902 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



and the chance of lost or cast away armor falling into the hands of the 

 Indians is enough, in my opinion, to explain the presence of some few 

 pieces of armor in their graves without going back to the early times of 

 the Northmen's explorations. The "skeleton in armor," discovered at 

 Fall River, is minutely described in an article written by Mr. John 

 Stark, and published in the third volume of the American Magazine, at 

 Boston, in the year 1837. This account may also be found on page 124 

 of Barber's Historical Collections, with a drawing of the skeleton and 

 armor in the position in which it was discovered. " The body was in a 

 sitting posture and enveloped in a covering'of coarse bark of a dark 

 color. Within this envelope were found the remains of another of 

 coarse cloth, made of fine bark and about the texture of a manila coffee 

 bag. .On the breast was a plate of brass 13 inches long, 6 broad at the 

 upper end, and 5 at the lower. It was oval in form, the edges made 

 irregular, apparently by corrosion. Below the breast plate and en- 

 tirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each 

 four and a half inches in length, and three-sixteenths of an inch in 

 diameter, arranged longitudinally and close together; the length of a 

 tube being the width of the belt. The tubes are of thin brass, cast upon 

 hollow reeds, and were fastened together by pieces of sinew. This belt 

 was so placed as to protect the lower parts of the body below the 

 breast-plate. The arrows are of brass, thin, flat, and triangular in 

 shape, with a round hole cut through near the base. The shaft was 

 fastened to the head by inserting the latter in an opening at the end of 

 the wood, and then tying it with a sinew through the round hole — a 

 mode of constructing the weapon never practiced by the Indians, not 

 even with their arrows of thin shell. Parts of the shaft still remain on 

 some of them. When first discovered the arrows were in a quiver of 

 bark, which fell to pieces when exposed to the air." 



The skull and a few other bones of the skeleton were much decayed, 

 but the upper viscera were entire, and the flesh and skin on the hands, 

 arms, one knee, and a part of the back were in a good state of preserva- 

 tion, though the skin looked black as if it had been tanned. In connec- 

 tion with the discovery of this skeleton in armor, this writer mentions 

 the fact that the famous Dighton Rock, bearing an inscription "of which 

 no sufficient explanation has yet been given," lies on the edge of a river 

 but a short distance away, and that near this rock brazen vessels have 

 been found. All these signs seem to him to indicate that some mari- 

 ners — the unwilling and unfortunate discoverers of a new world — lived 

 some time after they landed, and, having written their names, perhaps 

 their epitaphs, upon the rock at Dighton, died and were buried by the 

 natives. 



In the summer of 1882 the writer learned that some few years before, 

 the skeleton of an Indian had been discovered in Oentreville by some 

 workmen while making the cellar of Captain Crawford's house. Buried 

 with this skeleton was found a breast-plate of brass. Last summer it 



