Note 40 — Chapter I

Dr. Patton has described some interesting mounds near Vincennes, Indiana. A giant mound, which towers above many others of considerable proportions, is called the Sugar-loaf Mound, and stands on a promontory which overlooks the rich valley of the Wabash. The height of the Sugar-loaf is seventy feet, with a circumference at the base of one thousand feet. Dr. Patton in June, 1873, sank a shaft in this mound to the depth of forty-six feet. The composition of the mound was of siliceous sand, nowhere found in the region except in other mounds. At ten feet below the summit bones were found, but much decayed. Immediately below them was a layer of charcoal and ashes. Thirty feet deeper the same conditions were repeated, and the bones again were so brittle as to render it impossible to save them. A bed of calcined clay was next entered which could not be penetrated with the instruments at command. One mile south of the Sugar-loaf is a pyramidal mound forty-three feet high, with a circumference of 714 feet at the base and a platform on top fifteen feet wide and fifty feet in length. Others of as great proportions are described. Smithsonian Report, 1873, pp. 411 et seq. See also Antiquities of La Porte County, Indiana, by R. S. Robertson in Smithsonian Report for 1874, pp. 377 et seq. A very low type of cranium was exhumed from one of the mounds in this county. Also see Mounds at Merom and Hutsonville on the Wabash, by F. W. Putnam—Proceedings of the Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., vol. xv, 1872. Fifty-nine mounds were examined, and three stone graves discovered.