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 identifies the burial of the living with the dead by giving
an account of the burial of Black Bird, the great chief of the Omahas
more than 60 years ago. He caught the smallpox at Washington, and
dying on his way home, he gave instructions to his braves around him
how he was to be buried. "His body was clothed with the gayest Indian
robes, decorated with scalps and war eagle plumes, and he was carried
to one of the loftiest bluffs on the Missouri. He was placed upon his
favorite war horse, a beautiful white steed. His bow was placed in his
hand. His shield, quiver, pipe, medicine-bag and tobacco-pouch hung by
his side, for his comfort on his journey to the happy hunting grounds
of the great Manitou. After a significant ceremonial, the Indians
placed turf and sod about the legs of the horse; gradually the pile
rose, until living horse and dead rider were buried together in this
memorial mound, which may be seen from the banks of the Missouri."

But to come back to the mound, I now describe a sandstone disk, 1-1/2
inch in diameter and 3/4 inch thick, taken up from near the skeleton
in the lower part of Grave Creek mound. According to Schoolcraft's
analysis, communicated to the American Ethnological Society, "Of the
22 alphabetic characters, 4 correspond with the ancient Greek, 4 with
the Etruscan, 5 with the old Northern runes, 6 with the ancient
Gaelic, 7 with the old Erse, 10 with the Phoenician, 14 with the old
British," and he also adds that equivalents may be found in the old
Hebrew. It is, as some writers have described it, an exceedingly
accommodating inscription. The following readings have been given:--

By M. Levy Bing: "What thou sayest, thou dost impose it, thou shinest
in thy impetuous clan, and rapid chamois." By M. Maurice Schwab
(1857): "The chie