MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY, oTt 



on removinji: the stones, it was found that this work of defense was not 

 a solid wall, but a series of crypts or stone graves, constructed by plant- 

 ing broad, tlat stones perpendicularly in the sand and covering tliem 

 with others of the same kind laid across them. These rude tombs were- 

 entirely empty. Not a bone or tooth remained ; so great was the lapse of 

 time since the bodies of the honored dead had been laid in these secure 

 vaults that not a vestige of them survived but blotches of dark dust 

 upon the yellow sand. On either side of the primitive coffins, but not 

 contiguous to them, were traces of fire, and with ashes and charcoal 

 were noticed calcined bones, small cubes of galena, and broken ilints 

 and pottery. The destruction of the great mound yielded many rare 

 and fine implements and ornaments of stone and shell, which no one- 

 thought to preserve ; and no one thought to observe whether they had 

 been interred with the dead at the base of the tumulus or with those 

 buried upon its surface. Among the many relics unearthed, one par- 

 ticularly fine axe of polished stone is remembered, having a groove cut 

 around the middle and a cutting edge on each end ; also three pestle- 

 shaped objects of beautifully polished porphyry 20 inches long, 2i or 3 

 inches in diameter, rounded at one end and pointed at the other. 



Seven miles east of Beardstown, up the Sangamon, and quite near it, 

 at Mound Lake, is a conspicuous landmark known as "the Mound;" a 

 ridge-like elevation 40 feet high by GO yards in width, and 400 feet in 

 length. This mound has never been explored, and may be of artificial 

 origin; but I am strongly inclined to regard it a natural formation (like 

 the great Cahokia mound and other similar elevations in the American 

 Bottom), merely an outlier of the loess or bluff formation left there in the 

 primal erosion of the river valley. It is situated in the edge of the tim- 

 ber, on the bank of a small lake, 3 miles from the bluffs, and in the midst 

 of the finest fishing and hunting district, even in this day, to be found 

 in Illinois. Whether or not the Indians raised this mound is a question 

 to be determined by future investigation, but there is no doubt of their 

 having used it as a place of resort and camping ground for a great 

 length of time. Although it has been in cultivation for many years,, 

 traces of camp-fires are yet seen all over it, and its surface and the ad- 

 joining fields are yet littered with potsherds, flint chips, and decayed 

 bones and teeth of wiUl animals. One of the very few entire pieces of 

 pottery ever recovered in this county was plowed up with some human 

 bones on this mound in the early history of its cultivation. It was a 

 globular earthen vessel, 10 or 12 inches in diameter, marked externally 

 as usual with the impression of the fabric in which it was moulded or 

 sustained while drying. A similar vessel, but smaller, was plowed up 

 unbroken in a field a few miles east of this place a few years later. At 

 a point about midway the lake-side base of the mound I discovered, some 

 years ago, the remains of a kiln in which the savages had burned their 

 pottery. It was an excavation in its side, almost circular and 4 feet 

 in diameter, an old-fashioned lime-kiln in miniature, with walls burned 



