y the
filial or parental affection of the living. After the lapse of a
number of years, or in a season of public insecurity, or on the eve
of abandoning a settlement, it was customary to collect these
skeletons from the whole community around and consign them to a
common resting-place.

To this custom, which is not confined to the Iroquois, is doubtless
to be ascribed the burrows and bone-mounds which have been found in
such numbers in various parts of the country. On opening these
mounds the skeletons are usually found arranged in horizontal
layers, a conical pyramid, those in each layer radiating from a
common center. In other cases they are found placed promiscuously.

Dr. D. G. Brinton[78] likewise gives an account of the interment of
collected bones:

East of the Mississippi nearly every nation was accustomed at stated
periods--usually once in eight or ten years--to collect and clean
the osseous remains of those of its number who had died in the
intervening time, and inter them in one common sepulcher, lined with
choice furs, and marked with a mound of wood, stone, or earth. Such
is the origin of those immense tumuli filed with the mortal remains
of nations and generations, which the antiquary, with irreverent
curiosity, so frequently chances upon in all portions of our
territory. Throughout Central America the same usage obtained in
various localities, as early writers and existing monuments
abundantly testify. Instead of interring the bones, were they those
of some distinguished chieftain, they were deposited in the temples
or the council-houses, usually in small chests of canes or splints.
Such were the charnel-houses which the historians of De Soto's
expedition so often mention, and these are the "arks" Adair and
other authors who have sought to trace the decent of the Indians
from the Jews have likened to that which the ancient Israelites bore
with them in their migration.

A widow among the Tahkalis was obliged to carry the bones of her
deceased husband wherever she went for four years, preserving them
in such a casket, handsomely decorated with feathers (Rich. Arc.
Exp., p. 200). The Caribs of the mainland adopted the custom for
all, without exception. About a year after death the bones were
cleaned, bleached, painted, wrapped in odorous balsams, placed in a
wicker basket, and kept suspended from the door of their dwelling
(Gumil