With a skeleton, 3.5 feet from the surface, were two vessels of earthenware and a pipe of the same material. The larger vessel lay on its side across the right forearm; the smaller vessel, on its base, with the tobacco pipe, was on the right hand side of the cranium. Beneath the skull, were two piercing implements of bone. Both vessels are virtually intact and imperforate as to their bases. Each has a small hole on either side beneath the margin, for suspension. The larger has two incised parallel lines beneath the margin of the opening. Its dimensions are approximately: height, 4.5 inches; maximum diameter, 3.25 inches; across mouth, 2.5 inches. The smaller vessel, almost cylindrical (Fig. [3]), has an interesting incised decoration. Approximate measurements: height, 4.25 inches; maximum diameter, at mouth, 2.75 inches; at base, or minimum diameter, 2.25 inches.
Five feet down, near a fragmentary skull, were one arrowhead and twenty-six small fragments of chert. We have before made reference in our paper on certain mounds in Duval County to the placing of numbers of such fragments together in the mounds.
In another portion of the mound, at about the same depth as the previously mentioned deposit, with human remains, were eleven small bits of chert and one shell gouge.
Near the surface as it was at the period of excavation, lay a small “celt” with human remains.
Loose in the sand were several bits of chert and a portion of a polished stone hatchet, found separately.
What this mound may have contained at the period of its abandonment, it is, of course, impossible to say. Nothing discovered by us pointed to intercourse with the Whites.
Mound at Peoria, Clay County
Doctor’s Lake has its union with the St. Johns at Orange Park about sixteen miles south of Jacksonville, on the west side of the river. About six miles in from the mouth of the lake, almost at its extremity, is the settlement of Peoria. In the outskirts of Peoria, on the property of Mr. J. A. Silcox, was a mound 4 feet 2 inches high, and 75 feet across the base. It had sustained very little previous examination, but its height had been greatly diminished by washing down of sand and trampling of cattle, which, at the same time, had increased its diameter.
At the time of our previous mound work on the St. Johns we were unable to come to terms with the owner of this mound, the location of which, however, is noticed in our Report.
The mound was totally demolished. It was composed of brownish sand, with the usual intermingling of charcoal.