124 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



the Missouri from the west, has formed a point of the prairie-terrace, upon which 

 are visible numerous low heaps or mounds of earth and clay, varying from 

 several inches to a foot in height, and from two to ten feet in diameter. Some 

 of these consist underneath almost entirely of bones of the larger mammals, 

 while at various other points the soil seems to have been washed away, leaving 

 the bones, stui'geon-scales, etc., lying around promiscuously. The bones in no 

 instance presented the effects of fire, but always exhibited the sharp, irregular 

 appearance of having been cracked for the removal of the marrow. 



* 



Fio. 183. Dakota. (34840). Fio. 184. Ohio (Madisonville). Fio. 185. Arkansas. 



FIGS. 183-185. Bone fish-hooks, 



" Upon digging into one of these smaller earth-heaps, the fish-hook was 

 found in the end of a fractured thigh-bone of a buffalo. Fragments of pottery 

 were very abundant, while arrow-heads, hammer-stones (such as are used at this 

 day for driving down tent-pins, etc.), and small blue beads were not uncommon. 



" Black Eye, chief of the Upper Yanktonnais, informed me that the Arikara 

 were defeated and driven from that identical spot by the Dakotas, under the 

 command of his father, in 1818. The hillocks present every appearance of having 

 once been earth-lodges, though smaller than found at this day at Fort Berthold." 



Fig. 184. The original of this much-corroded hook was found in one of the 

 so-called ash-pits of the great cemetery near Madisonville, Hamilton County, 

 Ohio. The depressions at the upper end of the shank are the result of decay, 

 small particles of the bone having come off in that place. The hook is in pos- 

 session of the Hon. Joseph Cox, of Cincinnati, who kindly sent it to the National 

 Museum to be drawn.* 



* The results of an exploration of this cemetery, carried on under the auspices of the Madisonvillle Literary 

 and Scientific Society, are presented in three illustrated reports by Mr. Charles P. Low, published in the " Jour- 

 nal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History " (Vol. Ill, 1880, p. 40-68 ; p. 128-139 ; p. 203-220); and Dr. 

 F. W. Langdon has given in the same journal (Vol. IV, 1881, p. 237-257) an account of the osteological charac- 

 teristics of the skeletons there exhumed. In addition, the subject has been treated in several articles. I subjoin a 



