Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/218

 204 by forty wide, in a low place where a ravine envied a surplus of surface water into the river at wet seasons of the year. The accumulations were often covered by clay from the hillside, so as to have stratified it to a depth of eight feet in the lower part of the original ravine, making it later almost level with the surrounding river bottoms.

The bones other than human are bear, raccoon, buffalo, moose, deer, squirrel, woodchuck, rabbit, wolf, pigeon, quail, ducks, reedbird, turtles, pickerel, pike, perch, bull-head, and suckers.

The crushed shells of land snail, periwinkle, and the fresh-water clams were in great abundance.

Several of the strata show the action of fire on their surface, as if the attempt had been made to burn them over, to destroy the refuse.

The human bones in this heap were subject to the same treatment as those of the beast, and lay often in actual contact with them, and in every one of the strata.

The bones containing marrow were all either broken into short pieces or split open. The mark of the stone knife and axe is to be seen on most of them, where they were hit to break or split them, or in severing the joints. The ribs were cut into short bits, seldom over three inches in length; and always the knife-marks are seen on the inside, except where they were severed from the vertebral connection. This treatment is the same in both those of the beasts and men.

Among the number of human bones thus found one can identify many different skeletons. Some of the skulls were very thin and compact, showing a large and uniform curvature, while others were thick, spongy, and of irregular curvature.

The largest and coarsest bones, and those lying in the topmost strata, bear a striking resemblance to the bones of the Fox and Winnebago Indians slain in the Black Hawk war, many of which I have examined and compared with these.

In contact with one of the skeletons of the highest type, I found beads cut from the shell of Busycon perversum, a marine shell-fish, an inhabitant of the Gulf of Mexico. In another garbage-heap similar to this one, twelve miles distant, on the same stream, two whole shells of the Busycon were found by another man some years previous.

A beautiful paint-dish, or mortar, was found by another party in the same locality.

I found broken bone awls, stone drill-points, and half-finished arrow-heads, as well as thousands of pieces of broken pottery. Many weapons of war and implements of agriculture have been found scattered over the entire surface of the village site, and the hundreds of acres of garden-beds adjoining it.