THOMAS.) 



MISSISSIPPI. 



271 



one orbit was lower than the other, probably the result of an injury. 

 The small size of the burial place, the position of the bones and the 

 galenite sticking to the skull go to show that only the skeleton had 

 been buried. 



Lying west of these bones, in the hard dirt, was a scapula belonging 

 to a larger person than the last, along with other bones too badly de- 

 cayed and broken to tell what they were; also a few shell beads. At 

 10 feet from the center and 4 feet from the surface was a small pile of 

 ashes with the dirt slightly burnt below, showing that a lire had been 

 made when the mound had reached that stage and afterwards covered 

 up before the place had been disturbed. Three feet above the surface 

 at the center, in hard dirt, was a badly (^ecayed skull of an old person, 

 and one cervical vertebra. Lying on the original surface at the center 

 were some fragments of thick, red pottery and a small amount of 

 charcoal. Six inches above the bottom a thin seam of red clay was 

 continuous for 3 or 4 feet around the center. 



Fig. 169. — Section along the northeast trench, mound No. 1. Union county. 



The next trench was run in from the northeast (see Figs. 169 and 170). 

 Twenty-one feet from the center there was a depression of 6 inches where 

 soil had been removed down to underlying red clay which was so hard 

 as to be difflcult to loosen with a ])ick. lii this clay two holes, marked 

 {a, Fig. 170, and b, Fig. I(i9), had been dug 6 feet apart, one north of the 

 other. Each was a foot across and 3 feet deep, rounded at the bottom, 

 and filled witli a shiny gray ooze. In the one to the south was found a 

 piece of skull bone, in the northern one nothing but the soft mud or 

 slime. Fourteen feet from the center weie two similar holes, one 14 

 inches across and 3 feet deep, the other 3 feet south of it of thesame depth 

 and 18 inches across. One is shown at c, Fig. 109. No traces of bones 

 were found in these. They were filled with the same gray dirt as the 



