200 Aboriginal Funereal Customs in the United States. [April, 
A third method of inhumation was cave burial, such as was 
employed by the troglodytes of the Vézére, in Southern France. 
This was not common in the United States, though isolated in- 
stances are recorded, such as the remains found in the deposits of 
a cave in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, and also in caverns 
through the cajions of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. 
Cremation was of two kinds: in graves and in urns. The 
former was practiced, to some extent, by the ancient Pueblos of 
Arizona and Utah. The body was burned and the ashes depos- 
ited in shallow tombs, marked in the ordinary way by slabs of 
stone set on edge around the spot. Several tribes of the Rio 
Gila? in Southern Arizona and some in Texas were in the habit 
of burying the bones of their departed in urns. Sometimes the 
skull was placed face downwards in the mouth of the vase, and 
served as a sort of cover or lid. In the immense cave town on 
the Rio de Chelly (examined by a portion of Hayden’s United 
States Geological Survey), seven burial urns were unearthed, 
which had been placed in a group, their edges touching. They 
had been hidden just below the surface soil, on a mound of earth 
at the foot of the walls of the pueblo. Removing them carefully 
from their positions, it was found that they were about fifteen 
inches in height, six or seven across the mouth, made of coarse, 
sandy clay, and burned to a sooty blackness. The vessels were 
filled to the mouth with some substance, which, on examination, 
proved to be a white adobe cement, below which appeared frag- 
ments of charcoal, burned corn cobs, and small pieces of highly 
glazed pottery. No indications of charred bones were found in 
them, however, and it could not be determined satisfactorily 
whether they had originally contained sacrificial offerings merely, > 
or whether they held human remains. At the foot of the village 
an extensive grave-yard was discovered, marked off into square 
and circular tombs by the usual upright stones. A few hundred 
yards beyond this, up the stream, was another extensive place of 
interment; so that while the latter was the usual mode of burial, 
it would seem as though cremation had been resorted to by the 
people, while the enemy was attacking the town; for it is evident 
that there had been a great and bloody fight here, which can be 
proved by the quantity of arrow points and numerous other indi 
_ cations. 
1 The Spaniards, as late as the sixteenth century, found some tribes in this portion 
of the West, which cremated their dead. Captain Fernando Alarcon, in an account 
of his expedition in 1540, mentions a people near the Colorado River which lived 1m 
great houses of stone and burned their corpses. . 
