ABORIGINAL SITES IN LOUISIANA AND IN ARKANSAS. 67 
Four of them are almost perfect; the other two are partly destroyed by the 
caving of the banks of the Bayou Macon. They are connected with each other 
by a levee or narrow embankment of earth, making a nearly semicircular figure. 
There are two much larger mounds nearer to Floyd, one on Mr. Mabin's, and one 
on Mr. Motley's land. The latter must be between 20 and 30 feet in height. 
[What was formerly known as the Mabin Place is now the Poverty Point Plan- 
tation.] 
“On all the sides of all of the mounds, and in their vicinity, are found great 
numbers of relies, such as human bones, arrowheads, ‘plumb-bobs’ very perfect 
in form and immense quantities of broken pottery. Many of the pieces of 
pottery are highly ornamented. From the quantity of pottery, I imagine there 
must have been a factory of this ware in this locality. Excavations would in 
all probability reveal some very valuable and interesting specimens and I 
think it should be done by one accustomed to searching for archeological re- 
mains." 
In the opening part of Professor Lockett's statement reference is made to the 
mounds on the Jackson Place, our description of which immediately precedes this. 
We shall now consider the sites on Poverty Point and on the Motley Place, 
based on our own investigation. 
At Poverty Point, in full view from the bayou, rising from the flat, cultivated 
land, is a huge, aboriginal earthwork that at first glance almost impresses even 
the trained observer as being not a mound, but a hill. 
This mound, which for convenience we shall call Mound А, is in the shape 
of a ridge extending north and south, the upper, central part being narrow, as 
may be seen by the survey (Fig. 29) made at the time of our visit by Dr. M. G. 
Miller. The height of the mound is 70 feet, taken from the southern end, where 
conditions seemed most. favorable for determination, there being at that place 
no evidence of the depressions and ridges which were present elsewhere about 
the mound. 
From the central part of the eastern side of the mound extends a platform 
directed almost due east, the outline of which has been greatly impaired by 
wash of rain. This platform is connected with the summit of the ridge by a 
causeway, shown in the plan. The basal diameter of Mound A, north and south, 
is 680 feet. East and west, including the platform, it is 690 feet. 
To dig into so vast a mound as this seemed almost like the proverbial search 
for a needle in a haystack; nevertheless, trial-holes were put down on the erest 
of the mound, coming at once to raw clay, and also superficially in the platform, 
where burials, however, had such ever been there, evidently had long since been 
washed away, leaving compact, yellow clay on the surface. 
This great mound (A) forms part of a group of six which at one time may 
have been in the shape of a rude circle or of an irregular ellipse. At the present 
time, however, rain has so eroded the high area that rises above the bayou that 
the only representative of the figure (if there ever was one), between north and 
