490 



THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



, Aboriginal earthworks 



tion, and enclosed in a rude coffin, which was a dug-out canoe, cut in two at the middle, one part 

 being placed above and the other beneath the body. Among the articles found here were beads; 

 one pair of scissors; two thimbles, in a wooden tray; and a kettle of sheet-iron. Mr. Vermilya 

 reports, within a distance of a half mile from these, several other artificial mounds, one to three 

 feet high. 



In the northeast corner of section 6, Rutland, a group of eight mounds (Fig. 31), of the 

 common round form and varying, from one and a half to three feet in hight, lies between Elm 

 creek and Martin lake, on land about thirty feet above them. Six of these are in a straight line, 

 which bears S. 60 E., and reaches about thirty rods, or some three-quarters of the distance from 

 the creek to the lake. Mr. R. J. McCadden and others opened four of these mounds in 1879, 

 finding several skeletons in each, buried about one foot below the natural surface, in a sitting 

 position, facing the east, of stature five and a half to six feet high. Implements and utensils 

 found were twenty or thirty unfinished Hint arrow-heads in one place, and with them a wedge- 

 shaped stone, supposed to be for skinning, and a pipe, about five inches long, of the form and 

 proportions shown by figures 32 and 33, cut out of some dark gray stone; a few flint arrow-heads 

 here and there in the other mounds; and in the largest mound of the group (not that which con- 

 tained the many arrow-heads and the pipe), a small, unbroken cup (fig. : 4), three inches in di- 

 ameter and two and one-third inches high, with an aperture of one and a half inches, having a 

 nearly uniform thickness of an eighth of an inch, made of baked clay, gray in color, slightly 

 mixed with gravel on the inner side. This cup is perforated just below its rim by four holes, in 

 pairs close together on its opposite sides. No articles of metal were found. 



These two localities are in Martin county; no mounds were observed, nor heard of by in- 

 quiry, in Watonwan county. 



etc. 31 \ c. 52 



FIG. 81. 



ABORIGINAL MOUNDS, 

 SEC. 6, RUTLAND. 



FIG. 32. FiO. 33. 



PIPE, VIEW FBOM ABOVE. PIPE, SIDE VIEW. 



ARTICLES FOUND IN MOUNDS, SEC. 6, RUTLAND. 



