FOWKE] AKCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 99 



STEUFFER CAVE 



Four miles east of Freebur^:, in a ravine, is a cavern popularly 

 known as Beer Cave, being formerly used as a storage room for beer 

 made in a brewery built just in front of it. The entrance is 8 feet 

 wide and 12 feet higli. The front chamber, having practically the 

 same dimensions, extends directly back for 50 feet, then makes a turn. 

 The floor is a mixture of clay and angular gravel, with a continuous 

 downward slope from front to rear. Water cracks show that it is 

 sometimes flooded. 



The j3lace was never fit for living in. 



CAIRNS 



At the Gasconade River bridge, on the Rich Fountain road, two 

 creeks on the west side. Brush and Swan, separated only by a narrow 

 ridge which terminates abruptly at either end, come in a fourth of a 

 mile apart. Both rise in the same lake, 6 miles from the river, and 

 flow through parallel valleys, thus draining an abandoned ox-bow 

 curve of the stream. 



On the extreme eastern point of this ridge are two cairns. A 

 fourth of a mile from these are two others; and farther back still 

 more of them. All are now destroyed. They were the usual conical 

 heaps of stone, 18 to 20 feet across 



HOUSE MOUNDS (41) 



A group of house mounds extends for half a mile eastward from 

 Rich Fountain, along the valley of Brush Creek. They are fully 

 100 in number, and it is said there were formerly many more which 

 are now leveled by cultivation. The ground is low, in some places 

 swampy, so that water or mud surrounds many of them after a 

 heavy rain. 



"INDIAN fort" (42) 



This structure, also called the "Indian Lookout," is located on a 

 blutf facing the Osage, half a mile below the " Painted Rock," and 

 near the buildings of the Painted Rock Country Club, of Jefferson 

 City. 



Except for a slight projection or offset at one side, which contains 

 an opening or doorway, it was practically identical in appearance 

 with the vault graves along the Missouri River bluffs, described in 

 Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 37; or else with those on 

 Big Piney River in Pulaski County. It is formed of sandstone 

 slabs, once laid up in a wall but now scattered in confusion as if 

 fallen or thrown down. Apparently it measured about 32 to 35 feet 

 outside and 12 or 13 feet inside. 



