CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS OF THE GEORGIA COAST. 71 



partly flexed on the right side, heading S. With it were hematite and a rude 

 pendant wrought from a section of the columella of a marine univalve, grooved at 

 one end for suspension. 



Burial No. 50, Vessels D and E, 24 feet N., just beneath the surface, 

 was a badly broken vessel of the ordinary type with a perforated base. The rim 

 had been ploughed away. Within were fragments of bones of an infant so young 

 that the milk teeth had not erupted. Above this vessel was an inverted bowl in 

 fragments, undecorated save for a row of small knobs beneath the exterior margin. 



Burial No. 51, 25 feet N. by W., nine inches down, a skeleton of a male, flexed 

 on the right side, head S. by E. Associated was a nest of small pebbles, doubtless 

 formerly included within a tortoise shell. 



With a number of burials not especially noted was decayed wood or bark. In 

 the mound, loose in the sand, was a somewhat fragmentary undecorated tobacco 

 pipe. Sherds, undecorated, cord-marked and with check and complicated stamp, 

 were present. A portion of an undecorated vessel which, while whole, had also 

 seen service as a hone, showed five grooves, a part of one of which had been on the 

 missing portion. 



Aboriginal Enclosure at Sapelo High Point, Sapelo Island, McIntosh County. 



On Sapelo High Point, near the northwest end of Sapelo Island, overlooking 

 Sapelo Sound and, at periods of storm, washed by the waters of Big Mud river (the 

 southernmost fork of the sound) which had laid bare a section of the walls, is an 

 almost circular aboriginal fortification or ceremonial enclosure. This enclosure (see 

 plan, Fig. 48), which we examined by permission of Amos Sawyer, Esq., upon whose 

 property it is, has a diameter, including the walls, of somewhat over 300 feet. 

 The walls have an average height of from 5 to 7 feet, and a thickness of about 50 

 feet at the base. They are flattened on top where at present they have an average 

 width of from 10 to 15 feet. They are covered with forest trees, and are composed 

 exclusively of shells, mainly those of the oyster, with the usual midden refuse 

 intermingled, such as fragments of bone, bits of earthenware, and the like. 



Those most familiar with the history of Southern Georgia have failed to find 

 any allusion to this work in chronicles or histories, nor does any local tradition 

 attach to it. 



That the work is aboriginal is, in our opinion, beyond the shadow of a doubt 

 since a fortification made by Europeans would be of sand found on the spot and not 

 from shells gathered here and there from small deposits at a distance. On one side 

 of the mound only are shells within sight, and these consist of circular deposits not 

 over 18 inches in height, from which no shells have been taken. There is no 

 question then but this is one of those symmetrical works of the aborigines made by 

 piling shell through a period of time to form some definite shape such as a great 

 ridge on Barbour's Island not far from Sapelo, or at Enterprise, Florida, or the great 

 oblong mound of shell lying in the swamp near Volusia, Florida, with no shell 

 surrounding it, a full description of which we have given in the American Naturalist. 1 



1 "Certain Shell Heaps of the St. Johns River, Florida," January, 1893. 



