Dog
burial found in O.C.
Published: June 10, 2010
Updated: Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.
“Even more intriguing are
the positioning of the dog and the placement of a "cairn" — a rock
marker, in this case a large acorn grinding-bowl or metate — on top of it.”
Note: I was trying to recreate a search that rendered some
illustrations of Orange County CA cairn burials, sometimes topped with an
inverted mortar stone – of the bowl or basket type and not the metate type
pictured above (along the road mentioned in my previous post of yesterday). I just found the above to be the “man bites dog” sort of alternative
to the “Dogs on Mounds” that have appeared on this blog.
And here’s some widely scattered cairn burials that somehow
showed up when I used “orange county burial cairn mortar pdf” in the search
field:
“Indian
Habitations in Sussex County”
Spier (1915)
“In
addition,cairn burials—a mode of burial where large masses of rock were piled
(page 22) ....”
It’s a brief mention, followed by some thoughts on Indian Trails. And
preceded by thoughts on 25 Rockshelters, plus a bit about Indian land clearing
of a horticultural field.
CAIRNS ON LOST
HILL, AT MOUTH OF GOURD CREEK (MO)
“On the
top of this particular Lost Hill are six cairns, five of them near the northern
end, the sixth just where the ridge breaks off to the south. The margins are
uncertain owing to the upper stones being scattered by hunters as well as by
credulous individuals who are firmly fixed in the belief that all such
"rock piles" contain gold hidden by Indians.
So
far as can now be determined the five at the northern end were 16 to 18 feet
across as left by the builders, the southernmost one being somewhat smaller.
All are in uncleared land, and crevices between the stones are filled with a
tangled mass of roots from the trees and bushes growing on and around them.”
From the beginning: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18931/18931-h/18931-h.htm
CAIRN-BURIAL.
“The next mode of
interment to be considered is that of cairn or rock burial, which has prevailed
and is still common to a considerable extent among the tribes living in the
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas.
In the summer of 1872
the writer visited one of these rock cemeteries in Middle Utah, which had been
used for a period not exceeding fifteen or twenty years. It was situated at the
bottom of a rock slide, upon the side of an almost inaccessible mountain, in a
position so carefully chosen for concealment that it would have been almost
impossible to find it without a guide. Several of the graves were opened, and
found to have been constructed in the following manner: A number of
bowlders had been removed from the bed of the slide until a sufficient cavity
had been obtained; this was lined with skins, the corpse placed therein, with
weapons, ornaments, &c., and covered over with saplings of the mountain
aspen; on the top of these the removed bowlders were piled, forming a huge cairn,
which appeared large enough to have marked the last resting place of an
elephant. In the immediate vicinity of the graves were scattered the osseous
remains of a number of horses which had been sacrificed, no doubt, during the
funeral ceremonies. In one of the graves, said to contain the body of a chief,
in addition to a number of articles useful and ornamental, were found parts of
the skeleton of a boy, and tradition states that a captive boy was buried alive
at this place.”
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