HOW THE LAMANITES BURIED THEIR DEAD - CONICAL MOUNDS

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The period when this second burial took place occurred at different intervals among the different tribes, but was universally denominated the " Festival of the Dead." Bartram. speaking of the burial customs of the Floridian Indians, says: " After the bone-house is full, a general solemn funeral takes place. The nearest kindred and friends of the deceased, on a day appointed, repair to the bone-house, take up the respective cofl&ns, and, following one another in the order of seniority, the nearest relations and connections attending their respective corpses, and the multitude succeeding them, singing and lamenting alternately, slowly proceed to the place of general interment, when they place the coffins in order, forming a pyramid. Lastly, they cover all over with earth, which raises a conical hill or mount. They then return to town in order of solemn procession, concluding the day with a festival, which is called the ' Feast of the Dead.' "* The author here quoted * Travels, p. 514. adds, in a note, that it was tlie opinion of some ingenious men with whom he had conversed, " that all those artificial pyramidal hills, usually called ' Indian Mounts,' were raised on such occasions, and are generally sepulchres ;" from which opinion he takes occasion to dissent. There is no doubt a wide difference between the mounds thus formed and the great bulk of those connected with the vast ancient inclosures of the Western States. The large cemeteries which have been discovered in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio, seem to have resulted from a similar practice. In these the skeletons were generally packed in rude coffins composed of flat stones, placed in ranges of great extent. The circumstance that many of these coffins were not more than two or three feet in length, gave rise to the notion of the former existence here of a pigmy race. The discovery of iron and some articles of European origin in one of these cemeteries, in the vicinity of Augusta, Kentucky, shows that this mode of burial existed at a late period among the Indians in that direction. The " bone pits" which occur in some parts of Western New York, Canada, Michigan, etc., have unquestionably a corresponding origin. Several of these have been described in a previous chapter. They are of varioiTS sizes, but usually contain a large number of skeletons. In a few instances the bones appear to have been arranged with some degree of regularity.