570 MISCELLANEOUS PAPEES RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



centuries a camping? ground and stronghold of the aborigines. Geologi- 

 cally it, as well as most of the bottom, has a basis of loess or drift 

 clay with a superincumbent stratum of sand 5 to 10 feet in thickness. 

 All around the site of the mound the soil to the depth of 20 inches is 

 composed of the debris of old camps, a mixture of ashes, mussel shells^ 

 bones of fishes and wild animals, charcoal, broken pottery, &c. ; and 

 here hundreds of implements of stone, bone, and shell have been ob- 

 tained. The big mound is said, by persons who have often seen it 

 before the hand of vandalism desecrated it, to have been more than 30 

 feet high by 150 feet in diameter at the base. Its summit commanded 

 an uninterrupted view of the distant bluffs on both sides of the river 

 and of the stream itself for 2 or 3 miles above and below. We can easily 

 imagine the strange scene this great cone presented when it swarmed 

 one autumn day with an eager, startled multitude of wild, half naked 

 barbarians gazing with astonishment at the sun-burnt, bearded faces 

 and tattered garments of Marquette and Joliet as they wearily paddled 

 their frail canoe up the quiet river at its base. More than thirty years 

 ago the city authorities of Beardstown commenced the destruction of this 

 splendid monument to utilize the clay of which it was composed for 

 covering the sand of their streets, and in a few years the grand struct- 

 ure was totally demolished. The mound was found to have been made, 

 on the sand, of clay taken from the bed of the river at low water or 

 brought from the blutfs ; and it had been used as a burying ground by 

 people of different eras and races. Just below the surface the shallow 

 graves and well-preserved skeletons of recent Indians, buried with im- 

 plements of stone and iron and ornaments of glass and brass, were 

 shoveled out; and a little deeper the spades uncovered the remains of 

 a few Europeans, deserters, perhaps, from the commands of Chevalier 

 La Salle or Lieutenant Tonti, who had found an asylum and graves 

 among the Indians of this distant wilderness. There was one of them^ 

 however, whose mission in this part of the New World was widely dif- 

 ferent from that of his buried associates : the silver cross still grasped 

 by his skeleton hand, the Venetian beads about his waist that had 

 formed a rosary, and the ghastly skull still encircled by a thin band of 

 polished silver proclaimed that here a self-sacrificing disciple of Loyola 

 had expended life in the hopeless work of converting the heathen. 

 These intrusive burials passed, nothing more was discovered until the 

 original sandy surface of the island was reached, and what was there 

 deposited before the great mass of clay had been jnled over it was cast 

 aside by the laborers without notice. From the street commissioner 

 who had the work in charge I gained the following meager account of 

 all that attracted his attention sufficient to impress his memory. Eanged 

 along the middle of the structure was a parapet or wall, as he supposed, 

 of rough tlag-stones 30 inches high by 3 feet in breadth and 25 feet in 

 length, designed apparently by the ancient inhabitants as a breastwork 

 or rampart for the defense of their town from river approaches. But^ 



