218 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
covered by a mound raised in honor over the ashes of a deceased chief, for 
assuredly such a mound would not have been raised over the ashes of a 
victim. Indians never exchanged prisoners of war. Adoption or burning 
at the stake was the alternative of capture; but no mound was ever raised 
over the burned remains. Human sacrifices seem to have originated in an 
attempt to utilize the predetermined death of prisoners of war in the service 
of the gods, until slavery finally offered a profitable substitute, in the Upper 
Status of barbarism. 
Another use suggests itself for this artificial basin more in accordance 
with Indian usages and customs, namely, that cremation of the body of 
a deceased chief was performed upon it, after which the mound in question 
was raised over his ashes in accordance with Indian custom. 
Cremation was practiced by the Village Indians only among the Ameri- 
can aborigines. It was not general even among them, burial in the ground 
being the common usage; but it was more or less general in the case of 
chiefs. The mode of cremation varied in different areas, but the full par- 
ticulars are not given in any instance. In Nicarauga the body of a deceased 
chief of the highest grade was wrapped in clothes and suspended by ropes 
before a fire until the body was baked to dryness; then, after keeping it a 
year, it was taken to the market-place, where they burned it, believing 
1 
that the smoke went ‘‘to the place where the dead man’s soul was.”? From 
this or some similar conceit the practice of cremation probably originated. 
THE PROBABLE NUMBERS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS. 
There are no reasons for supposing, from the number of their villages, 
that the Mound-Builders were a numerous people. My friend, Prof. Charles 
Whittlesey, in a discussion of the rate of inerease of the human race, esti- 
mates them at 500,000.2. With thanks for the moderateness of the estimate, 
one-third of that number would have been more satisfactory. Dense popu- 
lations, an expression sometimes applied to the Mound-Builders, have never 
!Herrera’s Hist. America, ii, 133. 2Trans, Am. Ass. for the Adv. of Science, 1873, p. 320, 
