While this is the largest mound in the vicinity, and is claimed to be the largest mound in Kansas, it is not different except in size from many others within a few miles. All of them are made of the same earth as that which lies around them—a light, sandy loess which is easily removed with a shovel, requiring no picking or other loosening. In fact, it is almost as easy to dig as loose sand would be. Sometimes there are flat limestones in or around the graves; similar slabs are found not far away in the ravines.
Not far from this mound is a large lodge site, one of the so-called "buffalo wallows" as they are commonly known. These are the ruins of aboriginal houses. The general construction is the same, the only practical difference being that some are square in outline, others round. This difference is not always apparent prior to the excavation. In the making, a pit was dug, square or round as desired, and the earth thrown out on every side. Posts were then set around the margin of the excavation, and the house built in the same manner as those with which we are familiar from accounts of early travelers. Many of them have been examined by Zimmerman and Park, who found masses of hard-burned earth in which are cavities and depressions due to the burning of straw, grass, twigs, and poles, used in the construction of the houses. This results from the destruction of the houses by fire. Sometimes the floor has a layer of this burned material which is evidently due to the falling in of the roof. Most of these are on the hilltops, but some of them are on narrow ridges leading from the high land to the creek or river bottoms. In the latter event there is always a village site on the low ground bordering the stream. The relics gathered up on these village sites are in no wise different from those found when the lodge sites are excavated; and also are of the same character as those picked up on what are no doubt modern village sites in the vicinity. This fact militates against the idea that the lodge sites are extremely ancient.
IOWA POINT
On a low hill, cut off on every side by steep ravines, is a small mound containing a cist grave. The bottom of this, which was dug slightly below the natural surface, was covered with a pavement of limestone slabs. The grave was roughly oval or triangular in outline, measuring about 7 by 9 feet. Around it was a wall of similar stones, set in contact and sloping outward at an angle of about 40 degrees from the vertical. There was nothing whatever in this grave.
At the edge of the mound was a box grave 5½ by 2½ by 2½ feet, the longer axis on a radial line. It was made of small flat stones built up like a wall, the only grave of which I could learn that had any resemblance to the vault graves farther down the Missouri. In the grave were two skulls and some other bones, all bunched in the northern end.
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE NEMAHA RIVER
Lewis and Clark, in their journal, mention that when camped near the mouth of the Nemaha, one or both of them went to an Indian village about 2 miles up the stream. He, or they, climbed a low ridge near the river and stood on a mound which commanded a fine view of the surrounding country. There is a dispute as to the site of this mound; but the journal plainly says it was on the lower (east) side of a little creek which comes in here. Two miles farther up is a larger mound on higher ground which is generally supposed to be the one meant by the explorer; but this is on the other side of the creek and at some distance from the Pawnee village which was located near the mouth of the creek, on the lower side. The ground where this village stood is covered over a space of several acres with the ordinary débris of an Indian settlement; and it is significant that all the relics found are so similar to those which are called "ancient" when found in the lodge sites, that no one could determine from inspection which kind came from which place. Unless it may exist in the markings in the pottery, no distinction can be made between these specimens and similar ones from other localities.
The Pawnees lived here until 1837, when the Iowas and Otoes made a sortie upon the unsuspecting inhabitants and killed all of them they could overcome. Two women of the Iowa tribe who were living on the reservation in 1914 remember seeing dead bodies lying around wherever the invaders could find and kill a resident.
A short distance below the explorers carved their names on a rock which projected into the stream. Accounts as to this spot differ; it is generally stated that in making a road around here, the rock containing the names was blasted away; but a man in the neighborhood who claims to know the exact spot says the blasting did not extend quite so far and that the names are covered by a mass of earth and rock which slid from the bluff many years ago. If this be true, a thrill awaits the man who finds the names some centuries from now, when the river has washed away all this accumulated material.