lOO DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



Lyon County — Continued. 



the same author gives further particulars. *^7 He states that the 

 mounds north of the railroad number one hundred and five and 

 that one of them is a rude effigy, which measures SS% ^^et 

 in greatest length and 2^ feet in height (Fig. 17). He also de- 

 scribes the enclosure south of the track more fully. It encloses an 

 area of about 1 5 acres ; the walls are from i ^ to 2 feet high and 

 average 18 feet in width; the fort was built after the mounds and 

 seven of these are within or about the fort. 



Marion County. 



Robinson mentions mounds in the county. Kimberling^°9 ex- 

 amined mounds at Knoxville. They occur in groups of five to 

 ten in a straight line or a circle and always on bluffs or highland; 

 in one case there was a raised way some 20 rods long, 8 or 10 feet 

 wide, and i foot high, leading to an abrupt bluff. The mound 

 structure is described thus: "2 feet of soil; 16 inches of hard 

 baked clay, ashes and charcoal ; 5 feet below the clay layer, a 

 hearth, 2 feet by 4 feet and 10 inches deep, full of ashes and char- 

 coal; the walls of 'the furnace' were glazed by heat; the arch 

 is 12 feet in diameter and its height such that a tall man might 

 stand under it. In the centre of the mound was a piece of cement 

 with a crushed human skull below it." 



Mills County. 



Dean 41 and Proudfit ^38, 139. mo, 141 have made considerable in- 

 vestigations. Mounds and lodge circles are common on the loess 

 bluffs of the Missouri River. The mounds are usually small, sim- 

 ple, conical, from 20 to 100 feet in diameter and from 2 to 15 feet 

 high ; they yield an occasional chip of flint or fragment of pot- 

 tery ; they are almost always associated with lodge circles. 



These last are circular excavations from 20 to 60 feet in diameter, 

 with a present depth of 5 feet to 4 feet ; the original floor was the 

 bluff clay ; this often lies buried under 2 feet of black soil ; the 

 soil removed in excavation is sometimes piled up in a ring, still 

 remaining as a wall along the outer edge ; in one case an oak 

 stump 18 inches in diameter was found in the centre of the lodge 

 circle; these circles are usually on a divide, sometimes on a south 

 slope. A single lodge is an exception; usually they occur in 

 groups. 



