*T!f„°J,?°^1 REMAINS NEAR COLUMBIA 13 



liill laud extends iiliiiost t > the jum'tioii of the two streams, and the 

 narrow lowlands are subject to overflow. 



Three miles above Columbia, on the farm of Major Allen Gait, was a 

 large area aloui;- the river bank, several feet higher than the ground near 

 the hill, and so sandy as not to be worth cultivating. This sand bank 

 may have been due to the great flood of 1770, at which time much sedi- 

 ment was deposited in the river bottoms, but it had never been entirely 

 covered by water since the whites occupied the country until the freshet 

 of 1870. When the water receded it was found that fully 4 feet of the 

 surface had been removed, revealing not less than 40 or 50 "fireplaces" 

 scattered at intervals, generally 30 to 40 feet apart. Lying among the 

 ashes and burned earth, or scattered close about, were numy burned 

 stones, fragments of pottery, animal bones, mostly broken, some of them 

 calcined, arrowheads, great quantities of chips ami broken arrows, and 

 other indications of a former Indian town. Most of the arrowheads 

 were of quartz, a few being of flint or crystal i The remains Avere 

 abundant, but nearly all were carried away by local collectors. No 

 steatite pottery was found, nor any earthenware with handles. 



Scattered between the fire beds were the graves, readily distin- 

 guished by the darker color of the earth. They were circular, or nearly 

 so, about 3 feet in diameter, and none of them more than 18 or 20 inches 

 deep. One contained the skeletons of a woman and a child, one of a man 

 and a woman, a few those of two women, but most of them disclosed the 

 remains of only one individual in each. 



The fire beds were or 8 inches thick, and several feet in diameter. 

 If the fires were made in huts or wigwams, the latter were far enough 

 apart to allow considerable space around each one, the buriids being 

 made in the open spaces between. More than li.") graves were carefully 

 examined, but no relics were found in any of them; if anything had 

 been l)uried with the bodies, it was of a perishable luiture. In most of 

 them the bones crumbled upon exposure; only one skull was taken out 

 intact. Human bones were found nearly half a mile below the cem- 

 etery later in the season; but there was nothing about them to indicate 

 that the place in which they were found was originally alturial ground, 

 or even that the bones were near their original position ; they may have 

 been washed there. 



The area denuded by the freshet extended far beyond the limits 

 of the village site; in fact the whole bottom was bared to a greater or 

 lesser extent. Since this occurrence the ground has been inundated 

 three or four times; this, with constant cultivation, has destroyed all 

 semblance of definite order or arrangement. A great amount of 

 burned stones, human and animal bones, quartz chips, spalls, and unfin- 

 ished pieces, and numei^ous fragments of pottery are strewn in confusion 

 over the surface. 



Dr Gay, who assisted in these investigations, describes the skulls 

 as being flat at the occiput and having high or jiointed i^arietals, the 



