ANTIQUITIES OF JACKSON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
By G. H. French, of Carbondale, Ill.
Among the many objects attesting that Southern Illinois is part of a region once inhabited by a race of people about whom comparatively little beyond conjecture is known, the various mounds and cairns form a conspicuous part. The exploration of one of these structures was the subject of two visits by Dr. B. B. Chapin, a resident of this place, and myself on the 3d of April and the 3d of June, 1878. The mound is situated on the farm of E. M. Norbury, about 3 miles south of here, and is about 40 rods west from the Illinois Central Railroad, on a hill that forms a spur from a comparatively level area of land back a little from a creek on the south, and just in the edge of a piece of second-growth oak timber. Situated as it was on the point of this hill, it was difficult to judge at first of either its height above the natural ground or of its size; but subsequent examination showed that it was, in its highest part, about 3 feet above the original ground, and it appeared to be 25 or 30 feet in diameter. We found, however, that inside these limits was a series of stones that seemed to have been placed around the base of the mound to hold the dirt in position as it was heaped up, and as the elements in time had removed the dirt from the higher parts and spread it around and beyond these stones they had become partly or wholly covered up, while the extent of the structure was increased. If this theory is correct, and the position of the contents of the mound seemed to indicate that it is, the mound was originally oval or nearly oblong, and measured 12 by 15 feet in its shortest and longest diameters.
For 2 or 3 rods to the south and for 20 or more rods to the north and northwest, chips of flint were abundant, both mingled with the soil and on its top. The same soil and flints mixed with broken bits of pottery formed the general substance of the mound. These seemed to indicate that the immediate vicinity had been the site of an Indian workshop and perhaps camping ground. In the time when this ground was covered with the primeval forest the small branches only a few rods to the east and west would have afforded them water most of the year, if this locality ever formed a permanent place of abode; while the creek, from 50 to 80 rods to the south, would be the unfailing source when the heats of summer had dried up the others. Several other facts seemed to point to this as having been for them a central position. Across the creek, that is to the south, and 80 or more rods on the other side, in a southwesterly direction, was a stone mound that we also explored, but found no remains of any character either in or about it. It seemed to be simply a monument of direction as much as anything we could discover, an irregular cairn of stones in such a position that the natural contour of the land would indicate there might have been here
