ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF THE MISSOURI RIVER. 531 



I measured the stump of a white-oak which had grown in one of the trenches, 

 but had been cut down several years ago. It measured three feet and a half 

 in diameter two and a half feet above the roots. In other parts of the trenches, 

 red-oaks more than three feet in diameter are still standing. There are three or 

 four mounds near the intersection of the spur with the main ridge. From a half 

 to three-quarters of a mile from the earthworks and on a line parallel with the 

 west side, there begins an area of country extending to near the terrace before 

 mentioned, a distance of about two miles and which is about the same width the 

 other way. This entire area is literally covered over with low mounds, contain- 

 ing wood ashes, stone implements, pottery, mussel shells, and animal and human 

 bones. Indeed the whole ground seems to be filled in this way. 



" I dug into two of these mounds, in the field of Mr. Casebolt — they extend 

 over four or five large farms — and for a depth of five feet I found successive 

 layers of wood ashes and clay filled with broken pottery, flint chippings, bones 

 and shells. The bones were those of birds and animals. But Mr. Casebolt, on 

 the same farm, had a cellar dug under a part of his house after it was built, and 

 in digging, at a depth of about three feet, two human skeletons were found side 

 by side, buried extended in a horizontal position, at full length. The bones were 

 said to be very much decayed, and crumbled upon exposure to the atmosphere." 



In his fourth article, in continuation of the antiquities at the Pinnacles and 

 the history and tradition claimed by some to be associated with the "Old Fort," 

 Judge West says: "The effort of the human race to attain a higher and better 

 condition, is a matter of the deepest concern to all reflecting persons, and man's 

 early struggle for good, in the race's infancy, are no less important than his efforts 

 in a more advanced condition. In the grand problem of intellectual advancement 

 every step is alike interesting and must stand upon a common level in the highest 

 consideration of the great question. We find monuments of the humbler efforts 

 of man, in his primitive condition, mingled with the work of the higher civiliza- 

 tion of to-day, but they are fast fading away under its relentless incroachments. 

 Each succeeding race, in its advance, destroys the work of the preceding races. 

 As we are ruthlessly obliterating what has preceded us in human endeavor, so in 

 the time to come, a grander enlightenment will still further make the forces of 

 nature subservient to it and will efface the efforts of to-day with an equally relent- 

 less hand. But as our race has had its infancy, so too, it must have its time of 

 decrepitude and old age, and in the grand mutations of time, pass from the 

 world's evanescent stage. 



' ' In my last article I promised a further account of the antiquities about 

 Miami, and a notice of history and tradition attempted to be associated with the 

 " Old Fort." The work of the race which forms so conspicuous a feature in the 

 vicinity of the " Pinnacles," true to the law of the survival of the fittest, is rapidly 

 passing away under the arts of civiHzation, and unless preserved by some friendly 

 hand, will, ei:e long, be totally obliterated. Each succeeding year, as time moves 

 on, the plowshare still continues to throw down its monuments. But to my prom- 

 ise. Those who associate history with the old fort, claim that it was constructed 



