128 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 71 



usually 3 layers of decomposed bones at intervals of about 10 inches; 

 in the shallower there was in most cases only a single layer, at the , 

 bottom, though in a few a second dejjosit liad been made a few 

 inches above the first. The bones in some of the graves appeared to 

 have been placed in their proper position; but it was impossible 

 to ascertain with certainty whether such ^^'as the case. One of 

 the deeper pits had its bottom and sides lined with charcoal; none 

 of the others had even this slight evidence of care or respect. . . . 

 No relics of any sort were deposited with the l)ones; a rough mortar, 

 2 arrowheads, and some fragments of pottery were found loose in 

 the debris. . . . It is impossible to accurately estimate the num- 

 ber of skeletons found in this mound; but there were certainly not 

 fewer than 200, and there may possibly have been 250. These figures 

 will represent, approximately, one-fourth of the entire number de- 

 i^osited, if the statements as to the original size of the mound be 

 correct." (Fowke, (1), pp. 33-3G.) 



Jefferson failed to mention pits beneath the mound examined by 

 him, and they may or may not have existed; nevertheless the great 

 similarity of the two mounds makes it certain they were erected by 

 people possessing the same burial customs. Both were on the right 

 banks of the streams, and they undoubtedly indicated the positions 

 of two ancient Monacan settlements which may have been occupied 

 at the time of the coming of the colonists to Jamestown in 1607. 



The visit of Indians to the mound on the Rivanna, some years 

 after the adjoining village had been abandoned, as told by Jefferson, 

 is most interesting, but other similar instances are known. In a 

 letter to the Bureau of Ethnology about the year 1890 the late W. M. 

 Ambler, of Louisa County, Virginia, mentioned a burial mound on 

 the bank of Dirty Swamp Creek, in that county, and said in part: 

 "I was told by Abner Harris, now deceased, that some Indians from 

 the southwest visited this mound many years ago. They left their 

 direct route to Washington at Staunton, and reached the exact spot 

 traveling through the woods on foot. This has made me suppose 

 that this mound w^as a noted one in Indian annals." 



Another visit by some remnant of a native tribe to an ancient 

 burial place has been recorded. This was on the lowlands near the 

 bank of the Cowpasture, or Wallawhutoola River, in Bath County, 

 Virginia, on the lands of Warwick Gatewood. The account, as pre- 

 served, reads: "Some years since, Col. Adam Dickinson, who then 

 owned and lived on the land, in a conversation I had with him, re- 

 lated to me that many years before that time, as he was sitting 

 in his porch one afternoon, his attention was arrested by a compan}^ 

 of strange-looking men coming up the bottom lands of the river. 

 They seemed to him to be in quest of something, when, all at once, 



