Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  

Editorialania

Editorialania.                      285

 

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