GREAT INDIAN CEMETERIES OF THE WEST, 13] 



How far these cemeteries may be regarded as the depositories of" the mound- 

 builders, we are unprepared to say. Dr. Troost is disposed to regard the "pigmy 

 graves " as of comparatively late origin, and distinguishes between them and the 

 cemeteries of the more ancient race. He observes : " Some consider these places 

 as battle-grounds, and the graves, those of the slain ; but that is not the case. The 

 Indians do not bury fallen foes : they leave them to be devoured by wild animals ; 

 their own slain they carry to their towns, or hang up in mats, on trees. They have 

 their burying festivals, Avhen they collect the bones thus preserved, and bury them. 

 In my opinion, the numerous small graves which are attributed to a race of pigmies, 

 had this origin. I have opened numbers of them, and found them filled with mould- 

 ering bones, which, judging from the fragments, belonged to common sized men. 

 The bones in these graves lay without order. This is not the case with the old 

 extinct race, whose graves are much larger, the skeletons being generally stretched 

 out. Nevertheless, I have found these also more or less doubled up."* It is 

 extremely probable that the large cemeteries of Ohio, and those of Kentucky and 

 Tennessee, had a common origin. The absence of stone coffins in the former 

 may perhaps be ascribed to the greater difficulty of procuring stones for the pur- 

 pose of constructing them. Quite a number of stone graves have, nevertheless, 

 been found in Ohio, entirely corresponding in structure with those above described ; 

 all of which answer perfectly to the cistvaen or kistvaen of the British antiquaries. 



It is the opinion of Dr. Morton, founded upon an examination of the human 

 remains found in some of the " pigmy graves " of Tennessee, that " the so-called 

 pigmies of the Western country were merely children, who, for reasons not readily 

 explained, but which actuate some religious communities of our own time, were 

 buried apart from the adult people of their tribe." — (^An Inquiry into the Distinctive 

 Characteristics of the America?! Race, p. 44.) 



* Trans. Am. Ethnog. Soc, Vol. I., p. 358. Dr. Troost describes these graves as " rude fabrics, com- 

 posed of rough flat stones (mostly a kind of slaty lime and sandstone, abundant in Tennessee). These 

 were laid on the ground, in an excavation made for the purpose : upon them were put, edgewise, two similar 

 stones of about the same length as the former ; and two small ones were put at the extremities, so as to 

 form an oblong box of the size of a man. When a coffin was to be constructed next to it, one of the side 

 stones served for both, and consequently they lay in straight rows, in one layer only : I never found one 

 above the other." 



The vulgar notion of a pigmy race, founded upon the small size of some of the ancient stone graves, was 

 for a time associated with another equally absm'd. Some skulls of old persons were taken from those 

 cemeteries : the teeth had been lost and the alveola obliterated, exposing the sharp edge of the jaw bone ; 

 whence it was inferred that the ancient pigmies were destitute of teeth, and had jaws like those of a 

 tm-tle ! 



