Omaha daily bee., 1905-06-11
CONTENTS OF INDIAN MOUND
Aboriginal Burying Place in Iowa Inspected
by Nebraska Scientist
INTERESTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL RELICS
E. z. BIackman of the state Historical
Society Describes what He
Found in n Mound Near
Onawa.

LINCOLN, June 10.-To the Editor of the
Bee: While at onawa, Ia waiting for a
| chance to reach Decatur, Neb., l called on
| Mitchell Vincent of that place.
Mr.. Vincent has always been interested
In matters appertaining to Lewis and Clark
and what they saw along the Missouri in
1904. and he knows the value OF the evt-
dences of Indian occupancy.
A few weeks ago some farmers living
east OF Onawa found some earthenware
pots In an Indian grave and brought two
Of these vessels to the library at Onawa
| Mr.. Vincent became interested and in
sisted that go out to the neighborhood
OF these graves and learn, If possible, the
| significance of these discoveries.
May 81 Hon ]. B. P. Day and Mr.. Charles
Cutter of Castana, Ia, accompanied me
on the trip of exploration.
The mound, or hill, upon which the
graves were made is natural elevation
| of some twenty or thirty feet and is al
most surrounded by hills of much greater
! altitude; a small stream flows at the base
of this small knoll and joins the Little
| Sioux not far away
| The land belongs to Mr.. Peterson and IL
farmed and managed by Mr.. NJ Mickkel-
son, who accompanied us to the exact spot
from which the Onawa vessels were taken
Mr.. Mickkelson told me that over 100 skulls
had been found in this grave The knoll
was not more than thirty feet across OBJ
servation in digging showed that one burial
| after another was made in the same knoll;
| these were not all sunk to the same depth.
hence the error in stating that three dis
tinct levels were visible or that three
! burials had been made one on top of the
| other.
Condition of the Bones
the bones were about two and one-half
teet below the present level of the sur
face; the field has been cultivated for thirty
years and the people there think it has
| eroded about three feet, and l do not
doubt 1t as the soil is very loose and light
| The three skeletons which we unearthed
were each resting in a horizontal position
differing from the Omaha burials of an
early day and, in fact, differing from the
early burials of any of the plains tribes
| Two were resting on the side and one on
| the back. They were each at a different
angle with the compass; the first nearly
| east (head) to west and the last south
| east (head) to northwest At the head of
each was pottery vessel resting about
ten inches from the top of the head and
| nearly on the same level These vessels
| will hold about three quarts or a gallon
Two of the vessels found had a smooth
exterior and one had fabric Impressions
on the outside. The bone of the skull is
thick but the shape of the head shows a
fair degree of intelligence. One skull which
is now at Castana has the finest set of
teeth it has been my lot TO observe; the
finest work of the dentists art can not
be better; in fact not decayed tooth was
FOUND in any of the skulls although in
some skulls teeth were missing The bones
are still we'll preserved, but the soil is
very light and loose; the bodies were
placed originally about five feet under the
| surface If We right in our estimate of
the erosion. The knoll is very rounding
and no water has ever reached these bones
from the top. They absorbed moisture but
| slowly from the earth around them and
every condition is right to keep the bones
| In good state of preservation.
| Nature of the Pottery.
The vessels are made of thick pottery.
This pottery is tempered with quartz peb-
bles, mica and potsherds ground fine as
sand and mixed with the clay before the
vessels are shaped The shaping was done
by the squaws in a wicker work basket
in some cases, in others the vessels were
shaped without a mould of any kind and
handled carefully until they were SUM-
dried and then placed in a kiln and burned
feebly with reeds brush and buffalo
chips" which imparts to the vessel a
formed in wicker baskets lined with a
fabric, in which case basket, fabric and
all were burned The kiln was a circular
hole in bank in which the plastic pots
were placed and fire maintained for a
number of days.
Early traders say the Indians had
earthenware vessels. Catlin saw them. but
in his day Qs32) they were rare. No writer
has described the fabric which they used
to line the basket and. the only knowledge
we have of this material comes from the
impressions left the vessels num-
Der of students have studied 1t more or
less, but the art OF making this ware seems
to have been lost before the early writer's
came among the Indians A number of
years ago l gave the matter some study
This pottery which has been found in
sherds In Nebraska is identical, so far as
can judge from the description with the
Scandinavian fabric pottery made 1000 B.
c. and still found in Scandinavia. 1t is
also found in Ireland Iceland, Greenland
and America, from Labrador to Georgia.
then across Kentucky into Missouri and
, now a whole vessel has been taken from
a mound in northwest Iowa. The find is
important in more ways than one. It gives
us one more link in a long archaeological
chain which binds the past to the present
Age of the Grave.
Now as 10 the age of the grave. It was
doubtless used for many years as the
burial place of some family or totem, as
IL shows evidence of this by the various
levels reached in digging the graves The
important question is the date of the first
grave To reach this conclusion we must
determine what Indians lived here. Lewis
and Clark in 1904 say that the Iowas once
had village near where Crescent City
now stands. This is forty miles from the
scene OF our explorations. but plains tribes
moved often and ranged over a large area.
am of the opinion this grave is an Iowa
sepulchre. If it is Iowa is not earlier than
1893. lie Sueur. who came up the Missis-
sippi in 1853, says the Iowa Indians were
near the mouth of the Des Moines river
with the Otoes, but he learned that they
had gone TO live near the Mahas, on the
Missouri river l need not enter into the
wandering of these people, as this date.
II accurate, fixes a limit TO the age of this
grave, and think every indication points
to less than 800 years. but more than 100