side to such an extent that a portion of the clavicle had entered 

 the mouth. 



Several facts in connection with this layer of bodies lying on 

 the shells are very suggestive. All were adults save one, a lit- 

 tle child, near whose head three small pots of clay were found. 

 The bodies lay in close juxtaposition, the skulls of some 

 crushed in as by a blow from a blunt instrument; the bones of 

 all the bodies lay in anatomical order, while the white sand in 

 the ridge above was precisely the same shade throughout. 

 From all this it would seem almost conclusive that over the 

 bodies of many men slain in battle a long ridge of pure white 

 sand was erected, and this ridge was never disturbed by subse- 

 quent burials, no skeletons being found in the white sand. 

 However upon it many bodies were afterwards placed at inter- 

 vals and covered with a mixture of sandy loam and shells 

 intermingled, considerably increasing the height of the ridge, 

 which was rounded out with sandy loam to form the mound. 

 We are told that the lower Creeks and Seminoles hid the bod- 

 ies of their dead save in the case of a victorious battle, when a 

 mound was raised over them, a fact that would still farther 

 strengthen the conclusion arrived at, were it possible to -attrib- 

 ute to the Tick Island mound an origin as late as the occupancy 

 of the Peninsula of Florida by those tribes of Indians. 



Upon the mound lies a fallen live-oak that was old when the 

 Creeks left their home to the North, and separate burials were 

 continued long after the fight was over. Moreover, though 

 negative testimony, any investigator of the burial mounds of 

 Florida knows how frequently in post-Columbian times arti- 

 cles valued by the deceased were buried with them, and that, 

 on the river at least, mounds erected or used for intrusive bur- 

 ials after the coming of the whites teem with beads of glass, 

 and that pieces of copper, tomahawks of iron, beads and trink- 

 ets of silver and even ornaments of gold are 1 occasionally 



: Georgia, an opinion w 

 any valuable references, has ably combated in the 

 f melal found in Florida, 



Report 1882, page 1 



