36 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



the Chinooks of the extreme northwest bury their dead in the exact atti- 

 tude in which they died. This custom, if it ever existed, offers the only 

 reasonable explanation of the extraordinary postures so often noticed, 

 even to the discovery of sitting skeletons. The last, however, are infre- 

 quent ; the cases reported are usually the skeletons of bodies which were 

 closely folded and laid on the side ; when the flesh decayed the bones set- 

 tled to the bottom of the grave in a promiscuous heap, and the skull, if 

 not broken, apparently rests upon them. 



The depositing of food, weapons, or other articles with the dead, is 

 generally supposed to signify belief in a future life where decedent will 

 have occasion for the possessions found useful in this. Conceptions of this 

 nature are necessarily very shadowy in primitive minds. A great many 

 people in the most enlightened communities believe in ghosts, dread 

 to remain alone with a corpse, avoid a cemetery after night-fall, deposit 

 various articles in coffins, array a corpse in the best apparel attainable, 

 decorate graves at intervals for years. They can give no reasons for do- 

 ing these things; if any notion of immortality is involved it is only a 

 vague feeling too faint for logical expression. It cannot be expected 

 that barbarians or savages should have clearer ideas. Imbued with the 

 same solicitude that animates their more civilized congeners, they may 

 intend only an offering to make amends for any injury or slight that 

 might call for retaliation. When private property is concerned, there 

 may be a feeling that, whether dead or alive, the individual was entitled 

 to keep what belonged to him and no one else had a right to claim it. 

 There is a wide-spread superstition, too, that the use of small personal 

 possessions after the death of their original owner, will entail disaster 

 upon any one so rash as thus to tempt his fate. 



An}^ or all of these motives may have entered into the custom in 

 question; and all of them are equally set at naught by the fact that so 

 many bodies were deposited with absolutely nothing to accompany them. 



The opinion that a prehistoric race exercising undisputed jurisdic- 

 tion over any considerable portion of the territory, or one that attained 

 as near to civilization as the highest stage of barbarism, ever dwelt in the 

 Mississippi Valley, is contradicted by all observed facts. Nor does the 

 assertion of a dense population in any section, even where there is the 

 greatest evidence of it, rest upon a better foundation. The imagination 

 is charmed with the picture of toiling multitudes under the direction of 

 task-masters, engaged year after year in building tumuli, bases for sacred 

 edifices, enclosures for various purposes, and doing many other things in 

 a systematic way according to a pre-arranged, intelligent plan. But it is 

 more probable that structures of this kind, whether intended as a mark 

 of respect, for social requirements, to afford protection, or whatever pur- 

 pose, were public in their nature and erected by the joint efforts of the 



