358 CERTAIN ANTIQUITIES OF THE FLORIDA WEST-COAST. 



object of interest was met with during the work, and as this so closely agrees with 

 our experience of the shell heaps of the west coast, we are inclined to accept it. 



Mound near Little Manatee River, Hillsboro County. 



On the north side of the Little Manatee river, about 1.5 miles up, is the resi- 

 dence of Mrs. Cordelia Hoey, on the summit of a great aboriginal shell heap, possi- 

 bly one of those seen by DeSoto and his men. A short distance in a northerly 

 direction from the house is a mound thickly covered with scrub, into which a small 

 trench had been dug prior to our visit. The mound, irregularl}- circular and rather 

 rugged as to its surface, has a base diameter of about 58 feet, a height of 6 feet. 

 From the southwest side of the mound an aboriginal canal, almost straight, runs a 

 distance of 238 feet to the water. Leaving the mound the canal is 64 feet across, 

 converging to a width of 36 feet at its union with the water. The canal, in com- 

 mon with the field through which it runs, has been under cultivation, and conse- 

 quently is irregular as to sides and bottom. The maximum depth is now 3 feet 3 

 inches, though, according to Mr. Hoey, twenty years ago, when first he came to the 

 place, the sides were steeper and the canal about 2 feet deeper, so that high tides 

 entered the field until a dam was placed across the mouth of the canal. 



Beginning in the marginal part of the northeast side of the mound, a trench 

 35 feet across at the beginning was run 29 feet in to the center of the mound, where 

 the trench had converged to a width of 9 feet. The mound was of pure white 

 sand, unstratified. At the very outset burials were encountered. In all, 112 

 burials were met with, classing as such human remains with which the cranium 

 was present and omitting a limited number of bones found loose in the mound. 

 These burials were in a much greater state of flexion than we have usually seen in 

 our mound work. The prevailing form of interment was a squatting position, the 

 feet on a level with the pelvis, the legs against the thighs and these drawn up 

 against the body. The upper arms were against the sides with the forearms some- 

 times raised parallel to the upper arms and sometimes on the chest, reaching to the 

 neck. The head was bent over and forced down between the thighs, sometimes to 

 the pelvis. Certain skeletons lay on the side with the same general arrangement of 

 the extremities and the skull pressed over against the knees. So compact were these 

 bundles of bones, which were not the bunched burial so often met with, where sepa- 

 rate bones, not in order, are loosely piled in a heap, that we believe the skeletons in 

 this mound, perhaps denuded of flesh, but held together by ligaments, were envel- 

 oped in wrapping of some sort and tightly bound with cord or sinew. One of these 

 bundles of the average size was 23 inches long and about 26 inches in circumference. 



The crania were so decayed and so injured by roots of palmetto scrub which 

 covered the mound, that none was preserved. 



In connection with human bones lying loose in the mound, and with probable 

 denudation of flesh from the skeletons prior to interment, the reader will recall that 

 it was near Tampa that DeSoto rescued Juan Ortiz, a member of a former Spanish 

 expedition, who was found guarding from wild beasts, dead bodies of aborigines, 

 exposed for a period prior to interment. 



