296 Some Facts and Considerations about Fort Ancient. 



tion are circular ridges, thirty or forty feet in diameter, formed by exca- 

 vating the earth in a circle to the depth of a foot and heaping it around 

 the circumference. Catlin, it will be remembered, described the Mandan 

 villages of the upper Missouri as built in this manner ; the elevation 

 thus formed serving as the foundation of their lodges — a mode of build- 

 ing which he seemed to consider peculiar to that tribe, who, he says, 

 migrated from the Ohio valley in ancient times, " bringing with them 

 some of the customs of the civilized people who erected the ancient for- 

 tifications." The comparatively fresh and recent appearance of these 

 remains forms a perceptible contrast to the ancient appearance of the 

 genei-al fortification, which, in connection with other circumstances to 

 be mentioned, shows satisfactorily that this occupation was subsequent 

 to the construction of the work itself. 



These lodge marks are thirty or forty in number, disposed in nearly 

 regular order. On the north they extend toward, and in one or two in- 

 stances overlap, two nearly rectangular spaces, containing perhaps each 

 an acre, readily distinguishable after a rain, by the exceedingly black 

 and rich appearance of the soil as contrasted with the surrounding sur- 

 face. An examination into the cause of the superabundance of veg- 

 etable mold in these places revealed a vast quantity of human and 

 animal bones, fragments 'of pottery, arrow heads, and other flint im- 

 plements, stone implements, and a few of bone, all confusedly broken 

 and turned up by the plow and intermingled with incredible numbers of 

 enormous flat limestones. 



Excavation, necessarily limited, as the ground was under present 

 cultivation, disclosed only limestones accompanied by similar frag- 

 ments. The sj)ecimens of pottery ware found here in a few hours' 

 search were none larger than the hand, yet represented no less than 

 sixty-five different vessels, composed of dark clay, well burned and 

 tempered with pulverized muscle shells, siliceous and micaceous sand. 

 They were evidently urn-shaped vessels, deposited with the dead in 

 this spot, and, from the uniform blackened appearance of their interior, 

 suggested the presence of fire within, as a means of hardening the clay. 

 Some of these fragments contain exterior designs of geometric figures, 

 skillfully wrought, graven in the plastic clay by a blunt point or 

 pressed by an annular instrument, like a reed or cane. The body of 

 the vessels presented a similar appearance to those described as made 

 within wicker moulds and retaining the imprint of the matrix — a style 

 df ornamentation in these vessels produced by numerous parallel lines 

 crossing each other obliquely, in sets, graven by a toothed instru- 

 ment, like at;omb. 



These burials, from the fact that the Indian village had been located 



