CERTAIN MOUNDS OF ARKANSAS AND OF MISSISSIPPI. 
By CLARENCE B. Moore. 
PARETE 
MOUNDS AND CEMETERIES OF THE LOWER ARKANSAS RIVER. 
When it became evident that our quest on the Yazoo and Sunflower rivers 
in the State of Mississippi (described in the latter part of this report), was not 
destined to succeed, we turned to the Arkansas river. 
This river we investigated as far up as Natural Steps, twenty miles above the 
city of Little Rock, Arkansas, a distance of 194 miles by water, according to the 
Government survey. This survey, however, was made long ago, and the river in 
recent years, by cutting its way across bends, has shortened its course; therefore, 
the distance gone over by us was considerably less than the figures given. 
The time spent on this work, in our flat-bottomed steamer, with thirteen men 
to dig and four to supervise, was fifty-six ' days, including parts of February and 
April, and all of March, 1908. 
Our custom to send agents in advance to find the exact locations of mounds, 
had not been followed in the case of those on the Arkansas river. 
With the exception of the Menard mound, and the so-called Toltee group 
below Little Rock, the mounds on the Arkansas river between its mouth and Nat- 
ural Steps (that part of the river with which this report has to do), are insignificant 
in number and in size; while aboriginal cemeteries, as to the location of which a 
clue could be had, were far from numerous. The river is constantly changing its 
course, and many mounds and cemeteries, no doubt, have been swept away in the 
past or have been left far inland. 
When Marquette,’ the first of the French explorers of this region, visited the 
aborigines not far from the Arkansas River, in 1673, he found them cooking Indian 
corn “in large earthen pots very curiously made." “They have also,” we are 
1 ; Including four days on the White and LaGrue Rivers 
French, Historical Collections of Louisiana, Par t II, p. 295. To those who have not 
access to the original French in Margry's “ Découvertes, » Ше Historical Collections of Louisiana,” 
edited by B. F. French, will be of interest. The five parts appeared, respectively, in 1846, 1850, 1851, 
1852, 1853. The reader, however, must bear in mind that the “ Collections” contain cone and 
mistranslations, and that incorporated i in Part I is the fictitious account by Father Hennepin of a jour- 
ney by ү е down the Mississippi to the Gulf, which journey the mendacious friar never accomplished. 
econd series edited by B. F. French, “ Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida," two 
ан one published іп 1869, опе іп 1875, complete these ** Collections 
61 JOURN. A. М. 8. PHILA., VOL. XIII. 
