ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MISSOURI 13 



on the south bank of the river (West, 1877b, pp. 15-22 ; Lykins, 1878, 

 pp. 251-253). West opened five mounds in Platte County about 20 

 yards from the Clay County line on a ridge overlooking Line Creek to 

 the west and the Missouri to the south. A detailed consideration of 

 these mounds will be deferred for the present, but it may be noted that 

 two kinds were recognized, viz, those made entirely of earth and others 

 containing a structure of stone over which soil had been heaped. There 

 were no artifacts but "within a distance varying from one-half mile 

 to a mile from them, large quantities of flint arrows and spear heads, 

 stone axes, knives, flint cores and chippings, flat stones used for grind- 

 ing corn, fragments of pottery, etc. are found." West was inclined to 

 view the stone enclosures within the mounds as habitations ; and on the 

 basis of geological deductions no longer tenable, he attributed them to 

 a people residing on the shores of a lake that had dried up 8,000 years 

 ago. 



During the succeeding summer. Prof. G. C. Broadhead, one time 

 State geologist of Missouri, with a party comprising members of the 

 Kansas City Academy of Science and of the Kansas Academy of 

 Science, opened several additional tumuli in the same group (Broad- 

 head, 1880, pp. 352-354). Four contained stone enclosures; a fifth, 

 the only one to yield artifacts, was composed wholly of earth. 



Peabody Museum of Harvard University entered the local field 

 briefly in 1879, when Edwin Curtiss explored one earth mound and 

 three stone chambers "in the eastern part of Clay County" (Putnam, 

 1880, pp. 717-718.) A small collection of artifacts, described else- 

 where in the present report, was sent to the Peabody Museum; they 

 are among the very few specimens extant from this early period of 

 mound exploration in the Kansas City district. Unfortunately, some 

 uncertainty exists as to the exact location of Curtiss's excavations, but 

 there is reason to suspect that he may have worked near Line Creek 

 rather than in eastern Clay County. 



Presumably spurred by the findings north of Kansas City, Judge 

 West undertook a brief survey prior to 1880 "to determine whether our 

 Missouri Cliambered Mound Builders extended their domain west- 

 ward along the Kansas River valley and valleys of other important 

 streams in Kansas" (West, 1880, p. 530). The statement of his results 

 appeared as part of a paper read before the Kansas City Academy of 

 Science in 1875, but, as he himself stated in another paper presented 

 in 1876, he was unaware at the latter date of the stone chamber mounds 

 near Kansas City. Probably his 1875 paper, as published in 1880, in- 

 cluded certain observations made subsequent to the original reading. 

 In any event, he concluded that "the Chambered Mound Builders had 

 no permanent abode in Kansas, or if so, have left no enduring monu- 

 ment as evidence of it." He did leave record, however, of a village 



