A BURIED RACE IN KANSAS. 87 
where human remains were found. At each place I observed the Drift cropping 
out on the hill-slope at a short distance from the cellars. I also observed drift 
pebbles, which had been thrown out from the bottom of each cellar. In digging 
a trench from Mr. Baylis’ cellar a stone mortar was found at about the same 
depth of the cellar, and was covered over in filling the ditch and left remaining 
where found. But it must not be inferred that these two cellars are the only 
places where these mysterious remains are encountered. 
Mr. Billings, in a former letter to me, says: ‘‘In the excavation of nearly 
every cellar and well in town some relic of aboriginal inhabitancy has been 
found.” His residence is with his father, a short distance out of town, and, in 
the same letter, he says: ‘‘In digging acistern at my home, one of these peculiar 
graves was struck, from which charcoal, burnt bones, flint chips, etc., were taken. 
In excavating the basement of our barn, 38 by 40 feet, seven of these graves were 
discovered.” The M. & M. P. R. R. crosses Mud Creek some two or three 
hundred yards south of Marion Centre, and, in the same letter, Mr. Billings con- 
tinues: ‘‘In grading the approaches to the bridges a large amount of pre-historic 
debris was discovered, among which are broken bone implements, stone arrow 
and spear points, stone axes, grooved mallets, rub stones, broken pottery, etc.” 
But the best observed graves of this kind, if graves they are, were found at 
the brick-yard of Mr. W. S. Moulton, one and a half miles north of Marion 
Centre. These were well examined by Mr. Billings and Mr. Moulton, and 
possess some very remarkable features independent of their evident great antiq- 
uity. The clay used by Mr. Moulton is a Lacustrine deposit containing lime 
connections, and is very similar to the Loess or brick clay in this city. It is three 
to four feet in thickness, only, covered by two feet of black vegetable mold, and 
rests on the Glacial drift. Mr. Moulton has removed the clay, in his brick-making, 
over a space of less than fifty feet, but in this small area he has found eleven of 
these buried repositories of the dead. They are cone-shaped, covered over with 
two feet or more of undisturbed vegetable mold, and all rest on the Drift. From 
a careful measurement of some of these, by Mr. Billings and Mr. Moulton, they 
_ were found to be fifty-four inches in diameter at the base, eighteen inches at the 
top, and thirty-six inches high; i. e. there is found in the clay, of these dimen- 
sions, -a black cone-shaped mass of mixed ashes, charcoal, fragments of shells, 
intermingled, perhaps, with clay and containing human remains. 
What is very remarkable, the base of the cone, at equal distances, sends out 
three triangular projections of about twelve inches in extent; and, still more 
remarkable, is the correspondence with this configuration of an ornamentation, or 
carved figure, on a fragment of the pottery found. The ornamentation seems to 
have been sculptured after the vessel was partially dried, and before burning. 
There is but a part of the figure or emblem on the fragment obtained, but there 
is enough of it remaining to associate it with the peculiar shape of the receptacles 
found imbedded in the clay, without any great stretch of the imagination. The 
part of the figure remaining forms an arc of a circle, with one of the triangular 
