466 ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS—II [PTH. ANN. 44 
found “several skeletons” and “a good many pots,” but in their 
eagerness “smashed up everything,” and could give no intelligible 
account of anything they saw or did, further than to recount that 
there were “skeletons, bowls, pots, some of them with necks, and 
some rock things.” Sherrell arrived on the scene in time to examine 
a small portion which the teacher had not yet attacked. In this he 
found a skeleton which “by measure, was 8 feet long. There was a 
large stone pipe near the head, two pots at the feet, and some other 
things.” As there was at least a foot of the original body of the 
mound undisturbed between the remains and the natural surface, 
there is little doubt that all these things were of a period later than 
the construction of the mound. 
Doctor Bevill and Mr. Sherrell are men who know what they are 
doing and what they are saying; and their statements of what they 
did and what they saw are beyond question. Both assert that if they 
were in quest of graves they would have no idea where to look; 
there is no surface mark of any kind to serve as a guide. So with 
the few mounds in which later interments were made; there was not 
the shghtest indication that anything might be found in them until 
the plow turned out bones or relics. 
Doctor Bevill, in a few instances, found bones or worked objects 
at the bottom of a house mound; but never any human bones. From 
his description of the position and appearance of these few finds it 
is manifest that they merely happened to be there when the root 
fell in. 
From the excavations in the vicinity of Waldron, from investiga- 
tions in similar mounds in other parts of the country, and partic- 
vlarly as a result of Harriman’s work in the Washita Valley, it may 
be considered as a settled fact that, with possibly a few exceptions, 
all the low flat mounds so abundant in the old Caddo territory, ex- 
tending east to the Mississippi, north to the Missouri, and west to 
their limits, owe their existence to the decay of timbers in the roof 
of an earth-covered Caddo dwelling place. 
THE STRATMAN CAVE IN MARIES COUNTY, MO. 
A little more than 2 miles south of Gascondy, the point at which 
the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway crosses Gasconade River, 
is a cave on the farm of Henry F. Stratman. Its opening is 100 feet 
above the river, on the side of a hill 150 feet high. The slope to 
the stream, which flows immediately in front, is as steep as tough 
elay and angular rock will stand; the approach to one side from the 
top of the hill is less difficult. 
The appearance of the reentrant cliff walls on either side, and the 
amount of talus and débris between them, suggested that the material 
