172 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS, BLACK WARRIOR RIVER, 
On the chest of the skeleton of an adult, lying at full length on the back, was 
a gorget of shell, thickly coated with patina and with a deposit from the surrounding 
clay and sand. This gorget, bearing a complicated design on one side, after an 
unsuccessful effort on our part to clean it, was entrusted to experts who, though 
removing the accumulated material to a certain extent, were unable to make clear 
the design. i 
Forty-six inches below the surface lay a skeleton at full length on the back, as 
usual, having shell beads at the neck, and at the shoulder a slab of sedimentary 
rock, 9.5 inches by 14 inches by 1.1 inch thick. This slab, carefully dressed on all 
sides but one, where two deep grooves, front and back, show how it was separated 
from another portion, has for its only decoration two incised, parallel lines at each 
end on one side. On this slab are remains of red and of white pigment. 
Vessel No. 14, a cooking pot of coarse, yellow-brown ware, lay near several 
cervical vertebræ in a pit where great aboriginal disturbance had taken place. 
Near decaying fragments of a skull was found Vessel No. 15, an undecorated, 
broad-mouthed water-bottle. 
Apart from human remains, singly, were several fragments of “celts; ” one 
small disc of stone; several discs wrought from bits of pottery; slabs of stone ; 
hammer-stones; a circular stone doubly pitted; mica in a number of places; a 
piercing implement of bone with the articular portion remaining; a part of a 
smoking-pipe of: coarse earthenware, with rough incised lines on two opposite sides. 
It is worthy of remark how, in northwestern Florida and westward along the Gulf, as 
well as in the middle Mississippi district as pointed out by Holmes,’ where pottery 
vessels are of such excellent ware and of such variety of form and decoration, we 
find pipes of the same material so inferior in ware and characterized by such uniform 
want of originality as to shape and ornamentation. 
As we shall have occasion to refer to the finding of a number of pipes at 
Moundville, we may say here that we fully share Professor Holmes’ belief? * that 
the pipe was in use in America on the arrival of Europeans," and the more the | 
mounds are investigated, the more forcibly is this belief corroborated. 
Мосхр D. 
Mound D, with a summit plateau measuring approximately 60 feet by 90 feet, 
yielded to our trial-holes dark, disturbed soil and burials in the middle half of the 
‘eastern side and in the northern part of the western side. Therefore, we deemed 
it advisable to dig out the northern part of the plateau, to the depth of from 3 to 
4 feet, where the loamy soil ended and more solid clay began. The area dug through 
by us and the parts in which burials proved to be are shown in the plan (Fig. 58). 
Ten trial-holes were sunk into the southern half of the mound without material 
result. 
There were present in the soil, apart from human remains (though bones with 
: Pagel шен Ыт: of Eastern United States," 20th Ап. Rep. Bur. Ат. Eth., p. 83. 
7 eil, p. 45. 
