HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



But it is not possible to say that both mounds were erected by the 

 same people, although it is highly probable they were, as similar forms 

 of burial were found in both. The occurrence of many skulls, dis- 

 sociated with other bones, in mounds of central and northern Florida, 

 presents one of the most interesting questions in connection with the 

 study of the burial customs of the ancient inhabitants of this region. 



The greater part of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia was claimed 

 and occupied by various tribes of the Muskhogean stock. On the west 

 were the Choctaw, who extended over a large part of Mississippi and 

 eastward into Alabama. In early times, before the influence of French 

 missionaries had been exerted to a degree sufficient to change their 

 primitive customs, the Choctaw placed the bodies of their dead upon 

 elevated scaffolds away from their habitations. Later all traces of the 

 flesh were removed from the bones, which were then deposited in 

 mounds of earth. Little is known of the ceremonies which were prob- 

 ably enacted at the time of the second disposition of the remains. 

 At the present time the Choctaw follow the methods of their white 

 neighbors and bury in graves, a custom which the southern members 

 of the tribe appear to have acquired about four generations ago. 



The Creeks, to the eastward of the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw 

 to the northward, buried their dead in excavations made beneath the 

 floors of their dwellings which they continued to occupy, the space 

 above the grave being covered by a bed or table. Very different were 

 the habits of the Natchez, Taensa, and Timucuan peoples, who usually 

 destroyed the dwellings of the deceased. 



The very elaborate ceremonies enacted by the Natchez at the time 

 of the death of a chief have been minutely described by early French 

 writers. Human sacrifice was an important feature of this strange 

 formula. The body of the chief, after being properly prepared, was 

 carried by a circuitous route, and with much pomp and ceremony, to 

 the temple, where it was deposited. 1 



The temple of the Natchez at once suggests the rather similar 

 structure of the southern Algonquian tribes of Virginia and Carolina. 

 Other southern tribes appear to have had places of the same nature, 

 used to hold the dead before their final disposal, but probably of less 

 importance than was the structure of the Natchez. 



The burial mounds of piedmont Virginia, justly attributed to the 

 Siouan tribes, prove beyond doubt that all the flesh had been removed 

 from the bones before burial. But no records have been preserved of 



1 For the various accounts of the Natchez ceremony, consult Swanton, Indian Tribes of the 

 Lower Mississippi Valley, Bulletin 43, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 191 1, pp. 138- 

 157- 



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