582 SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON RED RIVER. 
The basal outline of the mound was roughly elliptical; the diameters E. and 
W. and N. and 8., respectively, were 82 feet and 62 feet. Тһе diameter of the 
summit-plateau, which originally had been small, was difficult to determine owing 
to the presence of a trench and of debris thrown out in its making. This trench, 
made by former diggers,—faint-hearted ones if they were treasure-seekers,—began 
near the margin of the southern part of the mound and continued up, so nearly as 
we could determine, to what had been the center of the summit-plateau, where a 
hole about 3 feet in diameter at the surface, tapering almost to a point had been 
sunk to the basal part of the mound. 
The trench, about 5 feet in diameter on top, converged considerably. Its 
depth was about 2 feet. So far as any interference with the investigation of the 
mound was concerned, this trench could be ignored. 
The mound had every appearance of having been made for burial purposes. 
As Mr. Haynes, the owner of the plantation, probably felt that his land, which 
was high in places, would not all be submerged even if the levee which surrounded 
the estate gave way, permission was accorded us to treat the mound as we saw fit, 
and in consequence it was completely demolished, our diggers carrying out the 
work on a level from 1 to 2 feet below the base of the mound, judging from its 
height as ascertained by us. In addition, narrow but deep pits were frequently 
dug down from the level of the work to aid in a search for graves. 
The mound was variously composed. Much of it consisted of a mixture of 
clay and sand—mostly clay—brown in color. Also, there was considerable red 
clay in places, and, locally, very considerable layers of light-yellow sand. There 
was no uniform stratification throughout. 
This mound was a problem. No line of original base or trace of such a line 
was apparent, and digging below where the base-line might have been expected to 
ђе, in places came upon yellow sand, seemingly undisturbed, and elsewhere upon 
solid red clay without a trace of disturbance. Hence the original base of the 
mound could not have been below the level of our digging. Why the black 
stratum which usually marks the base of the mound (of little thickness if it is the 
result of decayed vegetation alone, more marked if the debris of aboriginal life has 
contributed toward its making) was absent from this mound only can be surmised. 
Possibly, prior to the making of the mound, the ground had been cleared by the 
aborigines for some reason, or perhaps the region recently had been subject to 
wash from the nearby river. 
Throughout the demolition of the mound, with the exception of a burial to be 
described in due course, the only internal evidence of the erection of the mound by 
the hand of man was the mixture of the component materials. Bits of pottery, 
bones of lower animals, fire-places, fragments of stone, were absent. 
Five feet six inches south of an imaginary vertical line passing through the 
meeting-point of the axes of the basal plane of the mound, but on a level 2 feet 4 
inches below this plane, if we consider it to have been at a depth of 7.5 feet (which, 
as we have said, was the height of the mound when measured from the outside), 
