20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 82 



surface of the earth, a few stones put over it, and then a covering of 

 earth, that the second had been laid on this, had covered more or less 

 of it in proportion to the number of bones, and was then also covered 

 with earth ; and so on." 



There is reason to believe some Indians continued to occupy the 

 site until after the beginning of the i8th century. They may have 

 been few in number, but among the number must have been some 

 who were descendants of others who had lived there when Monasu- 

 kapanough was a large village. As late as the middle of the century 

 some were living who knew of the burial place of their dead. Jeffer- 

 son, referring to the mound which he had examined, told how " a party 

 passing, about thirty years ago, through the part of the country where 

 this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it, without any 

 instructions or enquiry, and having staid about it some time, with 

 expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, then returned 

 to the high road, which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay 

 this visit, and pursued their journey." Only those who had retained 

 a memory of the burial place could, or would, have made such a 

 pilgrimage. 



The exact position of the mound may never be determined, but it 

 certainly stood on the low ground, on the right bank of the Rivanna, 

 evidently nearer the river than the cliffs, and it may have been some 

 distance above the ford. 



During the month of June, 1911, I examined part of the low ground 

 in the endeavor to find some trace of the native village to which the 

 burial mound had belonged. Nothing was discovered on the surface ; 

 all had been covered in the past years. Nine excavations were made 

 about 50 yards from the river bank, and beginning about that same 

 distance west of the road leading to the ford. One excavation was 

 30 feet in length, others were 5 or 6 feet square, all were 2 feet or 

 more in depth. In seven of the nine excavations small fragments of 

 pottery were encountered at an average depth of about 20 inches, bits 

 of quartz and quartzite, and pieces of charcoal were also met with in 

 some excavations. No traces of bones of any sort were found. The 

 superstratum, some 20 inches in thickness, represents the alluvium 

 deposited by the river since the village was occupied, and may have 

 resulted from one or more freshets during the past century. The 

 greatest freshet known was in 1877, ^t which time, so it is said, most 

 of the low ground was overflowed to a great depth. When the waters 

 receded some parts of the area were covered with a thick deposit of 

 sand while on other sections the soil had been washed away and the 

 surface lowered. Many stone objects of Indian origin were exposed. 



