972 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS, LOWER TOMBIGBEE RIVER. 
their bases, the excavations having, respectively, diameters of 16 feet, 17 feet, 12 
feet, and 11 feet. These excavations afterward were carefully refilled. 
Not a single fragment of earthenware was met with in the mounds, nor were 
the usual bits of stone present. One rough piercing implement of quartzite lay 
alone, as did a flat pendant of slaty stone, about 3.75 inches in length, with an 
elongated, pear-shaped outline. 
Human remains were hopelessly decayed. In one mound were: what was 
left of a skeleton lying at full length on the back; a skull and two small fragments 
of long-bone; and a skull, two scapule and, perhaps, parts of two humeri with 
another skull 5 inches lower. Оп the base of this mound was a skeleton lying at 
full length on the back. Near the skull were seven ordinary river pebbles, eighteen 
fragments of pebbles, one small arrowhead of jasper, one rude, pointed implement 
of quartzite, and one fragment of shell. With these were two fragments of a jaw 
of a wildeat, kindly identified for us by Prof. F. A. Lucas. 
In another mound was a lone skull 18 inches down, and, lying on what we 
judged to be the center of the base of the mound, traces of a full-length burial. 
A third mound had a lone skull 16 inches from the surface and, centrally on 
the base, a skeleton flexed on the right side with a bunch of bones beside it, in- 
cluding three skulls. 
The only human remains met with in one of the three largest mounds were 
parts of a skull. 
This grouping together of a considerable number of small mounds, which 18 
first met with at this place, going north on the Tombigbee, is noted here and there, 
following the river for a distance of seventeen miles until Bickley’s Landing is 
reached, where, in 1901, we found forty small mounds together. Above this point 
such groups of small mounds are not encountered on the Tombigbee. 
MOUNDS NEAR BRECKENRIDGE LANDING, MARENGO COUNTY. 
In high swamp, about one-half mile NNE. from the landing, at and near a set- 
tlement of colored persons, is a group of small mounds on property belonging to 
Messrs. J. D. Carter and Brother, of Myrtlewood, Alabama Certain of these 
mounds are in thick brush, some in open woods, a few in a cultivated field; others 
are immediately in the settlement. It is our belief that we failed to make an 
entirely accurate count of these mounds. Presumably some escaped our enumera- 
tion and others were twice included. At all events, the mounds number between 
forty and fifty—certainly more than forty. In height they range between 1 foot 
and slightly less than 6 feet, though the latter height is exceptional. In basal 
diameter the mounds are between 15 feet and 45 feet. We did not note at this 
place the presence of shallow pits or of deep depressions whence material had been 
taken, which were so numerous in the group of mounds near Beaver creek. 
As these mounds are resorted to by cattle when the river overflows its banks, 
we felt constrained to limit our investigation of them to the method we had adopted 
with the mounds near the mouth of Beaver creek—by excavating the central por- 
