68 ABORIGINAL MONUMENTS OF NEW YORK. 



amongst the different tribes, but was universally denominated the " Festival of the 

 Dead." Bartram, speaking of the burial customs of the Floridian Indians, says : 

 " After the bone-house is full, a general solemn funeral takes place. The nearest 

 kindred and friends of the deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone-house, 

 take up the respective coffins, and, following one another in the order of seniority, 

 the nearest relations and connections attending their respective corpses, and the 

 multitude succeeding them, singing and lamenting alternately, slowly proceed to 

 the place of general interment, when they place the coffins in order forming a 

 pyramid. Lastly, they cover all over with earth, which raises a conical hill or 

 mount. They then return to town in order of solemn procession, concluding the day 

 with a festival which is called the ' Feast of the Dead.' "* The author here quoted 

 adds in a note, that it was the opinion of some ingenious men with whom he had 

 conversed, " that all those artificial pyramidal hills, usually called ' Indian Mounts,' 

 were raised on such occasions, and are generally sepulchres ;" from which opinion 

 he takes occasion to dissent. There is no doubt a wide difference between the 

 mounds thus formed and the great bulk of those connected with the vast ancient 

 enclosures of the Western States. 



The large cemeteries which have been discovered in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mis- 

 souri, and Ohio, seem to have resulted from a similar practice. In these the 

 skeletons were generally packed in rude coffins composed of fiat stones, placed in 

 ranges of great extent. The circumstance that many of these coffins were not 

 more than two or three feet in length, gave rise to the notion of the former exist- 

 ence here of a pigmy race. The discovery of iron and some articles of European 

 origin in one of these cemeteries in the vicinity of Augusta, Kentucky, shows that 

 this mode of burial existed at a late period among the Indians in that direction. 



The " bone-pits " which occur in some parts of Western New York, Canada, 

 Michigan, etc., have unquestionably a corresponding origin. Several of these have 

 been described in a previous chapter. They are of various sizes, but usually con- 

 tain a large number of skeletons. In a few instances the bones appear to have 

 been arranged with some degree of regularity. 



One of these pits discovered some years ago, in the town of Cambria, Niagara 

 county, was estimated to contain the bones of several thousand individuals. 

 Another which I visited in the town of Clarence, Erie county, contained not less 

 than four hundred skeletons. A deposit of bones comprising a large number of 

 skeletons was found not long since, in making some excavations in the town of 

 Black Rock, situated on Niagara River, in Erie county. They were arranged in 

 a circle, with their heads radiating from a large copper kettle, which had been 

 placed in the centre, and filled with bones. Various implements both of modern 

 and remote date had been placed beside the skeletons. 



In Canada similar deposits are frequent. Accounts of their discovery and 

 character have appeared in various Enghsh publications, among which may be 

 named the "British Colonial Newspaper," of September 24th, 1847, and the 



* Travels, p. 514. 



