B USHNELL— ABORIGINAL BURIAL 



bordering the numerous streams are often extensive groups of burials, 

 while others are situated in the lowlands and are exposed by freshets. 

 The Algonquian tribes which formerly occupied the rich prairie lands 

 of Indiana, Illinois, and the southern parts of Michigan and Wiscon- 

 sin, seem to have followed various methods of disposing of their dead, 

 no one of which appears to have been distinctive or characteristic of 

 a single tribe. And in no part of the country east of the Mississippi 

 did the native tribes remove from place to place to such a degree as 

 did the people of this region. Therefore it is not possible within the 

 limits of a short article to refer in detail to the various forms of burial 

 encountered in this wide area. The great mounds of southern Ohio, 

 with their altars and traces of great fires associated with human 

 remains, reveal a little of the ceremonies which attended the burials. 

 And it is quite apparent that the ceremonies performed by these 

 ancient people, evidently the builders of the remarkable earthworks 

 of the region, were among the most elaborate conducted by any of the 

 eastern tribes. 



Future investigations of mounds and burial places will probably 

 serve to make clear other customs of the early occupants of the 

 country east of the Mississippi, but unfortunately all such traces are 

 rapidly disappearing and within a century few signs will remain of 

 the native tribes which occupied the region when it was first traversed 

 by Europeans. 



Washington, D.C. 



[43] 



