The lower
chamber contained two skeletons, one of which is supposed to
have been a female. The upper chamber contained but one
skeleton. In addition to these, there were found a great number
of shell beads, ornaments of mica, and bracelets of copper.
It mast have been indeed a great work for people who had neither
metallic tools nor domestic animals to have erected such a great
mound. The earth for its construction was probably scraped from
the surface and carried to the mound in baskets. A people who
could erect such a monument as this, with such scanty means at
their command, must have possessed those qualities which would
sooner or later have brought them civilization.
Charles Dickens, when visiting America, gives this impression
that the Big Grave made upon him "...the host of Indians who lie
buried in a great mound yonder - so old that mighty oaks and
other forest trees have struck their roots into the earth, and
so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature
planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's
feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so
pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence
hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this
mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more
brightly than in the Big Grave Creek."
Standing here in this lovely region, chosen by a vanished race
as their last resting place, we recalled the words of an Ohio
poet:
