1881 .] 
221 
[Putnam. 
Among other objects made of bone are beads and small whistles or 
“ bird-calls ” made from the hollow bones of birds, and also flat 
and cylindrical pieces with “ tally ” notches and marks cut upon 
them. Short, cylindrical pieces of antler, carefully cut and polished 
(similar objects have been found in the grave-mounds in Arkansas) 
are often found. Two or three harpoon-points and a few bone fish- 
hooks have also been found. 
Arrow points, drills, scrapers and other chipped instruments of 
stone are common, and a few polished celts, and rough hammer- 
stones have been found in the pits. 
A number of objects of copper, particularly beads, have 
been taken from the pits, as have also several pipes cut out of 
stone and of various shapes. 
This list of objects, which is far from being complete, is suffi- 
cient to show that any thing used by the people who made these 
pits may be expected to turn up during future explorations ; and 
if the same care is taken in the continuation of the work as has 
thus far been given, very much of importance relating to the life 
of the people will probably be discovered. 
It yet remains to call attention to the discovery of a large 
amount of carbonized corn at the bottom of two of the pits. In 
both instances the corn had been covered with bark, twigs, and 
matting, which were also burnt. In one of the pits were several 
bushels of corn, some of which was on the cob and below the 
rest. Above the corn the pit was filled in with the usual mass 
of ashes, containing animal bones, shells and other things. 
At the bottom of one of the pits, and under the usual mass of 
ashes, animal remains, and potsherds, in a layer of ashes about a 
foot in thickness, there was found a perfect human skeleton. This 
is the only pit of over four hundred that has ever been opened 
in which human bones have been found, and this has been taken 
as evidence, as far as it goes, that these pits were the places of 
temporary deposit for the dead, the bodies being afterward removed 
for final burial in mounds or other places. It seems to me, how- 
ever, that the fact that the skeleton was under the same materials 
— ashes, animal remains, etc. — as found in the other pits, which 
are always in more or less perfect and undisturbed strata, is 
decidedly opposed to the theory that the pits were temporary 
