Sunday, March 9, 2014

Your Daily Giant 6/6/2013


Today's Daily Giant comes the Evening Telegraph, September 15, 1870, pg 6. A long, detailed and intriguing account is given. The title reads A Giant Race-The Indian Mound Chickasawba-Human Skeletons Eight and Ten Feet in Height-Relics of a Former Race. From the article,

"Two miles west of Barfield Point, in Arkansas county, Ark., on the east bank of the lovely stream called Pemiscot river, stands an Indian mound, some twenty-five feet high and about an acre in area at the top...The mound derives its name from Chickasawba, a chief of the Shawnee tribe, who lived, died and was buried there. This chief was one of the last race of hunters who lived in that beautiful region and who once peopled it quite thickly...

Aunt Kitty Williams, who now resides there, relates that Chickasawba would frequently bring in for sale at one time as much as twenty gallons of pure honey in deerskins bags slung to his back. He was always a friend to the whites, a man of gigantic stature and herculean strength...He was buried at the foot of the mound on which he had lived, by his tribe, most of whom departed for the Nation immediately after performing his funeral rites...

Chickasawba was perfectly honest and the best informed chief of his tribe....A number of years ago, making an excavation into or near the foot of Chickasawba's mound, a portion of a GIGANTIC HUMAN SKELETON was found. The men who were digging, becoming interested, unearthed the entire skeleton and from measurements given us by reliable parties the frame of the man to whom it belonged could not have been less than eight or nine feet in height. Under the skull, which slipped easily over the head of our informant (who, we will here state, is one of our best citizens), was found a peculiarly shaped earthen jar, resembling nothing in the way of Indian pottery which has before been seen by them. It was exactly the shape of the round-bodied, long necked carafes or water-decanters, a specimen of which may be seen on Gaston's dining table.

The material of which the vase was made was a peculiar kind of clay and the workmanship was very fine. The belly or body of it was ornamented with figures or hieroglyphs consisting of a correct delineation of human hands, parallel to each other, open, palms outward and running up and down the vase, the wrists to the base and the fingers toward the neck...

Since that time, wherever an excavation has been made in the Chickasawba county in the neighborhood of the mound SIMILAR SKELETONS have been found and under the skull of every one were found similar funeral vases, almost exactly like the one described. There are now in this city several of the vases and portions of the huge skeletons.

One of the editors of the Appeal yesterday measured a thigh bone, which is fully three feet long. The thigh and shin bones, together with the bones of the foot, stood up in a proper position in a physician's office in this city, measured five feet in height and show the body to which the leg belonged to have been from nine to ten feet in height. At Beaufort's Landing, near Barfield, in digging a deep ditch, a skeleton was dug up the leg of which measured between five and six feet in length, and other bones in proportion. In a very few days we hope to be able to lay before our readers accurate measurement and descriptions of the portions of skeletons now in the city and of the artifacts found in the graves. It is not a matter of doubt that these are HUMAN REMAINS, but of a long extinct race."

Wow, sounds like a hoax to me or maybe a family of Mastodon's were buried in the mound like some kind of Pixar movie where they made sophisticated pottery and artifacts also. The Chickasawba burial mound still exists on private property on Gosnell Road in Blytheville Ark.

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