Prehistoric Cemetery

The Scientific American ran a fascinating article on May 12, 1883, titled "A Prehistoric Cemetery." It discussed the "bones of a giant race":

Two miles from Mandan, on the bluffs near the junction of the Hart and Missouri rivers, says the local newspaper, the Pioneer, is an old Cemetery of fully 100 acres in extent piled with bones of a giant race. This vast city of the dead lies just east of the Fort Lincoln road. The ground has the appearance of having been filled with trenches piled full of dead bodies, both man and beast, and covered with several feet of earth. In many places mounds from 8 to 10 feet high, and some of them 100 feet or more in length, have been thrown up and are filled with bones, broken pottery, vases of various bright colored flint, and agates. The pottery is of a dark material, beautifully decorated, delicate in finish, and light as wood showing the work of a people skilled in the arts and possessed of a high state of civilization. This has evidently been a grand battlefield, where thousands of men and horses have fallen. Nothing like systematic or intelligent exploration has been made, as only little holes two or three feet in depth have been dug in some of the mounds, but many parts of the anatomy of man and beast, and beautiful specimens of broken pottery and other curiosities, have been found in these feeble efforts at excavation. Five miles above Mandan, on the opposite side of the Missouri, is another vast cemetery, as yet unexplored. We asked an aged Indian what his people knew of these ancient grave yards. He answered: “Me know nothing about them. They were here before the red man.”



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