STARR MOUND EXPLORATIONS IN NORTHWESTERN IOWA. Ill 



Mounds 3 and 4 were alone, on a lofty ridge, south of the railroad. 

 No. 3 yielded skeletons of two adults and one child; also the bones of- 

 a horse. A pipe was found here also. Deeper digging procured another 

 skeleton (adult), and a dog's skeleton wrapped in buckskin. The 

 relics were six iron bracelets, fifteen feet of wampum, a grinding stone 

 and a red pipestone pipe. The skeleton had ear-rings of copper 

 attached to the head. Where the copper had oxidized, the skin and 

 hair were preserved. This very peculiar specimen is now at Burlington. 

 This mound was enclosed within a stone circle. 



Mound No. 4 yielded a "stone wheel," an arrowhead, a pretty little 

 maul of reddish granite, part of a jar, and some very hard bone frag- 

 ments. A line of stones was laid across each end of this mound, 

 the lines being six or seven feet apart. The stone wheel deserves 

 description. It is perfectly true and elegantly polished. It is of a 

 dark, fine grain, solid stone. Its sides — /'. e., top and bottom surfaces 

 — are concave; its rim, a perfect circle in outline, is convex in surface. 

 The specimen is six inches diameter and is perforated by a half-inch 

 hole at the centre. At the outer edge the thickness is about one and 

 one-half inches; at the inner edge one-half inch or less. This stone 

 was evidently used in some pitching game, and is as fine as any of the 

 southern specimens of the same kind. 



Regarding the stone circles, I copy from my note-book : One, near 

 Mound No. 1, was elliptical. It consists of one hundred and ten 

 boulders, averaging a foot in diameter. They are set almost close to- 

 gether, and are of all kinds — quartzite, granite, gneiss, schist, etc. In 

 another, the stones are nearly all of the same kind. In a third, two 

 feet intervene between boulders. One circle was sixty-three by thirty- 

 seven feet, and contained one hundred and ninety-seven stones. 

 Nearly all the circles have an "opening," one to four and a half feet 

 wide, at the south-east. Some few are "double" — one circle concen- 

 tric with another. Some have "guard stones" at the openings. Some 

 circles are confluent, and have some boulders in common. One group 

 of confluent circles contains seven, of which two are "double." These 

 circles are generally supposed to be lines of stones to hold tent edges 

 down. I am not entirely satisfied that this is so. The fact that nearly 

 all the "openings" are to the south-east, while the prevailing wind is 

 north-west, seems to favor this theory. But if it is true, how shall we 

 account for the circle around Mound 3, the lines of stones upon Mound 

 4, or the very peculiar little circle on a steep side-hill, where a great 

 granite boulder is surrounded by a ring of smaller boulders, not accu- 



