Among the general features in which resemblances are noted are the following: 

The mound-builders were accustomed to dispose of their dead in many different ways; their modes of sepulture were also quite varied.  The same statements will apply with equal force to the Indians.

“The commonest mode of burial among North American Indians,” we are informed by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, [Footnote:  First Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1879-’80 (1881), p. 93.] “has been that of interment in the ground, and this has taken place in a number of ways.”  The different ways he mentions are, in pits, graves, or holes in the ground; in stone graves or cists; in mounds; beneath or in cabins, wigwams, houses or lodges, and in caves.

The most common method of burial among the mound-builders was by inhumation also, and all the different ways mentioned by Dr. Yarrow as practiced by the Indians were in vogue among the former.  It was supposed for a long time that their chief and almost only place of depositing their dead was in the burial mounds, but more thorough explorations have revealed the fact that near most mound villages are cemeteries, often of considerable extent.

The chief value of this fact in this connection is that it forms one item of evidence against the theory held by some antiquarians that the mound-builders were Mexicans, as the usual mode of disposing of the dead by the latter was cremation. [Footnote:  Clavigero, Hist.  Mex., Cullen’s transl., I, 325; Torquemada, Monarq.  Ind., I, p.60, etc.] According to Brasseur de Bourbourg the Toltecs also practiced cremation. [Footnote:  H.H.  Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 2, 1882, p. 609.]

Removal of the flesh before burial.—­This practice appears to have been followed quite generally by both Indians and mound-builders.

That it was followed to a considerable extent by the mound builders of various sections is shown by the following evidence: 

The confused masses of human bones frequently found in mounds show by their relation to each other that they must have been gathered together after the flesh had been removed, as this condition could not possibly have been assumed after burial in their natural state.  Instances of this kind are so numerous and well known that it is scarcely necessary to present any evidence in support of the statement.  The well-known instance referred to by Jefferson in his “Notes on Virginia” [Footnote:  Fourth Am. ed., 1801, p. 143; p. 146, in 8th ed.] is one in point.  “The appearance,” he tells us, “certainly indicates that it [the barrow] has derived both origin and growth from the customary collections of bones and deposition of them together.”

Notices of similar deposits have been observed as follows:  In Wisconsin, by Mr. Armstrong; [Footnote:  Smithsonian Rept., 1879, p. 337] in Florida, by James Bell [Footnote:  Smithsonian Rept., 1881, p. 636.] and Mr. Walker; [Footnote:  Smithsonian Rept., 1879, p. 398] in Cass County, Ill., by Mr. Snyder; [Footnote:  Smithsonian Rept., 1881, p. 573.] in Georgia, by C. C. Jones. [Footnote:  Antiq.  So.  Inds., p. 193.] Similar deposits have also been found by the assistants of the Bureau of Ethnology in Wisconsin, Illinois, northern Missouri, North Carolina, New York, and Arkansas.