more than thirty. 

 The followiuy is their manner of building them: The natives go into the new forest 

 to seek the trunks of young walnut trees of four inches in diameter and from 

 eighteen to twenty feet long ; they plant the largest ones at four corners to form the 

 l)readth and the dome; but before fixing the others they prei)are the scaftblding; it 

 consists of four poles fastened together at the top, the lower ends corresponding to 

 the four corners; on these four poles others are fasb'ned crosswise at a distance of a 

 foot apart; this makes a ladder with four sides, or four ladders joined together. This 

 <Ume, they fix the other poles in the grounil in a straight line between those of the 



I Bartram's Travels, 1791, p. 515. 



"Barnard Romans, "A Concise Nat. His. of I-'awt and West Florida," ii, ji. 71. 



•* Antiq. Southern Indiau.s, p. 203. 



^Relation in Margry, D^couvertes, 4tli part, p. 170. 



"•Relation of Henry de Tonty in Margry, [)ecouvertes. vol. i, p. 60C. ■' L'on nous tit d'abord entrer 

 iians une cabane de40 pieds de face: les nmraille.s en aont de bouzillago, espaisaes de deux pieds et 

 bautes de douze. La couverture est faite en dome, de nattes de Cannes, si bien travaill6es que la pliiye 

 ne perce point a travers." 



' Hist. La. II, p. 173. (Frencb ed.) English ed. lTti4, p. :e-8. 



