540 Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.
OHIO CAVE DWELLERS.
BY J. H. GALBRAITH.
[Mr. Galbraith has for some time been
publishing a series of
"Short Stories of the Buckeye
State." Many of them are worthy of
preservation in permanent form.
Archaeologists will be interested in
the one herewith reprinted. Did the Cave
Dwellers antedate the Mound
Builders ? - EDITOR.]
When Charles Whittlesey explored the
shelter houses or caves
under the sandstone outcropping along
the Black river in the vicinity of
Elyria, in 1851, he found that the floor
of the caves was covered several
feet thick with detertias from the
rocks, thickly mingled with bones of
animals. The shelter caves there are
exactly like those in France and
other parts of Europe, in which
archaeologists have found many inter-
esting relics.
In the Elyria case the sandstone, or
grit, lies upon shale forma-
tions, and the latter wearing away under
the influence of the elements
much more rapidly than the superimposed
sandstone, deep shelters have
been made which the primitive human
beings in this vicinity occupied
as their homes, just as birds and other
animals select for their use
such shelter as nature herself provides.
Not being good housekeepers,
the early human occupants of these
shelter caves threw their garbage on
the floors of the caves and it was this
accumulation that Colonel Whit-
tlesey explored.
With the bones of birds, animals,
fishes, etc., there was found
charcoal and ashes, showing that these
primitive people knew the art of
making fire and used it to warm
themselves and, perhaps, to cook their
meat and parch their corn.
The explorer also found buried in this
accumulation on the cave
floor three human skeletons, lying just
below the surface and in such
position as to lead him to believe that
they had not been buried there
after death, but that they were the
victims of just such an accident as
frequently happens now in the coal mines
of Ohio. He believed that
they were killed by a fall of slate from
the roof of the shelter cave, a
mass of such material becoming dislodged
from the roof above their
heads as they slept or rested on the
floor below, and it both killed and
buried the three.
One of the skeletons was evidently that
of an aged woman, another
that of a young man, and the other was
of uncertain age and sex.
Very few implements were found in the
exploration and it is believed
that the skeletons were of people who
lived in Ohio not less than two
thousand years ago.