FOWKE] REMAINS IN SCOTT COUNTY, ARK. 465 
The only alteration on any of them is that resulting from use. The 
Indians could find any quantity of such rocks of the character they 
desired, without the trouble of working them into shape. Crystals 
large enough to make arrowheads may be found in the adjacent 
mountains; flint—generic term here for chalcedony, quartzes, quartz- 
ites, chert, and a compact, granular, siliceous stone easily chipped to 
a sharp edge or point—occurs at many places within a few miles. 
The “ glazed” pottery is not aboriginal, being merely fragments of 
jugs in which farmers carried water to the fields. The low mounds 
(2 to 4 feet) are house mounds. The “mounds” higher than these 
are the product of erosion; their surfaces were often utilized for camp 
sites and much débris is scattered over them. Nothing is found in 
them except now and then a shallow grave; and when one of these 
does occur it clearly pertains to an intrusive burial, and, as stated 
before, there is never anything on the undisturbed surface to give a 
hint of what may be underneath. These higher elevations are 
usually called mounds by residents, and many persons believe them to 
be artificial. 
House mounds exist in great numbers. Doctor Bevill, of Waldron, 
made a careful count of those in township 3, range 30, being the 
township, 6 miles square, lying from 3 to 9 miles west of Waldron; 
he found 7,560, which is an average of exactly 210 to the square mile. 
They appear to be as abundant in other groups, although there are 
many areas of a square mile or more where none appear. 
Doctor Bevill has excavated “at least 75 or 80, perhaps more,” 
of these house mounds in various parts of Scott County. In all 
cases he found charcoal on the natural surface on which they were 
built. There were no human bones in any of the mounds he opened, 
or on the natural level beneath them, although under each of three 
mounds was a grave dug in the original soil or earth to a depth of 
16 or 18 inches. Some charcoal was found in all these graves, but 
nothing else; and as there was no evidence of burning or heat, the 
charcoal must have been carried from somewhere else. 
S. R. Sherrell, of Waldron, has excavated 53 of the house mounds. 
He found charcoal at the base of most of them. As his digging was 
done principally from the top, in the central part, he may have 
missed old fire beds which were to one side instead of in the center 
of the house. 
Sherrell found evidence of burial in six or seven of those he opened, 
but the human bones thus uncovered were invariably in the body 
of the mound, a foot or so above the bottom; which is sufficient proof 
that they were intrusive. The most striking of these cases was on 
the Taylor farm, 3 miles north of Waldron, where a farmer plowed 
out a clay vessel. A school-teacher, hearing of this, enlisted the 
services of his pupils and “tore the mound all to pieces.” They 
