122 APPENDIX. 



Libations in some cases were made at the tomb, and repeated at intervals for years. 

 According to Charlevoix, at the " Feasts of the Dead," or general burial of the 

 Hurons and Iroquois, dances, games, and combats constituted part of the ceremo- 

 nies of the occasion. 



Vanegas {Hist. California, I., p. 104) says. The California Indians bury or burn 

 their dead indifferently, as chances to be most convenient. Vancouver ( Voy. III., 

 pp. 182, 242) mentions two instances, in which the natives of the Northwest coast 

 burned their dead ; but we are not left to infer that the custom was general. A 

 singular funeral custom is mentioned as prevaihng among the Takali, or Carriers, 

 one of the Oregon tribes, and a branch of the great Algonquin family. They 

 always burn their dead upon a pyre; in case the deceased has a wife, she is 

 obliged to lie by the side of the corpse until the fire is lighted and the heat becomes 

 intense. If, in the estimation of the spectators, she abandons the pyre too early, 

 she is thrust back, and thus often falls a sacrifice. The Medicine-men of this tribe 

 pretend to receive the spirit of the dead in their hands, after the corpse is burned, 

 and to be able to transfer it to any one they choose, who then bears the name of 

 the dead, in addition to his own. — (Narrative of U. S. Exploring Expedition, Vol. 

 IV., p. 453.) 



Father Creux, a Jesuit Missionary in Canada, in 1639, notices a fact which 

 affords a curious antithesis to the customs of the Mexicans, above presented by 

 Clavigero : namely, that the Hurons cut off" the flesh from the bones of those who 

 were drowned or frozen, and burned it ; the skeleton alone was buried. Charlevoix 

 (Vol. II., p. 189) confirms this statement. He adds, that the bodies of those slain 

 in battle were burned, probably for the more easy transportation of their ashes 

 to the burial-grounds of their fathers. 



La Hontan (Vol. II., p. 53) states that " The savages upon the Long River 

 [Mississippi ?] burn their dead ; reserving the bodies until there are a sufficient 

 number to burn together, which is performed out of the village, in a place set apart 

 for the purpose." This statement does not find support in other authorities. 



" They appease the souls of the dead with offerings of meats and drinks. Every 

 woman whose child dies at a distance from home, makes a journey, once a year, 

 if possible, to its place of burial, to pour a libation on its grave." — {Loskiel, p. 76.) 



With these facts and the suggestions of analogy before us, we are certainly 

 justified in the inference that the burials in the mounds were attended with sacri- 

 fices, perhaps of human victims, with oblations, and, it is probable, with games and 

 ceremonies corresponding with those which prevailed, at one period, in the Old 

 World. 



It was remarked, in a preceding chapter, that the highest points of the hills and 

 the jutting bluffs of the table-lands bordering the valleys of the Western rivers, 

 are often crowned with mounds. Although generally supposed to have been 

 designed for "look-outs," or places of observation, investigation has shown that a 

 portion of them, at least, were sepulchral in their original purposes. Clavigero 

 observes of the Mexicans, that they had no particular places assigned for the 

 burial of their dead, but entombed them in the fields and on the mountains. It is 

 possible that an ambition like that which governed the selection of the place of 



