THE MOUND BUILDERS IN CANADA. 133 



no pits or excavations were found. As tlie cutting was, made patches 

 of cliarcoa.], ashes, and burned clay appeared, mixed irregularly 

 throughout the soil to a depth of four feet. Below this level the 

 ashes and charcoal were more regularly disposed in streaks, and in 

 places the earth seemed to be burned, requiring the use of a pick to 

 loosen it. At this level, also, the remains of some oak timber were 

 uncovered at the west side of the mound, which covered the remains 

 of a human being, interred in a sitting position. The wood was in 

 such a state of decay that it crumbled to dust in the hand, though 

 often showing the lines of fibre and growth, the dust being of a 

 bright red color. In the upper section of 4 feet, amongst the scattered 

 patches of ashes and charcoal mixed through the loam, were found a 

 number of skeletons, evidently " intrusives," as some of them were 

 in a compai'atively fair state of preservation, the smaller bones only 

 having disappeared. They had all been buried with the faces up- 

 ward and were unaccompanied by ornaments or other manufacttu-ed 

 articles. It was at once evident to me that they were later inter- 

 ments than the original remains found at the bottom of the mound. 

 There is recorded the fact that during an epidemic of smallpox, about 

 the year 1780, the Indians along the Red River buried their dead in 

 the mounds in this locality, and which were not made by themselves. 

 Without doubt, these " intrusives " found by me were the bodies 

 of the smallpox victims, the Indians departing from their usual mode 

 of scaffold bui-ial to avoid contagion. The late Senator Donald Gunn 

 was informed of this circumstance by an old Indian who had been a 

 resident of the district at the date mentioned. On the level of the 

 natural surface of the ground a platform or layer of round boulder 

 stones was found, beneath a smooth burnt clay floor, apparently 

 dipping lightly towards the centre, which I was unable to uncover 

 at the time, and cannot accurately describe, but it very closely 

 answers the description of the " clay altars " of Squier and Davis. 

 The skeleton of a man of rather above the ordinary stature was 

 found in a sitting position surrounded by several piles or bundles of 

 bones, each surmounted with a skull. These bundles seemed to con- 

 sist of the main bones and skull of one individual to each jiile, and 

 had evidently been brought there for reburial about the central figure. 

 These remains were very much decomposed, crumbling into fragments 

 ■ on exposure to the atmosphere. Some of the bones of the right foot of 

 the sitting skeleton were found in a lump of clay, but these wei'e the 



