74 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



It is impossible to determine even approximately the number of 

 inhabitants, but the large number of the buildings and the long ex- 

 tent of the walls indicate a population of several thousand. All the 

 buildings whose traces were uncovered appear to have been burned. 

 Below the fallen-in wall of an important building the charred re- 

 mains of the woven reed tapestry which had formerly hung upon 

 the wall were secured for the National Museum. 



It is not as yet possible to determine the age of these remains. 

 Beyond all question this town had been destroyed long before the 

 coming of the whites. No object of white man's manufacture was 

 found on this site. 



Mr. Gerard Fowke carried on archeological investigations in the 

 Stratman Cave in Maries County, Mo. This cave, which is situated 

 a little more than 2 miles south of Gascondy, the point at which the 

 Rock Island Railroad crosses Gasconade River, has an opening on 

 the side of a hill about 150 feet high. The approach to the cave on 

 the river side is very steep, but from the top of the hill it is less 

 difficult. Mr. Fowke opened a trench on the outside slope of the 

 talus at a point 30 feet from the entrance of the cave and 16 feet 

 below the floor level. He found most of the evidences of human 

 occupation in superficial black earth, scattered throughout which 

 from bottom to top were fragments of pottery, parts of vessels of 

 varying capacity and thickness; chert knives or spearheads, none 

 highly finished : hundreds of thousands of mussel shells more or less 

 decayed; and other objects so abundantly found on the numerous 

 camp sites and village sites along the Gasconade River. The arti- 

 facts were few in number and scattered throughout the mass, 

 nowhere more than a few pieces in a cubic foot of earth. This 

 denotes temporary occupation, at irregular intervals, over a long 

 period of time. Yet the cave was not altogether merely a resort for 

 temporary hunters or war parties. In addition to the pottery, which 

 shows at least occasional sojourning in the cave, there were frag- 

 mentary bones,. too fragile to preserve, of a child 2 or 3 years old, 

 of another somewhat older, and a small adult, possibly a woman. 

 These bones were found in different places but near the surface; 

 there were no other indications of burials. The only specimens 

 found worthy of note were a small hammer made of a chert twin- 

 concretion and bearing evidence of long service; a pebble, used for 

 sharpening small bone implements and for smoothing leather or 

 rawhide strings; and a double concave discoidal with V-shaped 

 margin. 



While the results of the work at Stratman Cave contributed 

 little to the antiquity of man in Missouri, Mr. Fowke's studies, which 

 are accompanied by a small collection, are valuable in a comparative 



