388 ANTHROPOLOGY. 



bayou, which, however, seems to have gradually encroached on the bluff 

 about 150 yards. The distance from No. 1 to No. 2 is 150 yards ; from No. 

 2 to No. 3, 100 yards. The land has been in cultivation for thirty-five 

 years, and the mounds are much broken down in height and spread 

 out at the base from washing down. 



In No. 2 and No. 3 nothing except some rough arrow-heads have been 

 found, and a polished broken quartz ax or tomahawk. It must have been 

 a place of resort for fishing, &c, as there are remains of the river mussels 

 found in the ground around the mounds, and in the mounds themselves. 



These mounds have never been dug into, and I find no burnt clay 

 about them to show that fire was used during their construction. The 

 cypress brake east of the mounds is the head of a considerable chain of 

 brakes and lagoons extending about 12 or 15 miles in a curve south and 

 southeast, and on its banks are numerous camping places in which are 

 found arrow-heads, broken pottery, shells (fresh-water) not now found 

 in the brakes. This would show that either the brakes were once run- 

 ning water, or that the shells were brought from the bayou. This coun- 

 try is peculiar in its formation. From the Mississippi, extending west, 

 is a vast level expanse of rich land, covered with luxuriant vegetation, 

 cut up by sloughs, bayous, and brakes, with perhaps not 20 feet elevation 

 above the Mississippi until you reach what are called the bluffs. These 

 elevations were once the banks of the immense lake which formed the 

 backwater from the Mississippi River. On both banks of the bayou, 

 on the hills as well as on the low lands, are evidences of a once numer- 

 ous population, extending back to the hills. Beside all the little rivulets 

 are remains of camps and places where pottery was burnt and arrow- 

 heads chipped. 



These mounds appear, however, to have been the center of civiliza* 

 tion, as the villages seem to be more scattered as you leave them. 



I have prepared a plot of sections in my immediate neighborhood, 

 where are camps, &c, marked down. These mounds are the only places 

 in which there have been found bones (G. H. Johnson's place), and from 

 the paucity of them, I think that either the common people buried their 

 dead promiscuously or burnt them on piles of wood. Only one skull 

 has thus far been found in these mounds. 



The mounds at Oak Bidge, in the southern part of this parish, were de- 

 scribed by a former representative of this district, and sent to your in- 

 stitution just after the war. 



They stand in the Mississippi bottom-lands, about 20 miles from the 

 bluff, 2i miles from Lake Le Fouche, and must have been sacrificial 

 mounds, as evidences of piles of dry canes having been burned on damp 

 clay are found in them. They seem to have been built in layers, covered 

 with clay, and the canes (such as we now use for fishing-poles) were burnt 

 on them, the impressions of the joints of the canes remaining in the 

 burnt red clay. Bones and human remains found in them show great 

 age. Quantities of celts, arrow-heads, chisels, wedges, &c, have been 

 found in the fields and plantations for miles around. 



