THOMAS. | ARCHAOLOGICAL DISTRICTS. 13 
10 feet high, though some, it is true, are of much larger dimensions; 
but these are the exceptions and not the rule.! 
As the authors just alluded to are so frequently referred to by writers; 
and their statements in reference to the works explored by them are 
taken as of general application, I will venture to correct another state-. 
ment made by them in regard to mounds of this character. They assert 
that “‘ these mounds invariably cover a single skeleton (in very rare in- 
stances more than one, as in the case of the Grave Creek mound), 
which, at the time of its interment, was enveloped in bark or coarse 
matting or enclosed in a rude sarcophagus of timber, the traces, in 
some instances the very casts, of which remain. Occasionally the cham- 
ber of the dead is built of stone rudely laid up, without cement of any 
kind.’” 
I have investigated but few of the ancient works of Ohio personally, 
or through the assistants of the Bureau, hence I can only speak in regard 
to them from what has been published and from communications re- 
ceived, but judging from these, Messrs. Squier and Davis, while no doubt 
correctly describing the mounds explored by them, have been too hasty 
in drawing general conclusions. 
That burial mounds in the northern sections very frequently cover 
but a single skeleton is true, but that this, even in this section, is uni- 
versally true or that it is the general rule is a mistake, as will appear 
from what is shown hereafter. Nor will it apply as a rule to those of the 
southern sections. 
To illustrate the character and construction of these mounds, and 
modes of burial in them, I will introduce here brief descriptions of the 
leading types found in the different northern districts heretofore men- 
tioned, confining myself chiefly to the explorations made by the Bureau 
assistants. 


'Ttis somewhat strange that Rey. J. P. MacLean, who has long resided in Ohio and 
has studied the mounds and other works of the southern portion of that State with 
much care, should follow almost word for word this and the next statement of Squier 
and Davis (Mound-Builders, p. 50) and adopt them as his own, without modification or 
protest, when in the appendix containing his exceedingly valuable notes on the ‘‘Ar- 
cheology of Butler County” nearly all the facts given bearing on these points show 
them to be incorrect. 
2 Ancient Monuments, p. 161. 
