34 BURIAL MOUNDS OF THE NORTHERN SECTIONS. 
The extreme width of the area represented is about 2 miles. Close 
to the point of the bend formerly stood the agency building, near which 
is the present residence of Mr. Jordan. The triangle marks the position 
of Black Hawk’s grave; the parallel lines, the race-tracks; the rings 
in the upper corner, the mounds of the lowas; those in the lower corner, 
near Iowaville, the mounds of the Pottawattamies; and the open dots, 
near the same point, the place where the scaffolds for their dead stood. 
Mr. Jordan says: ; 
“This valley had long been a famous haunt for the warring Indians, 
but was, at the time of my first personal acquaintance with it, in posses- 
sion of the Iowas, whose main village was around the point where my 
present residence now stands. The race-course consisted of three hard 
beaten parallel tracks nearly a mile in length, where the greater por- 
tion of the Iowa warriors were engaged in sport when Black Hawk sur- 
prised and slaughtered a great portion of them in 1830. After Black 
Hawk and his warriors had departed with their plunder, the remaining 
Towas returned and buried their dead in little mounds of sod and earth, 
from 2 to 4 feet high, at the point indicated on the diagram. 
“After the Black Hawk war was over, the remnant of the Iowas, by 
treaty, formally ceded their rights in this valley to the Sacs and Foxes. 
At this place this noted chief was buried, in accordance with his dying 
request, in a full military suit given him by President Jackson, together 
with the various memorials received by him from the whites and the 
trophies won from the Indians. He was placed on his back on a 
‘puncheon’ {split slab of wood], slanting at a low angle to the ground, 
where his feet were sustained by another, and then covered with several 
inches of sod. Over this was placed a roof-shaped covering of slabs or 
‘puncheons,’ one end being higher than the other; over this was 
thrown a covering of earth and sod to the depth of a foot or more, and 
the whole surrounded by a line of pickets some 8 or 10 feet high.” 
Here we have evidence that some at least of the Indians of this re- 
gion were accustomed to bury their dead in mounds down to a recent 
date. 
One of the most important burial mounds opened in this district by 
the employés of the Bureau is situated on the bluff which overhangs 
East Dubuque (formerly Dunleith), Jo Daviess County, Illinois. AsI 
shall have occasion to refer to others than the one mentioned, I give in 
Fig. 15, Plate III, a plan of the group, and in Fig. 16, same plate, a 
vertical section of the bluff along the line of mounds numbered 13, 14, 
15, 16, and 17, in which is seen the general slope of the upper area. 
The mounds of this group are conical in form, varying from 12 to 70 
feet in diameter and from 3 to 12 in height. All appear to have been 
built for burial purposes. 
In No. 5, the largest of the group, measuring 70 feet in diameter and 
12 feet in height, a skeleton, apparently an intrusive burial, was found 
