MORGAN.) IDOLS AT COPAN—GRAVE-POSTS OF CHIEFS. 957 
“oe 
with the upper half of the exterior walls decorated with grotesque orna- 
ments cut on the faces of the stone. Foster states that ‘‘these structures 
are composed of a soft coralline limestone of comparatively recent geologi- 
cal formation, probably of the Tertiary period.”' 
The so-called idols at Copan are the largest stones worked by the 
Central Americans. They are about eleven feet high by three feet wide 
and three feet deep, each face being covered with sculptures and hieroglyphies. 
In a field near the ruins, and near each other, are nine of these elaborately 
ornamented statues. By the side of each is a so-called altar, about six feet 
square and four feet high, made of separate stone. These Idols and Altars 
have been supposed to have some relation to their religious system, with 
human sacrifices in the background From their situation and character it 
may be conjectured that we have here the Copan cemetery, and that these 
idols are the grave-posts, and these altars are the graves of Copan chiefs. 
The type of both may still be seen in Nebraska in the grave-posts and 
erave-mounds by their side, of Iowas and Otoes, and formerly in all parts 
of the United States east of the Mississippi. If Mr. Stephens had opened 
one of these altars he would, if this conjecture is well taken, have found 
within or under it an Indian grave, and perhaps a skeleton, with the per- 
sonal articles usually entombed beside the dead. It was customary among 
the Northern Indians for the chosen friend of the decedent, with whom he 
formed this peculiar tie, to erect his grave-post, representing the chief exploits 
of the departed upon one side, with ideographs and his own upon the oppo- 
site side. “The stone,” Mr. Stephens observes, “of which all these altars 
and statues are made, is a soft grit-stone.”” 
Norman had previously described the material used as a ‘fine concrete 
limestone.”?® 
Elsewhere, with respect to the nature of the tools for cutting 
this stone, he remarks that “flint was undoubtedly used.”* Stephens makes 
a similar statement. The exact size of the stones used is not given, but 
they were not large. Norman remarks of Chichen Itza that “the stones 
are cut in parallelopipeds of about twelve inches in length and six in breadth, 
the interstices filled up with the same materials of which the terraces are 
1 Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 398, 2 Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 1-153, 
3 Rambles in Yucatan, p. 126, 4Tb., p. 184. 
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