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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



In connection with this report, I wish to report upon the result of the 

 excavation and examination of a number of graves situated on a bluff along 

 the banks of the Scioto river, a mile or two below Vellowbud, in Ross Co., 

 Ohio, which I investigated in July, 1876. There were fifteen or twenty 

 of them scattered through a ten acre cornfield and watermelon patch. 

 They were all circular, about twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter and 

 about fifteen inches high. They were composed of a yellow sandy soil, 

 differing very markedly from the black soil of the field, and in that por- 

 tion of the field planted in melons, could be easily recognized by the dif- 

 ference in color. A number of these were examined a few days before I 

 arrived, and copper, mica and stone ornaments were taken from them. 

 Small pieces of mica with holes drilled in them, and many mica flakes 

 were picked out of the loose earth of these previous excavations by me on 

 my arrival. Copper beads and ornaments with many slips of mica and 

 stone ornaments were shown to me as coming out of these graves. There 

 were quantities of human bones taken out and found lying around loose. 

 I found these hard and strong, and so firm and perfect that I could 

 hardly bring myself to the belief that they dated back to the recent 

 Indians. I examined a number of these graves in which I found nothing 

 but human bones in a tolerable state of preservation. So far as I could 

 learn, no articles of European make were ever found in these graves. I 

 have alluded to these graves because they are apparently the beginning of 

 mounds constructed recently, or else used as places of interment by the 

 recent Indians. From my observations I would say they were constructed 

 by our late Indians. . Further than that, this locality is only a few miles 

 north of " Mound City," that circular enclosure filled with so many 

 mounds and the source of so much of the results of Squier and Davis* 

 investigation. The mounds described by them were nearly all small, and 

 the variations in size from those they report and those I now tell you 

 about are so slight as to make one question the fact as to whether those 

 of Mound City were not really Indian graves. It will also be remembered 

 that the finest pieces of sculpturing, pipes, etc., which Squier and Davis 

 describe, came from Mound City, so that this strikes a blow at once at the 

 division of Mound Builders and Indians into separate races. I am compelled 

 to say that I have long believed there is a difference, and that I am not yet 

 convinced that there is not a difference. That the Mound Builders should 

 be connected in some way with some of the people scattered from Alaska 

 to Patagonia, and all called Indians, I will admit, but I do not believe we 

 have proved them to be identical with our recent North American Indians, 

 and there are numerous reasons to make me think they are not identical. 



