42 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 71 



ciated with these burials is quite contrary to the usual custom. Often 

 manj'^ pieces obtained from the traders are to be found in the later 

 Indian graves, and an interesting example was discovered at the 

 site of a large Shawnee town which stood where Frankfort, Ross 

 County, Ohio, was later reared. From the burial place of the 

 ancient Indian town " numerous relics are obtained, gun barrels, 

 copper kettles, silver crosses and brooches, and many other imple- 

 ments and ornaments." (Squier and Davis, (1), pp. GO-Gl.) 



Such are the numerous small cemeteries discovered throughout the 

 region west of the mountains. Each proves the position, at some time, 

 of a native settlement, some of probably not more than two or three 

 wigwams, the temporary camping place of a few families during the 

 hunting or fishing season. Others mark the location of a more im- 

 portant tribal center. Long after the upper Ohio Valley was aban- 

 doned by the people who had erected the great earthw^orks it became 

 the home of other tribes, or rather it became the hunting grounds of 

 many tribes, but it was not occupied by any large native towns. Later, 

 about the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the Shawnees 

 were forced northward from the valleys of Tennessee, and other Algon- 

 quian tribes began seeking new homes to the westward beyond the 

 mountains, the upper valley of the Ohio became repeopled by a native 

 population, and to these later settlements may be attributed the great 

 majority of burials now encountered within the region. The towns 

 were moved from place to place as requirements and natural causes 

 made necessary, and with each movement a new cemetery was soon 

 created. Such a movement of the inhabitants of a Shawnee village 

 about the middle of the eighteenth century is graphically described 

 in a journal of one who witnessed the catastrophe which made it 

 necessary : 



" On the Ohio, just below the mouth of Scioto, on a high bank, 

 near forty feet, formerly stood the Shawnesse town, called the Lower 

 Town, which was all carried away, except three of four houses, by a 

 great flood in the Scioto. I was in the town at the time, though the 

 banks of the Ohio were so high, the water was nine feet on the top, 

 Avhich obliged the whole town to take to their canoes, and move with 

 their effects to the hills. The Shawnesse afterwards built their town 

 on the opposite side of the river, which, during the French war, they 

 abandoned, for fear of the Virginians, and removed to the plains on 

 Scioto." (Croghan, (1). p. 368.) 



And this was only one of many similar instances where a compara- 

 tively small number of individuals occupied during a single genera- 

 tion many sites and left at each site a small group of graves. 



Scattered over the western country, throughout the region once fre- 

 (juented by the fur trader and missionary, are often to be found traces 



