ARCHEOLOGY. 23 



From another in a small mound near Chillicothe were obtained over two 

 hundred pipes made from several varieties of stone and carved into faith- 

 ful effigies of more than a score of different animals and birds. In a very 

 large mound a few miles from the last, were several altars covered with 

 specimens, many of them different from any previously discovered; for 

 examples, a copper axe weighing thirty-eight pounds; obsidian imple- 

 ments over a foot in length, of exquisite finish ; pearl and copper beads so 

 numerous they were measured in cigar-boxes ; copper plates stamped and 

 cut into most intricate designs and figures seemingly impossible of 

 accomplishment without steel dies and cutters. Nearly all in the above 

 list — which might be indefinitely multiplied, though not with such 

 remarkable examples — had been injured by fire after they were deposited; 

 some of the copper was partially fused, the pipes and many other stone 

 pieces badly shattered, the shells and pearls almost calcified. 



Such specimens, though most abundant on the altars, are by no 

 means confined to them. They are found in other parts of the same 

 mounds, and in mounds without altars. In these cases they most fre- 

 quently occur with skeletons, or in positions indicating obsequies. Some, 

 however, may be found singly or in small collections, at the bottom or in 

 the body of the mound, having no relation to other deposits or, apparently, 

 to the general purpose of the structure. Usually the latter are less care- 

 fully wrought or of inferior material; a part of them may have been 

 dropped by the builders, but others were so placed intentionally. They 

 may be votive offerings or a tribute to the dead, overlooked at the proper 

 time, or added subsequently. 



The tumuli usually contain few skeletons ; the ossuaries where, at 

 long intervals, were deposited the bones of all who had died since the last 

 general sepulture, or the communal burial mounds in which bodies are 

 piled one over another year after year, such as are frequent in other 

 localities, seem foreign to Ohio, unless in the northern counties. Occa- 

 sionally a mound fully twenty feet high was erected over one person; 

 often not more than five or six skeletons are found; very seldom more 

 than twenty. In most cases the body was extended on the back, though 

 instances are reported of skeletons sitting up or lying on either side, 

 extended or drawn up till the knees touch the chin. The head may be 

 toward any point of the compass; in many mounds no two skeletons are 

 parallel or in the same posture. Ordinarily the bodies were laid on the 

 surface and a mound built over them; but it is not unusual to find 

 remains at various places within the deposited earth. The spot selected 

 was almost invariably cleaned off before burial, though the sod was not 

 always removed, as shown by a thin, grayish, clayey streak, seldom more 

 than an inch thick, produced by decay of grass and roots covered with 

 earth. Graves, most of them less than two feet deep, have been found in 

 the earth beneath the tumuli; in some, the disposition of the bodies and 

 character of the specimens with them is the same as in the mound; in 



