BURIAL MOUNDS OF CAMIGUIN ISLAND. 3 



of them, but they were too small to determine what bones they were; a 

 third jar contained a small piece of one of the bones of the skull. In one 

 of the jars were found a few common, pale blue, glass beads together 

 with a piece of dark brown, loosely woven, coarse fabric, which fell to 

 pieces at a touch of the hand. In another jar a few more blue beads of 

 the same kind were seen together with a black, sticky mass which had a 

 very unpleasant odor. 



I found it aJmost impossible to secure any information on the island 

 about the customs of former times, because the people native to Camiguin 

 had all died and the few old pieople still living had come over from Luzon 

 or from other islands in recent years. The only statement as to the use 

 of these jars which I could secure was from a young man who told me 

 that he had heard an old man say that they formerly buried the dead in 

 earthenware vessels, cutting the legs of the corpse at the Icnees so as to 

 make it possible, by doubling the legs, to put the entire body into a jar. 

 AAliile this may have been one practice followed, it could not have been the 

 only method of burial, because many of the jars had openings too small to 

 admit the body even of a young child. Of course, it is possible that two 

 methods of burial might have been followed at the same time, one, that 

 of putting the dead body in a jar, and the other, that of placing the bones 

 only in the vessel after the flesh had either been removed or allowed to 

 decay. The presence of the black, sticky mass and the beads in one jar 

 and of the piece of fabric and beads in another would seem to argue for 

 the first method, and the small openings in many of the jars are certainly 

 an argument for the second method. 



I made inquiries of many people as to the existence of similar heaps of 

 stones in other parts of the island, but I could learn of none excepting a 

 few on the other side — northeast- — of the volcano from those already de- 

 scribed. These I visited and examined. They were found to be of the 

 same general stjde as those to the southwest of the volcano. I was told 

 that at the extreme northem end of the island similar mounds were to be 

 found. However, when I arrived there the guide pointed out certain 

 heaps of stones which on examination proved to be natural outcrops of 

 rock. I believe from what I learned after leaving Camiguin that possibly 

 there are other burial mounds on the island besides those which I saw. 



T do not see that there is any reason for concluding that these burials 

 were made by any other people than Filipinos who formerly inhabited 

 Camiguin. Cave burials have been found on at least one island off the 

 northeast coast of Surigao, and others have recently been reported from 

 the Island of Bohol. Burial jars containing bones have also been found 

 in the vicinity of Dapitan, Mindanao. 



However, perhaps the most interesting fact in this connection is that 

 I was told that jars similar to these on Camiguin are to be found on 

 Calayan, an island northwest of Camiguin. An old woman who has 



