ETHNOLOGY. 



IXDIAX REMAINS NEAR RED RIVER SETTLEMENT, HIDSON'S BAY TERRITORY. 



Bvr Donald Gunn. 



Red Rivek, A^Jril 1, 1867. 



I have been collecting a few Indian relics of former ages, sucli as stone axes, 

 mallets, and skulls. The axes are made of a fine-grained l)lue-stone, the mal- 

 lets of gneiss ; the skulls were taken from what are apparently sepulchral 

 mounds. Last October a neighbor living on the east side of the river, recpiiring 

 an additional cellar to preserve his root-crop from the winter frosts, commenced 

 digging into the top of a knoll in the woods, close to his field, taking out eight 

 feet square. He did not dig precisely into the centre of the knoll, but some- 

 what to one side ; on digging down he was rather surprised at the depth of the 

 surface-soil, or black vegetable mould, being so much greater here than he had 

 ever found it anywhere else ; he, however, continued digging until he got from 

 four to five feet deep. Here he began to cut through decayed wood, apparently 

 oak, which had been laid in a horizontal position. On getting a foot or so below 

 this, in paring down the side of the pit, he uncovered a human skull, having its 

 lower jaw attached, and lower down the vertebrae, showing that the dead had 

 been placed in a sitting posture. In digging still farther, he found other liumau 

 remains, and at a depth of eight feet from the top of the tumulus and on a level 

 with the surface of the surrounding country he struck on a floor of very smooth 

 and hard white mud, which appeared to have been hardened by the action of 

 fire, since bits of coal were found on it. On this clay fiooring the following 

 articles were found, viz: four or five skulls lying on the face; a number of 

 small bones, those of lingers and toes ; an earthen kettle, with a shell in it, 

 such as live at present in this river ; bones of the beaver ; two pipes of fine 

 blue-stone, without a perforation ; three ornaments made of shell or bone — two 

 of them, I tliink, of the shells probably of the small turtles found here in 

 the river ; the otlier must be of bone and is about five inches in length ; one 

 perforated shell, used for ornament ; a few beads, made of shell. 



There is another tumulus 400 or 500 yards directly south of this. It is 

 larger than the one that has been opened, and I think that if opened something 

 interesting would be found in it. These mounds have been known for many 

 years past, but never supposed to have been works of arf, or raised by human 

 labor ; but now I begin to entertain the opinion that manj" such sepulchral 

 mounds are to be found in this vicinity. 



The Indians dwelling in this section of the country have no traditional 

 knowledge relating to these mounds ; when any questions are put to them as to 

 the time when erected, and the use for which they were raised, they answer 

 that they were mud dwellings, such as are occupied at present by the Mandans 

 on the upper Missouri ; and that they had been built very long ago ; who the 

 builders were they know not. 



This ignorance of former times can, to some extent, be pretty satisfactorily 

 accounted for from the well-known fact that this region has often had a change 

 of inhal)itants since the advent of the whites. The Cms were in possession 

 when the first traders found their way to Lake Ouinipeg, as they then called it. 

 The Assinaboines succeeded the Cms, on the latter tribes breaking otT or sep- 



