GREAT INDIAN (MUIETEBIES OF THE WEST. 129 



foundation foi- the basement story, seventy by sixty feet, and four feet deep, we 

 exhuined one hundred and ten skeletons, numbered by the skulls ; but there were 

 several more, the skulls of which were so much decayed and intermingled with 

 othei-s that I did not take them into the calculation. I have no doubt that there 

 were at least one hundred and forty bodies buried within the bounds above men- 

 tioned ; and then on every side the skeletons had been severed, a part taken away 

 while the remains were left sticking in the wall. My garden, extending one hundred 

 and" fifty feet back from my house, is manured with human bones, and is very pro- 

 ductive. I cannot turn up a spadefull of earth without disturbing the remains of 

 the ancient dead. 



" Those exhumed by me, I have said, appeared to have been regularly buried ; 

 they were about two feet below the surface generally, but some not more than a 

 foot or eighteen inches, invariably with their heads toward the rivei- — the river at 

 this point running south 70° west ; some had rough unhammered stones extending 

 on both sides the full length, with a head and foot stone, and a stone covering the 

 head ; others, again, would have only a stone on each side of the head, a head and 

 foot stone, and a stone covering the head ; others, only a head and foot stone ; 

 and others, and much the greatest number, had ' nothing to mark the ground 

 where they were laid.' Most of the bones were entire ; but when exposed to the 

 atmosphere, many soon crumbled into dust, though others remained quite firm. 

 Several of the skulls, in a good state of preservation, I had in my house for months, 

 until they were broken up. The teeth appeared sound : I do not recollect an 

 instance of defective teeth ; there were many absent teeth, but this evidently arose 

 from their dropping out after burial. There were some skeletons of children : the 

 bones of those mouldered into dust almost immediately. 



" Many articles of Indian ornament, use, and warfare were excavated, such as 

 arrow-heads of flint and bone, glass beads, and that peculiar kind of ancient Indian 

 pottery, formed of clay and pulverized or pounded muscle-shells, which had evi- 

 dently received the action of heat to harden it. Some of the specimens of the 

 latter were very perfect, with well formed ears, like our pottery ware ; some well 

 formed, handsome stone pipes, glass beads, both black and blue, ornaments of 

 bone, etc. The other ridges, where they have been opened, have exhibited like 

 results : they are full of human bones, apparently regularly buried ; but the skeletons 

 have not been always found to lie at right angles with the river, but sometimes 

 parallel, and at other times diagonally. Upon this bottom, and covering these 

 remains in 1792, when the bottom was first settled, stood some of the largest trees 

 of the forest. We have sycamores now standing on the bank, between these 

 remains and the river, five feet in diameter at the stump. 



" There is another fact which perhaps I should mention. Maj. Davis, who owned 

 a farm on the Augusta bottom, about half a mile below the village, passing 

 opposite his lands where a part of the bank had fallen into the river, discovered a 

 bone sticking out of the bank ; and upon drawing it out, it proved to be the bone 

 of the rio-ht arm, and upon the wrist there were three hammered iron rings. They 

 were evidently of manufactured iron, round and formed to fit the wrist : the ends 

 brought together but not welded or closed ; the iron was destroyed, — it had been so 

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