NO. 12 MONACAN TOWNS IN VIRGINIA — BUSIINELL I9 



as have the burial places once belonging to other villages of the Siouan 

 tribes and no reference to it would have been preserved. The site of 

 the Indian town was visible from Monticello, and the burial mound 

 stood near the south, or right bank of the Rivanna within the area 

 shown in plate 2. Jefferson desired to know the nature of the contents 

 of the work and, so he wrote * (p. 139) : " For this purpose I de- 

 termined to open and examine it thoroughly. It was situated on the 

 low grounds of the Rivanna, about two miles above its principal fork, 

 and opposite to some hills, on which had been an Indian town. It was 

 of spheroidical form, of about 40 feet diameter at the base, and had 

 been of about twelve feet altitude, though now reduced by the plough 

 to seven and a half, having been under cultivation about a dozen years. 

 Before this it was covered with trees of 12 inches diameter, and round 

 the base was an excavation of five feet depth and width, from whence 

 the earth had been taken of which the hillock was formed. I first dug 

 superficially in several parts of it, and came to collections of human 

 bones, at different depths, from six inches to three feet below the 

 surface. These were lying in the utmost confusion, some vertical, 

 some oblique, some horizontal, and directed to every point of the 

 compass, entangled, and held together in clusters by the earth. Bones 

 of the most distant parts were found together, as, for instance, the 

 small bones of the foot in the hollow of a scull, many sculls would 

 sometimes be in contact, lying on the face, on the side, on the back, 

 top or bottom, so as, on the whole, to give the idea of bones emptied 

 promiscuously from a bag or basket, and covered over with earth, 

 without any attention to their order." And to continue : " I proceeded 

 then to make a perpendicular cut through the body of the barrow, 

 that I might examine its internal structure. This passed about three 

 feet from its center, was opened to the former surface of the earth, 

 and was wide enough for a man to walk through and examine its 

 sides. At the bottom, that is, on the level of the circumjacent plain, I 

 found bones ; above these a few stones, brought from a cliff a quarter 

 of a mile off, and from the river one-eighth of a mile off; then a 

 large interval of earth, then a stratum of bones, and so on. At one 

 end of the section were four strata of bones plainly distinguishable ; 

 at the other, three; the strata in one part not ranging with those in 

 another. The bones nearest the surface were least decayed .... Ap- 

 pearances certainly indicate that it has derived both origin and growth 

 from the accustomary collection of bones, and deposition of them 

 together; that the first collection had been deposited on the common 



^Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia. Philadelphia, 1794. 

 2 



