resting place, the skull within was not broken and could not be 

 taken out without breaking it or the pot, a fact which attracted 

 much comment at the time. I remember one remark of Mr. 

 Phillips.-- "The pot was made over the person's head as a pun- 

 ishment." The pot 1 and skull were afterwards broken by an acci- 

 dent to the box in which it was packed. 



"All the articles in this mound were well preserved as the plas- 

 tering protected them from the elements." 



The character of the articles found in the "Big Mound" 

 mentioned in the foregoing account by Prof. Swallow, will be un- 

 derstood from the following short descriptions and accompanying 

 illustrations. The woodcuts, though rather roughly executed! are 

 generally quite characteristic of the articles represented. The 

 numbers used in the descriptions and to designate the figures are 

 those under which the articles are entered in the Museum Catalogue. 



The clay in some of the vessels has been mixed with more or 

 less finely pounded shells, probably of fresh water muscles. In 

 other instances the pounded shell has not been used, but fragments 

 of charcoal are to be traced, indicating that either charcoal itself 

 was used to temper the clay, or else, which is more likely, that 

 some vegetable substance was mixed with the clay, which, in burn- 

 ing the vessels, was reduced to charcoal. In a few of the speci- 

 mens sand was mixed with the clay, and in several, the clay was 

 apparently without any mixture. These last are generally thick 

 and rude in their finish, while those in which charcoal is now seen 



vessels, as in No. 7800. 



Many of the vessels from these Missouri mounds show evidence 

 of having been heated both on the inside and outside ; but several 

 appear not to have been so heated, and these are not so finely and 

 smoothly finished as those which have been hardened by fire. 



The best finished of these vessels have the appearance, noticed 

 by Squier and Davis in other specimens from the mounds, of having 

 been carefully shaved by a sharp knife on the outside. The same 

 ar.uice is observable in the dark, Peruvian pottery. It is pos- 

 sible that this was produced by making the clay on the outside of 



