MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 573 



repose is often rudely disturbed by the plow, and tlieir human remains 

 scattered over the fields with broken pottery aud occasionally flint im- 

 plements, stone axes, bone awls, and other relics. In many mounds of 

 this class the tirst step taken in the inhumation of the corpse or corjises 

 apparently was to scoop out from the soil a shallow, dish-like excava- 

 tion in which the body or bodies — generally several together — were de- 

 posited, sitting up with limbs flexed upon the breast; they were then 

 I>robably covered with bark or other perishable material, as no large 

 stones are ever encountered in these graves, and then covered with 

 earth. In some of them the bones of the dead, in extreme stages of de- 

 cay, are in great confusion and were buried without definite arrange- 

 ment or system, somewhat as was observed by Mr. Jeflerson in a mound 

 which he describes in his "Xotes on Virginia," indicating that in those 

 the skeletons of all members of the tribe who had died within a definite 

 period of time had been collected from the tre«- scaffolds, or brought 

 from the tribal bone-house, as was witnessed by Bartram, and laid to- 

 gether in bundles and "covered with a great mount." The chalk-like 

 softness of the bones in this class of mounds tends to confirm the first- 

 thought impression of high antiquity; but this fact alone cannot be re- 

 lied on as satisfactory proof of their age when we consider that the 

 covering of earth, ])erhaps not of great thickness at first, has been 

 washed down and thinned by rains, leaving the animal remains but 

 slightly protected from the decomposing agencies of water and frost. 

 In one instance unquestionable evidence of comparatively recent origin 

 was presented. In cutting down a roadway through one of the Prairie 

 Creek ridges, since known as " Indian Hill," in the southwestern part 

 of the county, a broad, low mound was removed and the skeletons of 

 several individuals exposed. With the mingled mass of bones thrown 

 out were found broken pottery, a few stone and bone implements, to- 

 gether with a quantity of glass beads and brass rings of European man- 

 ufacture. Eesting in what remained of the hand of one of the female 

 skeletons was a beautiful pipe of polished serpentine in the perfect 

 form of a squatting frog, of life size, but instead of the usual flat, carved 

 base of the so-called " mound pipes," it had an aperture drilled to con- 

 nect with the bowl for the insertion of a cane or wooden stem. Some 

 time afterward, at the foot of this ridge, the plow turned up a single 

 skeleton from a mound so small as to have escaped previous notice; 

 and so far advanced in decay were the bones that it was with difficulty 

 I succeeded in partially restoring, by the aid of glue and plaster, the 

 skull and facial bones. The only relics found with this individual, 

 which I judged to have been a female, were a stone frog, probably un- 

 finished, larger than the natural maximum size, without perforations 

 of any kind, and a pipe, representing the head of a fox, both rudely 

 cut out of soft, coarse, yellow sandstone. 



In all the interments I have heretofore mentioned the bodies of the 

 dead, so far as I could ascertain, had been primarily placed upon the 



