Indian Burials thoughout history.

[Cappy Z.]

Kind of a intellectual inquiry if you will. I have no plans to dig up any mounds etc. My question is since Florida has been occupied by Indians for thousands of years..shouldn't there be many many burial grounds? Only a few make the news.
The other question I have is about depth. A few years ago in Daytona Beach Florida apparently workmen were repairing a water pipe at "twenty feet" deep in the sand..and found an Indian.
Is it possible that many burial grounds have the remains as deep as twenty feet?

Just an interesting subject.

 

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[centfladigger]

most of the burials here in Florida were water burials. In the archaic times they bundeled the dead and staked them to the bottom of the lakes and ponds. The windover site is the most famous one so far. Near Titusville. 8,000 year old burials...... Workers digging an old peat pond to make way for an exit ramp for I-95 disovered bones in the peat and called the cops, cops called the archs and they set up a drainage sytem and found over 100 burial so far, alot more since then, anyways the awesome thing about this site is the preservations of tissue. The peat allowed no oxygen and they found brains in alot of the skulls. They found fabric made from palmetto fibers, 26 strands to the sq.inch. This site is preserved and burials still undiscovered awaiting better technology in the future. Okeechobee had numerous burials exposed in the drought 2 years ago. I know of 3 lakes right now that have them. Our mounds came from the woodland period the safety harbor/weedon island culture/swift creek etc.

http://www.nbbd.com/godo/history/windover/

Most of our mounds have long since been destroyed by development or out of atate Archs and the goodies taken to out of state museums or even overseas museums. We have some of the best wet site archeaology anywhere. The Marco Island sight found by Frank Cushings( I think it was him) in the turn of the century unearthed wooden mask and wooden objects, paddles figurines stools , bowls etc. The masks had paint still on them, but when they were exposed to the air the quickly deteriorated. Check out wet site archeaology by Barbera Purdy.

C.B Moore was the main arch to destroy the state. He had a steam boat called the Gopher and took it up most of the rivers and dug the mess out of alot of mounds, he kept excellent records and his books are a must have for alot of Florida collectors. Copper, gold, mica and other fine materials have all been found in our mounds.Shell death masks or big Busycon shell cups that would have infant remains in them.

Even our shell mounds were quickly destoyed for road fill iin the late 1800`s. The university of Tampa had shell mounds dug up and brought in tp build the foundation of the college on the Hillsborough river. The thinking of the early settlers was that these mounds were natural and couldnt be man made. I check certain shell mound regularly after storms roll in. Some of these mounds were 3 stories high. We even have earthworks here also. Fort Center site in Okeechobee was one, the indians down in Naples dug canals inland from the bay for easier travels to their sites. I could go on and on but hopefully this answered some questions.

oh yeah , as for the depth, it would depend on where it was, you go 10 ft most places and your hitting water. Sand dunes on the east coast are a possibility. Here in the Tampa area we hit hardpan around 5 ft. A few single burials have been found in the past few years discovered during construction and they were only a few feet down.

 

[Tnmountains]

This is a great read and link. What a wealth of information. A must read about the pond.
Centfladigger you out did yourself.

 

[joshuaream]

Centralfladigger's response pretty much covers it all, really great info there.

After many years of excavating, I'll say this: Burials aren't as rare as we think they are. Aside from isolated kill sites, almost any decent site that produces artifacts should have a burial area nearby. (If they lived there, they died there...)

In most areas, preservation conditions are so poor that after a few thousand years there really isn't any bone left, at best a stain. If you know what to look for, you can occasionally see evidence of the burials, but a construction guy on a bulldozer or even a knowledgeable collector might only notice the stone artifacts and miss the subtle changes in soil color/texture.

A practice I've seen many times over was that ancients often reused earlier burial sites (prime realestate is hard to come by.) Combine that with the tens of thousands of burials that were excavated by early archaeologists and WPA era programs, the multitude of sites destroyed by construction, and the sites dug by early collectors, and the easy sites with bones laying on the surface have been cleaned up. Also, given the way floods happen, rivers meander, beaches erode and grow, etc. a paleo/archaic burial near a river or along a highspot on the beach might have been scattered years ago.

Another factor now a days is that there is definately an incentive for both construction sites and even archaeological digs to NOT find remains (archies cover them up and dig the other way, construction guys usually just keep moving.)

Here are a couple of the many people I've found while walking in the desert. As long as they are covered, the preservation is great, but within a week or two of being uncovered the sun dries the bones and they become soft and powder dry and literally blow away.

 

[naturegirl]

This stuff is interesting! Thanks for the pics Joshua, "dust to dust", I've always found it comforting to know our bodies return to the earth. Here in Oklahoma the burial consisted of being covered by a pile of rocks. At least that's what Ive been told. Ocassionally when I'm out tramping around the countryside I find strange piles of rocks that just don't look natural. Could these be burial sites? I've never dug through them, just doesn't seem right. When the Osage came into oil royalties, and began burying their dead in graveyards they purchased some of the most eleborate, largest tombstones around. In our small towns around here you can tell pretty much at a glance which tombstones belong to Indian families. Now I'm wondering just when the ancients that occupied the plains began the rock-burial. I would think just more recently, or there would be a whole lot more of these graves around.

ng

 

[Cappy Z.]

You guys are the greatest.

 

[pickaway]

Good info & cool pics...

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Native NA’s followed the seasons as hunter/gathers and it was not uncommon for them to cremate the lost while traveling rather than bury at temporary camps. At least that’s what I’ve read.

 

[Older The Better]

Old thread but I’ve wondered where have all the people gone too, I can say like stated above the Osage liked to place the dead in a seated position and pile rocks over the top, there was a book that mentioned here in se Kansas nearly every hilltop had a pile of stones… my personal theory is that many of these stones were gathered up for building foundations and rock fences, since at the time Indians weren’t really considered equals nobody thought anything of disturbing the burials.
The town nearby has a cemetery that used to be a burial ground. Supposedly an early settler bought it and used all the stone to build a kiln, he eventually sold the area to the city to be a cemetery and the Indians were invited to gather any artifacts and bone they wished and then the rest were collected and placed in a box and buried in a spot that has been lost over time.
As far as some questions above I think you go back into time and practices changed as far as how they disposed of the dead. Deep burials are almost certainly from changing depositional processes… I’ve seen farm equipment 15’ down in a cutbank…

as far as the Florida area that seems pretty well covered but I’d throw in… I believe it was McCoy or Irving in their book they mentioned while in Louisiana they waited for the Indians to leave then went and dug up several graves to collect specimens just out of a kind of gentlemanly curiosity. I have to image many people did the same all over the country

 

[Tnmountains]

Here we have fresh water shell mounds some very large. It was the trash pits from villages.They buried in these because it was an easy dig and in warm weather they needed to get them in the ground quick.Some of these occupation sites are over twenty feet deep. This does not include the shell mounds or temple mounds.

 

[BennyV]

Kind of funny. I was researching this stuff about the tribes in New York where I live. Most didn’t make mounds. Just buried them in dirt in a coffin. They made a hole by the head in the coffin to let the spirit come and go.

Also, read about an indian skeleton found close by where I live. It was buried with a stone blade in its hand a few other items.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Ah dang! With the new update, it didn’t warn me I was reviving a thread that was dead for 16 years!!

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Kind of funny. I was researching this stuff about the tribes in New York where I live. Most didn’t make mounds. Just buried them in dirt in a coffin. They made a hole by the head in the coffin to let the spirit come and go.

Also, read about an indian skeleton found close by where I live. It was buried with a stone blade in its hand a few other items.

My nearest tribe buried with the feet facing the east (facing a special place). They piled stones to prevent animals from digging. But like I said they would also cremate on a raised platform likely for various reasons.

I’ve ALWAYS wondered since being a child that if these people had been here since the beginning of time, why do we not find more bones or graves marked by stones? That’s A Lot of generations!

I cannot think of a single construction project in my lifetime that was halted in my area due to ancient human remains being encountered.

 

[GirlWithWolf]

I’ve ALWAYS wondered since being a child that if these people had been here since the beginning of time, why do we not find more bones or graves marked by stones? That’s A Lot of generations!

I cannot think of a single construction project in my lifetime that was halted in my area due to ancient human remains being encountered.

The country is a big place, but it is kind of amazing since water sources were necessary for our ancestors, as it was for modern cities. That need should narrow down the playing field and make encounters more common, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Why?

 

[BennyV]

The country is a big place, but it is kind of amazing since water sources were necessary for our ancestors, as it was for modern cities. That need should narrow down the playing field and make encounters more common, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Why?

I think there are a few reasons why large numbers were never found.

1. They were found during development back in the day and instead of getting hit with a stop work order they were tossed out like trash. Sad.

2. They were reinterred in local cemeteries.

3. I hope this is the case. They are still out there, but buried in areas that are off the beaten path in areas are still largely uninhabited. Another possibility is there are remains in nature preserves, parks, and public lands that are off limits to digging/development.

 

[ToddsPoint]

The oldest mound burials in the Midwest were found by Greg Perino at the Godar site in Calhoun Co IL. It was a middle to late archaic cemetery from around 3500 BC if I remember right.

 

[Jatrox]

There are many burials all over North Eastern Kansas. They range from stone mound burial, stone mound cremation, earthen burial and cremation sites. Some are cemeteries, some mounds scattered throughout an area and quite a few individual. I have twice now run across a single burial in a random wind break. Of course all locations are kept "secret". Most of the destruction has been from farming and development and some by nature (i.e. floods, river wander, etc.) and some by luting going back to the early 1800's as said previously. I read in Isaac McCoy's journal that he even "excavated" one and mentioned finding many hilltop stone mounds in his expeditions of this area.

 

[Older The Better]

I also forgot to add European influence in this area some Osage were buried in the traditional way and others opted for traditional Christian burial, had a local historian take me around and he showed me what just looked like an intersection at the edge of town and he said off on one side was an Indian burial ground from those that stayed when the tribe left for Oklahoma, a lot of half breeds, I assume they were moved but I can’t remember if he actually said, just grass going back into a brushy creek area now

 

[TORRERO]

Kind of a intellectual inquiry if you will. I have no plans to dig up any mounds etc. My question is since Florida has been occupied by Indians for thousands of years..shouldn't there be many many burial grounds? Only a few make the news.
The other question I have is about depth. A few years ago in Daytona Beach Florida apparently workmen were repairing a water pipe at "twenty feet" deep in the sand..and found an Indian.
Is it possible that many burial grounds have the remains as deep as twenty feet?

Just an interesting subject.

Isn't it amazing how we wouldn't dare consider digging up one of our cemeteries, but if they belonged to someone else, they are fair game to be dug up and destroyed..

Years ago when I was boy I used to like to collect Arrowheads, my mother taught at the University of Memphis TN, and had a friend with a farm in Arkansas across the Mississippi river... I went to the farm a few times looking for arrowheads, because they told me that when they bought the property there had been an Indian Mound in the middle of the field, they said that the first few times they played the field, it would turn the soil white with the bones from the mound. I don't know how realistic that is but it just says a lot for the disrespect for the people who came before..
We did find a lot of arrowheads in that field, and fish bones and fish vertebra, which they said were used as necklaces..
I don't know what the truth is but its a sad tale nonetheless..

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Isn't it amazing how we wouldn't dare consider digging up one of our cemeteries, but if they belonged to someone else, they are fair game to be dug up and destroyed..

Years ago when I was boy I used to like to collect Arrowheads, my mother taught at the University of Memphis TN, and had a friend with a farm in Arkansas across the Mississippi river... I went to the farm a few times looking for arrowheads, because they told me that when they bought the property there had been an Indian Mound in the middle of the field, they said that the first few times they played the field, it would turn the soil white with the bones from the mound. I don't know how realistic that is but it just says a lot for the disrespect for the people who came before..
We did find a lot of arrowheads in that field, and fish bones and fish vertebra, which they said were used as necklaces..
I don't know what the truth is but its a sad tale nonetheless..

This phenomenon is not limited to native Americans. Basically human remains tend to lose their moral protections after about 250 years. After that, archaeologists have zero reservations about digging you up, taking pictures and stuffing you wherever. ACTUALLY because Native Americans are nearly the only people recognized to have a culture and traditions these days in the US. They have MUCH stronger moral protections than any other ordinary grave. If you think about it, that is really true.