NOTES UPON HUMAN CRANIA AND SKELETONS 

 COLLECTED BY THE EXPEDITIONS OF 1872-74. 



By Make Sibley Severance and Dk. H. C. Yaeeow. 



959, 964*. Cranium, ivith the skeleton of a pappoose, from a rock-grave, 

 Beaver, Utah. On a hill-side east of Beaver is a collection of Indian 

 graves of recent construction, half way up from the plain on which the 

 town lies to the top of a barren hill of volcanic nature. These graves 

 are formed of piles of lava rock, heaped to great size, and presenting 

 somewhat irregular forms on the declivity where they are built. No 

 particular shape nor direction could be discriminated, and no theory 

 deduced as to their probable erection with axes directed toward a 

 definite point of the compass. They were mere piles of irregular stones 

 thrown together as any wild tribe would be likely to throw them for 

 the concealment of property or the preservation of their dead. A growth 

 of stunted cedars covers the hill-side on which they lay, and supplied 

 the material for a part of their interior construction, as described below. 

 Westward from the site of the graves is a long view across the valley, 

 in which Beaver stands, to a rough range of sierras bounding the plain on 

 the west and to receding mountains beyond — a picturesque outlook for this 

 rude aboriginal burying-field. 



The first grave opened was about 10 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 6 feet 

 high, with the longitudinal axis pointing nearly north and south, and the 



* These numbers refer to the Catalogue of the Army Medical Museum, and also to the following 

 table of measurements. 



391 



