﻿The Deercreek Mound. , 203 



The points to which your attention is mainly called in this skull, are : 

 1. The brachy-cephalic head. 2. The straight and long back of the head. 

 3. The prominent brow and large nose. 4. The deep lower jaw. 5. The 

 marked facial angle. These are points quite nearly coinciding with the 

 only Mound Builder skull figured in Vol. I., Smithsonian Contributions to 

 Knowledge ; also to the skull found in the Grave Creek Mound, and 

 roughly figured by Schoolcraft in Vol. I., Proceed. Am. Ethnological 

 Society, p. 412. 



They are points of strong contrast, and great difference from the so-called 

 Madisonville skulls, and suggest a possibility of thus proving a distinction 

 of the Mound Builders into a race by themselves. The fact in itself calls for 

 great care in preserving skulls, which are undoubtedly Mound Builders, by 

 themselves, and carefully distinguishing them from skulls often found in 

 mounds from burials by a later people. It also demands that greater care 

 than that of mere relic plunder is called for in opening and preserving the 

 remains of mounds. Squier and Davis assert that they only found one 

 perfect skull. I feel pretty certain that they did not go as carefully to 

 work to preserve them, or enough of them, for comparison, and the fact 

 that they never reported any attempts at comparison of even different 

 parts of the skull, corroborates my view. 



There is nothing beyond the octagonal stone ana the great labor of con- 

 structing the mound, that is seen in any of the artificial relics, which de- 

 notes a state of civilization or condition beyond some tribes of our historic 

 North American Indians. We can conclude, I think, without reasonable 

 doubt, from the age of the trees upon it, that the mound is at least three 

 hundred and fifty years old, and, probably, much older. That would carry 

 us back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, or further — a century 

 before the settling of New York City. It tells us that there existed at 

 the time of its erection an old forest growth,' and that our present forest 

 growth is either much older than it indicates in itself, in a direct .line, or 

 that it was a later forest growth than the one whose trees were buried to 

 make the vault. An oak tree, one and three-quarters feet in diameter, in- 

 dicates mure than a century's growth. The sea-shell ornaments, from 

 their position, indicates the vanity of the wearer and their probable 

 rarity. They were, no doubt, considered valuable, just as we to-day value 

 rare things with the same barbaric vanity — not because they possess in- 

 trinsic value, but because they are rare — and of them we make the same 

 vain display. It is only one of the many relics of barbarism which have 

 come down in our evolution from the barbaric to the civilized state. 



