1883.] Indian Stone Graves. 133 
obsolete after the contact with the whites. Yet, supposing such 
articles had been exhumed by ignorant relic-hunters, their signifi- 
cance would not have been appreciated by them, and the very 
fact of their existence would soon have been forgotten. 
I have seen many stone graves in Illinois and Missouri, and have 
opened a few of them. A short account of my rather limited ex- 
perience in this kind of exploration was communicated to Colonel 
Charles C. Jones, who published it in his well-known work on 
the antiquities of the Southern Indians.’ I therefore will not 
repeat in this place what is already in print ; but I will draw spe- 
cial attention to a fact, which, though isolated, is of some im- 
portance in its bearing upon the question of the continuance of 
stone-grave burial in recent times. i 
In 1861, while engaged in the investigations referred to, I vis- 
ited the farm of Dr. Hammond Shoemaker, situated near Colum- 
bia, in Monroe county, Illinois. After some conversation, the 
Doctor invited me to follow him to one of his maize-fields, and 
there he showed me an empty stone grave, until lately the last 
resting-place of a Kickapoo Indian, who, the Doctor informed 
me, had been murdered many years ago, by one of his own tribe. 
The incident and the victim’s interment by his people were then 
(1861) still in the recollection of old farmers of the county. As 
for the grave, I can assert that it differed in no way from others 
seen by me in the neighborhood. Several years before my visit, 
the Doctor had opened it and taken out the well-preserved skele- 
ton, being in need of a skull for instructing a young man then 
studying the medical art under his guidance. Dr. Shoemaker 
was afterward induced to remove the skull, his wife not liking 
the aspect of that grim object, and, in order to put it altogether 
out of sight, he buried it in a piece of ground near his farm- 
house. I was very desirous of obtaining the skull, and the Doc- 
tor kindly expressed his willingness to part with it, provided it 
Could be found. He took a spade and we went in search of the 
skull. But unfortunately the area was covered with a dense 
growth of grass, and as the Doctor could not identify the spot 
where he had interred the skull, our efforts to recover it proved 
fruitless, _ 
At that time Dr. Shoemaker was a white-haired, hale old gen- 
_ ‘Jones (Charles C.) : Antiquities of the Southern Indians, particularly of the 
Georgia Tribes. New York, 1873, p. 218, etc. 
