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| "Indian charnel House" by John White, ca. 1586. charnel houses are special buildings where the bodies of the deceased are stored while their flesh decays. The woven boxes at the rear may have contained defleshed bones or offerings (or both). The seated figure on the right is said to be a wooden idol, probably representing an ancestral figure. Although this famous watercolor drawing depicts a charnel house of the Algonkian Indians in Virginia, similar mortuary buildings were used by many groups in the Eastern Woodlands, including those who lived in the Caddo Homeland in the Early to Middle Woodland period. Original at the British Museum. |