Ohio History Journal

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and calls out, 'Let them go'; and the superb roan leaders, that have been

prancing, waiting for the word, dash off."

But after all Kirkersville attained to something more than local

fame.

"It was in the summer of 1865, just after the end of the Great

Rebellion, when I was stationed at Watertown arsenal near Boston.

Colonel Kingsbury, our commanding officer, was a classmate of General

Sherman; and when the latter came to Boston, he hurried out to the

arsenal to see his old cadet friend. During the visit our Colonel gave

him a fine dinner, to which all of us young bachelors were invited. While

at the table Sherman, who talked as usual most familiarly and interest-

ingly, said to Major Shunk who sat just opposite me, 'Well, Major, I

knew your father, Governor Shunk of Pennsylvania,' and after some in-

quiries in regard to the Major's family, turned his emitting dark brown

eyes on me and asked in his customary direct manner, 'Well, Captain,

where are you from?' Whereupon all the youngsters lowered their eyes

into their plates with the broadest grins, for only a short time before

Major Shunk, in buying a series of maps, had told the book agent that

he would take them, that he found them sufficiently minute in their deline-

ation as they gave Kirkersville, and they had had the usual fun out of

it. With some embarrassment I answered, 'General, I have the honor to

come from the adjoining county to yours. You are from Fairfield, I am

from  Licking; but I don't suppose you ever heard of my town--it's

Kirkersville.' 'Kirkersville!' exclaimed Sherman with enthusiasm, 'Kirk-

ersville! Why, I've been there many a time. I know it well; it had the

biggest pigeon roost in the world,' and he brought his hand down with

a bang. I wore a smile of triumph as I looked up and down the table."

And here Mr. Schaff proudly calls attention to a little map in his

book in which is presented a circle with a radius of twenty miles of

which Kirkersville is the centre and within the circumference of which

circle there were born or during their lives resided sixteen characters of

more or less national renown. Among them were Generals W. T. Sher-

man, P. H. Sheridan, W. T. Rosecrans, Irwin McDowell, S. R. Curtis,

Charles Griffin, C. R. Woods and B. W. Brice; Justice W. B. Woods of

the United State Supreme Court, Senator Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio,

Samuel S. Cox, member of Congress, Willard Warner, United States

Senator from Alabama, James F. Wilson of Iowa, James B. Howell,

United States senator from Iowa, and Thomas Ewing, the distinguished

orator governor of Ohio.

 

ANCIENT INDIAN GIANTS.

The Baltimore American is responsible for the following interest-

ing article concerning what it designates as prehistoric Indian giants.

Gigantic skeletons of prehistoric Indians, nearly eight feet tall, have

been discovered along the banks of the Choptank River. Maryland, by

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284        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

employes of the Maryland Academy of Science. The remains are at the

Academy's building, in Franklin Street, where they are being articulated

and restored by the Academy expert, John Widgeon, colored. They

will be placed on public exhibition early in the fall.

The collection comprises eight skeletons, of which some are women

and children. They are not all complete, but all the larger bones have

been found, and there is at least one complete specimen of an adult man.

The excavations were in progress for months, and the discovery is con-

sidered one of the most important, from the standpoint of anthropology,

in Maryland in a number of years. The remains are believed to be at

least one thousand years old. The formation of the ground above and

the location of the graves give evidence of this. During the excavations

the remains of camps of later Indians were revealed. These consisted of

oyster shell heaps, charred and burned earth and fragments of cooking

utensils. These discoveries were made fully ten feet above the graves

which contained the gigantic skeletons.

There have been other discoveries in Maryland of remains of men

of tremendous stature. A skeleton was discovered at Ocean City several

years ago which measured a fraction over seven feet, six inches. This

skeleton was interred in a regular burying mound, and beads manufac-

tured by white men were found upon it. This dead Indian was probably

one of the tribe mentioned by Captain John Smith, who, in July, 1608,

made a voyage of exploration of the Chesapeake Bay.

In speaking of Indians in the history which he subsequently wrote,

Captain Smith said of this tribe, called Susquehanocks:  "But to pro-

ceed, sixty of these Susquehanocks came to us with skins, bowes, arrowes,

targets, beads, swords and tobacco pipes for presents. Such great and

well-proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seemed like giants to

the English, yes, and to the neighbors, yet seemed an honest and simple

disposition, and with much adoe were restrained from adoring us as gods.

These are the strangest people of all these countries, both in language

and attire, for their language it may well become their proportions, sound-

ing from them as a voice in a vault.

"Their attire is the skinnes of beares and wolves, some have cos-

sacks made of beare's heads and skinnes that a man's head goes through

the skinnes neck and the eares of the bear fastened to his shoulders, the

nose and teeth hanging down his breast, another beares face split behind

him, and at the end of the nose hung a pawe, the halfe sleeves coming

to the elbows were the necks and beares and the arms through the mouth

with pawes hanging at their noses.

"One had the head of a wolfe hanging in a chaine for a jewel, his

tobacco pipe three-quarters of a yard long, prettily carved with a bird,

a deare or some such device, at the great end sufficient to beat out one's

braines; with bowes, arrowes and clubs suitable to their greatness. These

are scarce known to Powhattan. They can make near 600 able men and

are pallisaeded in their towns to defend them from the Massowmeks, their

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mortal enemies. Five of their chief Werowances came aboard us and

crossed the bay in their barge. The picture of the greatest of them is

signified in the mappe.

"The calfe of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard about, and

all of the rest of his limbs so answerable to that proportion that he seemed

the goodliest man we ever beheld. His hayre, the one side was long, the

other close shore, with a ridge over his crown like a cockes comb. His

arrows were five quarters long, headed with the splinters of a white

crystal like stone, in forme of a heart an inch broad and an inch and a

half long or more. These he wore in a wooleves skinne at his back for

a quiver, his bowe in the one hand and his clubbe in the other as is

described."

An evidence which seems to bear out the supposition that the skele-

tons found are of the same tribe was that one of the skulls found had

a large heart-shaped arrow imbedded in it.

At the point on the Choptank where the remains were found there

are steep shelving cliffs of sand and gravel that extend to the water's

edge. Beneath this bank is a layer of marl. The graves are in the sand

a few feet above the hard marl, and have deposits of between twenty and

thirty feet of sand and gravel above them. A peculiar feature of the

discovery is the charred state of the bones of the women and children.

This seems to indicate that the ancient Indians cremated the bodies of all

except their warriors. The wet resting place of the bones for so many

centuries has made them very soft and fragile, and it was with the greatest

difficulty that they were removed.

The work was done under the supervision of Widgeon, who has

done most of the collecting for the Academy for a number of years.

Since his work on the Choptank he has been to the West Indies and made

a splendid collection of several thousand specimens of insects, which Prof.

Uhler has at his home and which he is classifying.

 

 

 

HISTORY OF SERPENT MOUND.

Late in the fall of 1905 the Secretary of the Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society at the request of the trustees of the society

prepared a little volume of 125 pages entitled, "THE SERPENT MOUND,

ADAMS COUNTY, OHIO. The mystery of the mound and history of the

serpent. Various theories of the effigy mounds and the mound builders."

This monograph was published by the society in cloth and paper editions

which are sold at prices of 50c and $1.00 for paper and cloth binding

respectively. The author who has made many visits during the past few

years to the mound, has been more and more impressed with its mystery

and significance. Archeologists who have given the matter attention have

pretty generally agreed that it must have been built for purposes of

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