THOMAS.) MISSISSIPPI. 275 



dirt that had been dumped like that in the first mouud, aud was in very 

 thin layers as though many successive deposits had been made and 

 sjiread out. Within an inch of the bottom was a small piece of green- 

 ish glass, apparently broken from a glass bottle. Eestiug upon the 

 ashes, though of less extent, was a mass 12 inches thick of charcoal, 

 dirt, ashes, and broken pottery, in which lay an iron knife and a 

 thin silver plate stamped with the Spanish coat of arms. Fig. 17.3. 

 At the top was a thin layer of charcoal where a fire had been extin- 

 guished ; this was at a lower jioint than had ever been reached by the 

 plow. There was a want of conformity between this mass and the sur- 

 rounding dirt, which shows it may have been of later origin ; that the 

 mound had been oi>eued after its completion and afterward restored to 

 its former shape; but the l)ed of ashes was undoubtedly as old as the 

 mound itself, so that, although the iron knife and silver plate offer no 

 positive proof as to age, the piece of glass is strong evidence that the 

 mound was constructed after its builders had dealings with the whites. 

 It maybe remarked here that this group is located in the area occupied 

 by the Chiekasaws. 



At about 40 feet from the center the dirt began 

 to show the same arrangement of dumping as was 

 seen in mound 1. 



Mound 4 was made throughout of a heavy gray 

 clay, such as forms the ground to the north of it. 

 The embankment ran, according to local belief, 

 directly over this mound; it was, therefore, closely 

 examined for any signs of palisades, but without 

 success; nor is there now the slightest indication 

 here of either wall or ditch. A small amount 

 of mingled dirt and charcoal appeared at what 

 seemed to be the center of the mound, but this was 

 evidently thrown in at the time it was built to help F'"- n3.-siiver piatc, with 



/>.-. Spauish coat of arms; 



A ' mound, Union county. 



Mound 5, not shown in the figure, is outside the 

 inch>sure to the east. A wide trench through it exposed thirteen skulls 

 with a few fragments of other bones. They wei-e all within 10 feet of 

 the center and arranged in three layers, the first on the siu'face, the 

 second nearly 2 feet above, and the third at about the same distance 

 above that. The skulls belonged to persons of different ages, from the 

 child whose first teeth were beginning to appear, to the aged individ- 

 ual whose teeth were worn to the gums. With the oldest was a burnt 

 clay pipe, the only relic found in the mound. The bones were put in 

 without regard to position; a skull and a rib, for example, or a femur 

 and a jawbone lying together. The mound was of the same dirt as the 

 surrounding soil, excejit a deposit of gray clay a foot thick aud 3 feet 

 across at the center, about half of it lying below the original surface. 

 Only one sknll found here was in a condition to be preserved; all, how- 

 ever, were of one shape and that very like the modern Indian skull. 



