THOMAS.] IJODIES WRAPPED IN HARK. 679 



l)it. It is difficult t(i I'XplMia tlic existence nfthe clianeil timbers in iiny other way. 

 Tliere must Lave lieen other tires than that innnetliately around and al)Ove the body, 

 and many ot'tliem, because on one side of the mound the clay is burned e%'cn to the 

 to]i of the mound. In one place 3 feet above the body the clay is vitrified. It is 

 jpossilile that tires were liuilt at diH'erent levels — oiien fires — and that most of the 

 ashes were blown away by this wiu<ls which often sweep over the plain. I have 

 stated that there was first laid down a sort of floor of wood, on which the V>ody was 

 placed. On the same floor were placed about 500 copper beads, forming a line almost 

 around the body. Of course the string (in another mound in the neighborhood co]i- 

 per beads were found strung on a buckskin string) was burned and the beads were 

 more or less separated by the movement of the timbers and earth. Sometimes sev- 

 eral were found in contact in proper order. Several beads were completely rusted 

 away. Where the timliers were not burned to a.shes but only charred, the beads 

 were found lying upon the lowest layer of charred wood with another layer resting 

 npcm them. From the small diameter of the concentric or growth rings in the 

 charcoal in the bottom layer I infer that there was nothing more elaborate than a 

 platform of poles for the resting place of the body. Where the wood was burned 

 to ashes the beads were found in the ashes. 



(.5) Besemlilancoi in other respects. — That it was the custom of some 

 of tlie moiiiid-biiililiiij;' peojtk' to l)iiry their dead in box-shaped stone 

 cists is now well known. Tliiit a few Indian tribes followed the same 

 custom is attested by history and fully proved by other evidence, as 

 will hereafter be shown. 



According to Lawsoii ' it was not uncommon among the Indiiins of 

 Carolina to wrap the body of the deceased at the time of burial in 

 mats made of rushes or cane. Eemains of rush or caue matting have 

 frequently been found about human remains in southern UKmnds. 



It was also a custom with several Indian tribes to place bark beneath 

 and often above the body. Numerous evidences of a similar mode of 

 burial have been found in the mounds. Whether or not aerial or sctif- 

 fold burial was resorted to l)y any of the mound-builders is not, as a 

 piatter of course, susceptible at this date of direct proof, yet the fact 

 that communal or bone burial was practiced by the mound builders in 

 the same sections where this mode of preliminary sepulture was cus- 

 tomary with the Indians of historic times, indicates that it was also a 

 custom of the former. 



In some cases it has been observed by the Bureau assistants while 

 exjiloring in the northwestern sections that some of the bones in these 

 buried masses bore what seemed certain evidence of exposure to the 

 eleiueuts previous to burial. 



' Hist. Carolina, p. 81. 



