7»96 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



The shell mounds were formed by piling up the beach sand and then 

 putting the shells on top as they accumulated. They were evidently 

 the accumulations of ages, and were shaped as seen (conical mounds, 

 ridges, and plateaus) to afford protection to the inhabitants during the 

 high waters of hurricanes. In 1870 the water at Punta Eassa stood 8 

 feet deep over the beach on which the cable station is built. The beach 

 is fully 4 feet above mean tide, so that the water rose 12 feet in less 

 than twenty-four hours. The mounds also make splendid gardens, and, 

 by giving sweep to the wind, afford the best of protection against mos- 

 quitoes and flies. The fact that the mounds and ridges do not form an 

 inclosure shows that they were not intended as fortifications; they 

 simply afforded places of safety from the flood and prevented the wash- 

 ing away of gardens and crops by it. 



Many of the mounds have large trees growing on them, and the shells 

 and bones in the center have been ground to dust, but others are made 

 of shells, always broken, as hard as if gathered yesterday. There is an 

 old trader among the Florida Indians, settled now at Key West, who 

 told me that the Indians say that their ancestors built the mounds along 

 the coast. He said, moreover, that the Florida Indians exactly resem- 

 ble physically those of Cuba, but neither look at all like those of Mexico. 

 A Charlotte Harbor settler told me that the present Florida Indians 

 were, until the last few years, in the habit of coming down to the coast 

 every fall and camping on the mounds to fish and to escape the sickly 

 season on the mainland. He further said that these Indians are not 

 Seminoles, but remnants of a tribe which occuj)ied the country before 

 the Seminoles moved down from farther north and conquered them. 

 They are sun worshii)ers. 



I went up the Caloosahatchie Eiver 25 miles, and the Manatee 12, 

 and neither saw nor heard of any fresh-water shell-mounds. There are 

 shell heaps at Manatee and on the east coast at Mosquito Inlet, but they 

 are oblong mounds with flat tops and are solitary. In a small one in 

 Manatee village I was told that human bones were found, and wit4i them 

 some stone implements. 



ANTIQUITIES IN WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND. 

 By John P. Smith, of Sharpshurg^ Md. 



In the vicinity of Sharpsburg there were mounds and earthworks, some 

 of which have been destroyed, and others have been excavated and found 

 to contain numerous archaeological specimens. Tradition informs us 

 that a most bloody affair occurred on the Antietam Creek, near its 

 mouth, which is distant 3 miles south of Sharpsburg, more than a cen- 

 tury ago, between those warlike tribes of savages, the Catawbas and 

 Delawares. These tribes, it is said, were engaged in strife when this 



