592 SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON RED RIVER. 
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cultivation. This mound, which is irregularly circular, has a diameter of about 50 
feet and a height of 4.5 feet. A tree 14 feet in circumference 2.5 feet from the 
ground monopolizes the central part of the mound. 
On the plowed ground nearby were many fragments of pottery and chips of 
flint, but, curiously enough, no arrowheads rewarded a careful search. 
Trial-holes, one of which, SW. of the central tree, was 7.5 feet by 13 feet, were 
sunk over the surface of the mound and carried to a maximum depth of 7 feet 9 
inches to underlying yellow sand in search of sub-basal pits. Some of the trial-holes 
came upon burials in the southern half of the mound, mostly well down the slope. 
Others were similarly successful in ground extending from the southern side of the 
mound into the cultivated field. The ground at that place was somewhat higher 
than the rest of the field and had risen under deposits made during aboriginal 
occupancy. From this ground had been plowed up the debris we have referred to 
which lay all over it and over parts of the field near it. Human bones and pottery, 
in fragments, were found in places on this ground. 
The very irregular space in which burials were found, though persistent dig- 
ging was done for days in all parts of the mound and its vicinity, was an area 
about equivalent to 35 feet square. Eleven burials were encountered, ten of adults, 
one of a child, none with bones in condition to preserve. The adult skeletons lay 
extended on the back; the legs of two of the skeletons were separated, doubtless to 
allow the introduction of the pottery vessels which were found between the legs. 
Six of the ten adult skeletons lay with the skulls directed S. or within two or 
three degrees from S.; the remaining four headed respectively N., N. by E., N. by 
W., S. by E., or very nearly so. 
The burials lay in pits, which, however, with one exception, were difficult to 
trace with exactness as they were large, and in the restricted space in which they 
had been placed, sometimes intersected one another. Furthermore, though there 
was much clay in the made-ground locally, there was also much sand, so that in 
attempting to dig out the pits one encountered serious downfalls of material which 
obliterated the boundaries of the graves. 
Though the lower part of the slope of the mound and the made-ground 
extending from its southern side had been cultivated, and we found burials there 
disturbed by the plow, nevertheless a pit 5 feet 8 inches in depth was discovered 
in the made-ground outside the limits of the mound proper. Other burials in this 
ground ranged in depth between the superficial ones cited and one at a depth of 3 
feet 10 inches. 
A pit in the body of the mound, the exception we have noted, began as to its 
northern boundary near the southwestern side of the central tree and extended 
somewhat down the southern slope. Its limits were clearly defined, the material 
in which it was differing somewhat from that of the made-ground of the extension 
from the southern part of the mound in which most of the burials were. Its dimen- 
sions were : length, 9 feet 2 inches; width, northern end, 6 feet 10 inches; southern 
end, 6 feet 8 inches. The depth of this pit, which was traceable from the surface, 
was 7 feet 8 inches to clear, yellow sand. 
