14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



coast of Louisiana. Many earth mounds and shell heaps 

 were found throughout this latter region, indicating the exist- 

 ence there in prehistoric times of an advanced culture of 

 fairly uniform type. Particular attention was given to the 

 21 mounds on Pecan Island in the lower part of Vermilhon 

 Parish. This part of Louisiana was occupied in historic times 

 by the Attacapa, a cannibalistic tribe of comparatively low 

 culture. The builders of the Pecan Island mounds, however, 

 were apparently not Attacapa, but an earUer and more 

 advanced people, who made an excellent type of pottery and 

 who were skilled workers in stone, shell, and bone. The pres- 

 ence in these Pecan Island mounds of native copper and 

 galena, as well as slate and other kinds of stone not native to 

 the section, indicates that at a very early date the Indians 

 of lower Louisiana had trade relations with other tribes to 

 the north and east. In addition to the ctdtural material col- 

 lected, a number of undeformed skulls were obtained from 

 Pecan Island and these will be of particular value, since 

 skeletal material from Louisiana is scarce. 



Upon completion of the work in Louisiana in the latter 

 part of June, Mr. ColUns proceeded to eastern Mississippi 

 and located the sites of several of the historic Choctaw vil- 

 lages and secured physical measurements on 72 living Choc- 

 taw in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Miss. The latter phase 

 of the work was in continuation of similar studies on the 

 Choctaw begun in the summer of 1925, and was made pos- 

 sible by an appropriation from the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science. 



Dr. J. W. Gidley, assistant curator of vertebrate paleon- 

 tology in the National Museum, was detailed to the bureau 

 for a continuation of work begun in the summer in conjunc- 

 tion with Amherst CoUege, in ex^Dloring the fossil beds in the 

 vicinity of Melbourne and Vero, Fla., for fossil bones and pos- 

 sible human remains. Mr. C. Wythe Cook, of the United 

 States Geological Survey, aided Doctor Gidley in a deter- 

 mination of the geologic formation of the bed. Most of the 

 work of this expedition was to verify the geological obser- 

 vations of the previous expedition and to obtain if possible 



