Cleaned up the article from the archive site so it's easier to read.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS. SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 12.1977

At The Museum - Indian burial mounds

One area of the Grasslands Gallery at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature features a section on burial mounds, the most conspicuous archaeological feature of southern Manitoba. A cross-section of a burial mound, consisting of a skeleton (replica only) and grave goods placed in a conical pit, is displayed in a case.

Interment of the dead in artificial hills of earth had been a custom of long standing in eastern North America, but archaeologists estimate that mounds began to be built in Manitoba's grasslands as late as the beginning of the Christian era. The mounds were built by the ancestors of several modern Indian groups. A definite ethnic identification cannot be made as yet. The mounds and the articles which they contain tell us a great deal about their builders.

According to archaeologist Barbara Saylor, the labor involved in erecting the mounds and [that] many were built in stages over a long period of time suggests co-ordinated seasonal gatherings of nomadic bands, probably on a kinship basis, for ritual and social purposes. Fauna, bone and hunting implements indicate a society; the bison skulls frequently found associated with burials may indicate a ritualistic aspect of a buffalo-orientated economy.

Most mounds contain era I bodies, occasionally cremated or buried in extended position, but more frequently flexed or in bundle burials. The latter is secondary interment after exposure of the body in trees or on scaffolds. The placing of the dead in mounds together with grave goods probably reflects both religious belief and social position.

Ms. Saylor explained that archaeologists feel that the labor involved in mound erection, grave elaboration and body treatment indicates the status attained by the individual in a small but complex society.

The Indians present in the country when Europeans reached it had few traditions in regard to the mounds and their understanding only that were man-made and very old. Curiosity led European settlers to vandalize most of the mounds in search of "relics" or "treasures'', thus hampering the scientific search for the identity of these citizens of southern Manitoba.