346 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE ALABAMA RIVER. 



a survival of the aboriginal custom of placing objects with the dead, on the breast 

 of a child in a pine coffin was a Spanish piece of eight reals of the year 1815 — one 

 of those "pieces of eight" which the buccaneers so highly prized. 



In all, nineteen aboriginal burials, some greatly disturbed, were met with, the 

 form coinciding with that in vogue in the mounds in the Thirty-Acre Field. All 

 bones were past preservation, through decay. 



With burials were a handsome "celt" of fine-grained Syenite, 11.5 inches in 

 length ; a chisel ; quantities of shell beads and pins ; a mushroom-shaped object of 

 earthenware, somewhat broken ; a deposit of copper pendants, in small pieces, of 

 the type already described ; two discs of copper of the type found in the Thirty- 

 Acre Field mound and another deposit of pendants, one on the other, similar in 

 type to the other lot. These pendants lay on a coarse fabric of twisted vegetable 

 fibre, which, in its turn, lay upon cane matting. This material, like other wrap- 

 ping material found on copper in other sections, was, in our opinion, not to envelop 

 the copper alone, but was simply a part of a general envelopment of the entire 

 skeleton of which the portion found, preserved by the copper salt, alone remains. 

 We see how the Peruvians wrapped their dead and doubtless, in many sections, a 

 similar custom obtained in this country. 



Mr. Harlan I. Smith, of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, has recently 

 published the results of his work in the southern interior of British Columbia. 1 Of 

 the burials there he tells us, " the bodies were buried upon the side, with the knees 

 drawn up to the chest. They were wrapped in a fabric made of sage-brush bark, 

 and were covered with mats of woven rushes." 



Mound at Jackson's Bend, Elmore County. 



Jackson's Bend, having the Alabama on one side, the Coosa on another, has, 



on the Coosa side, a farm belonging to Mr. Brown Jackson, colored, overlooking the 



water. In periods succeeding floods it has been the custon of those residing near 



to examine the section of the bluff laid bare and to dig 



f where dark-colored earth, running down, indicated the pres- 



ence of a grave. We were shown many objects of interest 

 taken from these graves, some of which, kindly presented 

 to us, showed contact with the whites. Among the objects 

 of aboriginal make was a portion of a bowl of a tobacco- 

 pipe in the shape of a human head (Fig. 69). 

 In the S. E. corner of the Bluff Field, over which were 

 scattered numerous arrowheads of quartz and of chert, was 

 Fl jacWs%\nL t tFuirs P ize e ) a mound lon g under cultivation, about 3.5 feet high and of 

 indeterminable basal diameter. This mound, which, we are 

 told, had been previously dug into, was trenched to a certain extent by us, resulting 

 in the discovery of the head and shoulders of a skeleton with a number of marine 

 shells [Oliva literatd) perforated longitudinally for stringing. The remainder of 

 1 "Science." N. S., Vol. IX, No. 224, pp. 535 to 539, April 14, 1899. 



