372 ETHNCLOGZ. 



Saint Clair Eiver, and which extend from a point sonth of Fort Gratiot 

 for about one and one-half miles northward, along the west shore of the 

 river and of Lake Huron. [Fig. 4.] A collection of a large number of 

 relics was made by me from the location, and were forwarded, accom- 

 panied by a report on the subject, to the Peabody Museum. My paper, 

 embodying the principal facts, subsequently formed a part of the annual 

 report of the trustees,* and was afterward copied into several of the 

 leading periodicals of the country, including the American Journal of 

 Science.t The general publicity thus given the discoveries precludes 

 the necessity of more than a passing notice here. 



Those numerous mounds are, with few exceptions, of similar charac- 

 ter, and were largely used for burial purposes. One of them presented 

 some features distinctive of the ''refuse-heaps" of our Atlantic coast 

 and of the North of Europe, a wide area at one end being covered with 

 " a solid crust of black ashes, from eighteen inches to two feet thick, 

 containing the bones of various animals used for food, broken pottery, 

 and stone implements." 



The relics from the mounds, in addition to those usually found, con- 

 sisted of an extraordinarily large number of broken stone-hammers of 

 the rudest kind ; a plate of mica five by four inches ; and two necklaces, 

 one made of small bones, stained a beautiful green color, resembling 

 enamel, the other composed of the teeth of the moose, alternatiug with 

 well- wrought beads of copper; and the bones; of birds, staiued green, as 

 in the first instance. In the mound containing the last-mentioned 

 ornaments several interments had been made, and the decayed stump 

 of a scarlet oak,{Quercus coccmeaWang,) two feet in diameter, sur- 

 mounted the summit, the roots spreading above the contents in all 

 directions. 



The human bones were all very tender from decay, and in most 

 instances crumbled to pieces. All the tibiw noticed by me exhibited 

 the characteristic platycnemic compression. In dwelling on this cir- 

 cumstance, in connection with my previous discoveries in the same 

 direction, I may remark that " I cannot but believe, from what I have 

 seen, that future investigation will extend the area in which this type 

 of bone is predominant to the entire region of the great lakes, if not 

 of the great West; or, in other words, that at least the northern 

 'mound-builders' will be found to have possessed this trait in the 

 degree and to the extent denoted ;" which prediction recent discoveries 

 in Wisconsin and Iowa would seem in a fair way to fulfill. 



In the following table I present an exhibit of a few of the tihiw; 

 though I am convinced they do not show the extreme cases of com- 

 pression occurring here, as most of the flattest bones fell to pieces 

 before they could be measuj?ed. But such as it is, even, it is valuable, 



* Sixth Anoual Eeport of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of Archssology and 

 Ethnology. Boston, 1873. 

 t American Journal of Science and Arta, M sgries, vol. vii, pp. 1-9. January, 1874. 



