102 YEARBOOK, PUBLIC MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE [Vol. III. 



the supra-orbital ridges, it is possible that this skull may be that of an 

 old woman, while the first skeleton seems to be that of a man. There 

 were no accompaniments of any kind. Seated on the occiput was a 

 hibernating toad, whose bright eyes shown in the gloom of his sleeping 

 quarters. 



Nine feet northeast of these two graves, and twenty-four feet from 

 Mound No. 1, a fireplace, two feet deep, two and a half feet across, 

 and lined with bowlders, was unearthed. It contained, besides char- 

 coal, only a few flint chips and potsherds. It may have been a cere- 

 monial sunken fireplace where the fires made to light the feet of the 

 dead to the other world, were burned. 



Nine feet due east of the graves, and twenty feet south of Mound 

 No. 1, was true Mound No. 2. It was circular, or nearly so, measur- 

 ing eighteen feet across from north to south, and sixteen feet from 

 east to west. This mound, like Mound No. 1, was entirely composed 

 of kitchen refuse. Still, six feet from the northeast side of the mound 

 at a depth of six inches, a human skull, of a young person, was found 

 packed in a circular mass of very black earth and split deerbones with 

 a few fragments that appeared to be human bones. It lacked its 

 lower jaw completely. Whether it was an indication of a cannibal 

 feast or a trophy of war buried there for safe keeping, cannot be de- 

 termined. A few inches away lay the tip of a flint arrowpoint and a 

 few more inches beyond this was the blade of a flat celt or hoe. The 

 butt of this was later found a yard farther south. The entire mound 

 was only eighteen inches high and seemed to be a collection of camp 

 sweepings, perhaps raised to serve as a place of interment for the 

 isolated skull, but as the skull was not placed in the center and at no 

 great depth, the concealment of the skull may have been merely an 

 afterthought on the part of the person or persons who placed it there. 



In short, there is nothing about the remains, either graves, mounds, 

 or the specimens that they contained, to indicate any great antiquity. 

 The specimens would indicate that their makers were some poverty 

 stricken people of the great Algonkian stock, who, while dwelling 

 there certainly before the arrival of the white-man with his trade 

 articles of brass, steel, and glass, did not precede his arrival by many 

 years. Perhaps they were the foreparents of the very Potawatomi 

 Indians who were found dwelling along the Milwaukee by the first 

 white adventurers. 



With this in mind, the writer recalls that his Potawatomi friends 

 have informed him that their Bald Eagle and Thunder clans selected 

 just such bold knolls and promontories as this to bury their dead, 



