Mound-Builders

lt there was a single skeleton very much decayed. Within these vaults and beside the illustrous dead, were found more than 3,000 shell-beads, ornaments of mica, copper bracelets, and other stone carvings. Around the lower vault were found ten much decayed skeletons, all in a sitting posture.

The skeletons in the vaults, doubtless, were the remains of royalty, or some distinguished chiefs, whose memory these devoted people desired to perpetuate, while the ten skeletons, which surrounded the vault, were perhaps some of their loyal subjects who were sacrificed according to the custom of some of the heathen nations both ancient and modern. Foster, desiring to draw a comparison or rather identify this mode of burial with those of the Greeks and other nations, directs our attention to Herodotus, Book IV, Chaps. 71 and 190. And for identifying the ceremonial with the funeral of Achilles, our attention is called to the Odyssey, Book XXIV, with the burial of Hector in the Iliad, Book XXIV.

Dr. Wilson ide