Primitive man in Ohio / by Warren K. Moorehead.

  • Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King), 1866-1939.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Primitive man in Ohio / by Warren K. Moorehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    144/290 (page 116)
    Mound Number Fifteen.1—This is the larger one of the two north of the pike. When we began work a careful measurement showed it to be oval in out- line, the length being one hundred and ten feet, breadth sixty feet, and height five feet. The bear- ing of the longer axis was north, thirty degrees east, and the greatest width was at a distance of forty-eight feet from the southern end. For distinction, the point where these two diameters cross will be called the centre of the mound. The real centre, of course, lay several feet farther toward the north. Accord- ing to old residents, it was originally twenty feet in height, an impossible figure, as we shall demonstrate, and mentioned only to show how little reliance is to be placed on statements regarding matters of this kind, and how, with no intention whatever of decep- tion, people unaccustomed to careful measurements in- variably exaggerate the height of mounds. Our work revealed that within four feet of the margin entirely surrounding the mound, was a stone pavement not over two feet in width. It was formed by a single layer of pebbles the size of a man’s fist, taken, appa- rently, from the creek bed near by. It may be con- sidered certain that when this pavement was made it lay at the foot of the slope, the completed mound rising from its inner edge. This being the case, if all the earth washed from above were restored to its original position over the upper surface, the height of the mound would not be increased thereby to an amount exceeding four teet making 1 A short account of the exploration of this mound was printed in the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History for April, 1SS9.