404 ORGANIC KEL1CKS IIS 



lousas, and when in that country, learned the following- 

 facts : 



About the year 1797, Mr. Martin Durald, command- 

 ant of Atacapas, addressed a letter to the late Wil- 

 liam Dunbar, of Natchez, to the following effect:- 

 That when the French first came into the country j now 

 Atacapas and Opelousas, they found a watercourse, to 

 which the native savages gave a name, that in their 

 language was equivalent to " Carion Cro" in French. 

 Mr. Durald demanded of the Indians, for what reason 

 they gave the name of Carion Cro to that bayou ; they 

 replied, that in the days of their fathers, a large animal 

 came there and died, and that so many carion crows as- 

 sembled to devour the carcass, that ever afterwards the 

 creek (bayou) received the name of Carion Cro. Mr. 

 Durald further states, that he, after his establishment in 

 Atacapas, instituted an inquiry, and found that part of 

 the bones of the large animal spoken of by the Indians 

 had been recently discovered, and were to be seen on 

 bayou Carion Cro. 



Mr. Durald's communication on the fossil bones at 

 Opelousas, west of the Mississippi, is printed in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions of Philadelphia, vol. vi. p. 55. In 

 digging wells there, various bones have been found, such 

 as a human skull, thirty -five feet deep ; pottery of the na- 

 tives ; oyster shells, twenty-two feet deep ; a goat's horn ; 

 enormous bones, supposed to be those of the elephant ; 

 teeth and jaw bones of the same. There was a cart 

 load or more of these huge remains in one place, on the 

 farm of Mr. Nerat, as Mr. Dunbar relates. 



I myself visited Opelousas in October, 1804, and while 

 there, learned from Dr. Raphael Smith, of that place, 



