ON SOME ANCIENT MOUNDS OF THE BAY OF QUINTE. 417 . 
natural mark upon the part of the shell used for this purpose. They 
are bored from end to end and polished. 
The other articles found interred with this skeleton were: 1. A 
number of common fossils occurring in the Trenton limestone, in the 
vicinity of the Bay of Quinté. 2. Several queerly shaped, waterworn 
stones. 3. Several fresh water shells so much decayed that they could 
not be preserved. 4. A few small lumps of iron ochre perhaps used 
for painting the face. 5. The breast bone of an eagle. 6. A bear’s 
tusk. 7. A tooth of a beaver. It is said that Indians of other parts 
of the continent used beaver teeth for scraping the flesh from the 
hides in the process of tanning.* 8. A pair of horn-cores resembling 
those of a ram, a circumstance of difficult reconciliation with the 
undoubted antiquity of these works, unless the existence of the wild 
sheep of the Rocky Mountains be taken into consideration. 
The number of crania taken from this mound in a good state of 
preservation, is five. These are now in the possession of the writer. 
There were perhaps a dozen bodies originally deposited in this work. 
Whatever be the origin of these remains, it is clear that the Mas- 
sassaga Indians were not the builders of the works in which they are 
entombed, since this tribe, it is well known, buried their dead in wrap- 
pers of birch-bark, and laid them at full length a few inches beneath 
the surface of the soil, as the sand-hills about Belleville clearly prove. 
The remains found in the surface-soil of the mounds are perhaps of 
their interment ; but the skeletons found in the sitting posture belong 
to some other and far earlier race. The question, to what race, is 
wrapt in the same mystery that overhangs the ancient mound struc- 
tures which lie in the remoter regions of the West, and which of late 
years have been the subject of so much philosophical speculation. 
* This information was Obtained from Assikinack, an Odahwah chief of the Manitoulin 
Island, who is now aged about 104 years. 
+ The above list of articles corresponds in many particulars with the remains found by 
Dr. Drake, in a mound examined by him, in the vicinity of Cincinnati, an account of which 
is given in the “Biography and History of the Indians of North America,” by Samuel G.. 
Drake. 10th edition, page 41. 
