SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 449 
Partly flexed on the left side, adults, 2; adolescent, 1, 3 
There was no fixed orientation of the burials at this place, heads being directed 
toward various points of the compass. 
Although considerable age must be aceorded the burials at Ресап Point, since 
nothing in any way indicating contact with white persons was found there, yet 
possibly owing to the quantity of ashes in the made-ground in which the burials 
lay, which would act as a preservative, the skeletal remains were in an excellent 
state of preservation, enabling us to obtain there forty-eight skulls and other skele- 
tal remains, which were included in our gift to the National Museum. 
An interesting pathological specimen was met with: Burial No. 69, the skele- 
ton of an adult, had a badly united fracture in the upper fourth of the left femur, 
with anterior displacement of the upper fragment. 
On the surface, where they had been ploughed up, and in the soil of the dwell- 
ing-site, were many flint chisels which had been made from pebbles, often ones 
especially selected owing to a shape which lent itself to the making of a chisel 
with a minimum amount of chipping. Some chisels, however, were made from 
pebbles broken in two or from which considerable parts had been removed. After 
the pebbles had been chipped to the required shape, they were ground somewhat, 
especially on both sides at one end, to confer a cutting edge. In Fig. 60 is shown 
a selected pebble; one chipped and ready for grinding; and a completed chisel. 
In the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology" is shown one of the 
chisels from Pecan Point. 
Also scattered throughout the made-ground were numerous small, flint arrow- 
points,whole or in various stages of completion; one large projectile-point or knife 
of flint, made with a single barb, a type well known as coming from parts of 
Arkansas, Louisiana and elsewhere; several celts of moderate size, one of these of 
fine-grained sandstone, another probably of metamorphic rock; a small, flat mass 
of bituminous coal; a few, rude, discoidal stones made from pebbles originally flat ; 
many flat, circular pebbles not artificially shaped; numerous disks made from frag- 
ments of pottery vessels, some centrally perforated; a tube of bone with an encir- 
cling groove near one end; a shell of a cretaceous fossil ( лосуға costata) which 
occurs in western Arkansas; two scales of the gar-pike, such as Du Pratz says were 
used as arrowpoints by the Mississippi Indians; three mussel-shells found one 
within the other, two of which, probably belonging to the same shell-fish ( Unto 
anadontoides), had been carefully worked to a point at one end; an astragalus of 
an elk and three belonging to Virginia deer, all showing workmanship to enable 
them to be used as dice in a game; in a little pile together, five wing-bones belong- 
ing to the wild swan, the wild goose, and the wild turkey. We have spoken before 
of the curious custom at the Rhodes Place, the Bradley Place and at Pecan Point, 
to put near or with the dead, metacarpal bones of birds of considerable size. The 
evidences of this custom were especially noticeable at Pecan Point, but here, how- 
ever, each occurrence was not recorded by us as the bones sometimes were too 
badly crushed and decayed for identification. 
' P. 470, Fig. 142. 
57 JOURN. A. N. 8. PHILA., VOL. XIV. 
