Note 7-† — SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

See Proceedings of the Acad. of Nat. Sciences of Phila., vol. ii, p. 274. If I mistake not, I was the first to bring forward this mode of interment practiced by our aboriginal nations, as a strong evidence of the unity of the American race. “Thus it is that notwithstanding the diversity of language, customs and intellectual character, we trace this usage throughout both Americas, affording, as we have already stated, collateral evidence of the affiliation of all the American tribes.”—Crania Americana, p. 246, and pl. 69. Mr. Bradford in his valuable work, American Antiquities, has added some examples of the same kind; and the Chevalier D’Eichthal has also adduced this custom, in connexion with some traces of it in Polynesia, to prove an exotic origin for a part at least of the American race. See Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique de Paris, Tome II, p. 236. Whence arose this conventional position of the body in death? This question has been often asked and variously answered. It is obviously an imitation of the attitude which the living Indian habitually assumes when sitting at perfect ease, and which has been naturally transferred to his lifeless remains as a fit emblem of repose.