Note 18 — Chapter I

Since this is a contested point, both as to the presence of the works of the Mound-builders in the North-west and as to their great antiquity, I subjoin a portion of a report on these mounds made by Gen. H. W. Thomas, U. S. A., to Dr. Thomas of the Surveying Expedition, in the Sixth Annual Report of the U. S. Geological Survey under Dr. Hayden in 1872, pp. 656–7: “‘Lewis and Clarke reported seeing Indian mounds 1000 miles above the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, but this report is not verified.’ So says Mr. John D. Baldwin, A. M., in his work entitled ‘Ancient America.’ “I now and here propose to contribute my mite toward the verification of the statement of Lewis and Clarke. “The few men whom duty or wild inclination have from time to time brought into this, for the most part, uninhabited region of treeless prairie, have all known of the existence of thousands of artificial mounds. What was in them they knew not, and but two or three, to my knowledge, have ever been opened. On August 16, 1872, I opened one on the high table-lands that spread out on both sides of a little stream called the James. The point is about 47° north latitude, and 98° 38´ longitude west from Greenwich. It is within three miles of the line of the North Pacific Railroad. The mound is circular in form, 30⁸⁄₁₀ feet in its shorter, and 35³⁄₁₀ feet in its longer diameter, and five feet high. I opened four trenches, three feet wide, from the outer edge, meeting in the centre, forming a cross when finished. I then excavated the entire mound from the centre outward, until there was nothing more to find. For results I had several two-bushel bags full of bones, eight skulls, many pieces of skulls too small to be of value (there must have been at least twenty-five bodies buried there), a rough-hewn stone ten inches high and five and a half inches in diameter, in shape resembling closely a conical shell, a cutting half an inch deep around the centre. (This was evidently tied with thongs to a stout handle, and used in pulverizing their maize.) A portion of a shell necklace, two flints, two heads of beaver, and some bones of animals unknown, and a large quantity of bivalves, much like the clam (Mya oblongata) of our Atlantic coast, but thicker, and the interior surface much more pearly. “The mounds and their contents are apparently of great antiquity. They are, in every case, on the very highest point in their immediate neighborhood, and perfectly drained. The climate is excessively dry; so dry that the James River is entirely dry at a point about 500 feet above the contemplated railroad-bridge across the river. Notwithstanding this, many of the bones crumbled into white dust on being brought to the air, like those found in Herculaneum and Pompeii, and it was absolutely impossible to get out a single one in anything like perfection. Around and over these bodies stones and sticks were placed, doubtless to preserve the remains from the coyote and the fox. The wood could be rubbed into fine yellow-brown dust between the thumb and forefinger. Any trace of excavation around the mound for dirt to heap it with had been entirely obliterated. The upright position of the skulls also indicated that the bodies were buried in a sitting posture. The leg-bones, however, lay lower and horizontal. “The number of mounds indicates a denser population than ever has been known here, or than the natural resources of this region can now support by the chase. At the same time the number of dry lakes scattered all over would indicate that at some remote period the country may have been a better one than now, and supported a larger population.”