ut on and around the stones throughout the mound, were exhumed
many relics, especially of pottery, showing that food and offerings had
been laid upon the graves after they were closed. Nowhere was there the
least indication of any contact with Europeans; and these cemeteries
undoubtedly antedate the coming of the whites.

Among the most strikingly interesting discoveries made during the past
few years is the burial-place in the Miami valley of Ohio, with its
hundreds of singular pits dug in the hard clay below the leaf-mould in
which the skeletons are found. This place was discovered by the members
of the Madisonville Literary and Scientific Society, which, during three
or four years, carried on an exploration under the personal direction of
Dr. C. L. Metz. In 1880 the Peabody Museum was invited to join in the
exploration, and Professor Putnam visited the locality soon afterward.
The result of this co-operation is apparent in the large collections
brought to the museum, where the contents of several of these strange
pits are shown, as well as thousands of objects obtained from others or
occurring with the skeletons in the leaf-mould. More than fifteen
hundred pits and a thousand skeletons have now been uncovered and
examined, several acres having been dug over, foot by foot, with
painstaking completeness.

The pits, hollowed out of the underlying clay, are from two to seven
feet in depth, and about four feet in diameter, hidden under a stratum
of slowly-accumulated leaf-mould two feet thick. The majority of them,
evidently, had been made previous to the burial of the bodies, though
some were more recent than a few of the graves. The labor expended in
digging them, and the peculiar character of their contents, render it
not improbable that they were made in pursuance of some superstition or
as part of a religious rite. This is an unsatisfactory generality, but
more cannot yet be said with safety.

The average pit may be said to be filled with ashes in more or less
well-defined layers. Near the top there may be a mixture of gravel, but
underneath are found only fine gray ashes to the depth of one or two
feet, in which often occur thin strata of charcoal or sand, while at the
bottom burnt stones have often been found. Throughout the whole mass of
ashes and sand, from top to bottom, are bones of fishes, reptiles,
birds, and mammals. The larger bones, such as those of the elk, deer,
and bear, are broken; and all, apparentl