Aboriginal Forms of Burial in Eastern 



United States 



By David I. Bushnell, Jr 



SSrpURING pre-Colonial days, eastern United States was the 

 home of numerous tribes which differed in language, man- 

 ners, and customs, including that of the burial of their 

 dead. Separated by mountain ranges and river valleys, 

 often the avowed enemies of their neighbors, they devel- 



oped different habits, influenced in many instances by their natural 

 environment. Of the many tribes, those of the Algonquian stock were 

 the most numerous, and extended over the widest area, which included 

 the whole of New England, and the country westward to the Missis- 

 sippi and southward along the coast to near Cape Lookout in North 

 Carolina. Thus they practically surrounded the Iroquoian tribes, 

 which at the first contact with Europeans occupied the central portion 

 of the present state of New York, a part of the valley of the St 

 Lawrence, and the lands westward along the southern shores of Lake 

 Erie. But very little is known of the tribes of the latter region, as 

 they had vanished from history by the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, soon after the coming of the first French missionary. South 

 of this region, extending to and beyond the Ohio and eastward into 

 the mountains, was a vast expanse of territory within which were no 

 permanent settlements. This was, however, in all probability, the 

 ancient home of Siouan tribes which, not many generations before 

 the arrival of Europeans, had left their earlier habitat and moved 

 down the valley of the Ohio, later to settle beyond the Mississippi. 

 To these tribes may be attributed the majority of the earthworks and 

 other traces of early occupancy of this region, including certain mound 

 burials in which the brachycephalic crania are similar in all respects 

 to those of the present-day Osage. Eastward from the Mississippi to 

 the Atlantic, through the present states of Mississippi, Alabama, and 

 Georgia, lived many Muskhogean tribes which were first encountered 

 by the Spanish expedition of De Soto, 1539-1541, and who continued 

 to occupy the same region until the early part of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. During the years following their first contact with the Span- 

 iards, many of the smaller tribes became more closely allied, thus 

 forming the Creek Confederacy whose principal centers developed in 



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