was spread on which was built a fire, 
forming an earthen shield over the corpse 
before additional earth was added. Cav- 
erns, fissures in rocks, rock shelters, etc. , 
were frequently used as depositories for 
the dead. According to Yarrow, a cave 
near the House mts., Utah, in which the 
Gosiute Indians were in the habit of de- 
positing their dead, was quite filled with 
human remains in 1872. 
Embalmment and mummification were 
practised to a limited extent; the former 
chiefly in Virginia, the Carolinas, and 
MUMMY FROM AN ALASKAN CAVE. (dall) 
Florida, and the latter in Alaska. Of the 
modes of disposing of the dead, included 
by Yarrow under “aerial sepulture,” the 
following are examples: Burial in lodges, 
observed among the 
Sioux; these appear to 
have been exceptional 
and were merely an 
abandonment of the 
dead during an epi- 
demic; a few cases of 
burial in lodges, how- 
ever, have been ob- 
served in Alabama. 
Burial beneath the 
floor of the house and then at once 
burning the house were practised to some 
extent in e. Arkansas. Scaffold and 
tree burial was practised in Wiscon- 
sin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, 
Urn Burial Alabama Mound; 
1-22. (Moore) 
DAKOTA SCAFFOLD BURIAL. (yarrow) 
etc., by the Chippewa, Sioux, Siksika, 
Mandan, Grosventres, Arapaho, and other 
Indians. The burial mounds of Wiscon- 
sin indicate this mode of disposing of the 
dead in former times, as the skeletons 
were buried after the removal of the 
flesh, and the bones frequently indicate 
long exposure to the air. The Eskimo of 
the w. coast of Alaska sometimes place 
the dead on a platform 2 or 3 ft abo-\ 
ground and built over it a double roofin 
or tent, of driftwood. It was also tl 
custom among the Indians of the La 1 
DAKOTA TREE BURIAL. (yarrow) 
region to have at certain periods wha 
may be termed -Communal burials, i 
which the bodies or skeletons of a db 
trict were removed from their temporal 
DAKOTA SCAFFOLD BURIAL. (yarrow) 
burial places and deposited with mucl 
ceremony in a single large pit (see Bre- 
beuf in Jes. Bel. for 1636, 128-139, 1858). 
On the N. W. coast, n. of Columbia r., the 
dead wer e usually placed in little cabin- 
