EVIDENCES OF PALEOLITHIC MAN—AN ANCIENT FORTIFICATION—ABORIGINAL VILLAGE AND CAMP SITES—THE INGALLS AND OTHER BURIAL MOUNDS.

How long the region embraced in Atchison county has been the home of man is not known, but the finding of a prehistoric human skeleton, computed by the highest anthropological and geological authorities to be at least 10,000 years old, in the adjoining county of Leavenworth, favors the presumption that what is now Atchison county was occupied by man at an equally remote period. Evidences of a very early human existence here have been found at various times. Near Potter, in this county, the writer found deep in the undisturbed gravel and clay, a rude flint implement that unquestionably had been fashioned by prehistoric man, evidently, of what is known as the Paleolithic period. In drilling the well at the power house of the Atchison Street Railway, Light and Power Company, the late T. J. Ingels, of Atchison, encountered at a great depth, several fragments of fossilized bone, intermingled with charcoal, evidently the remains of a very ancient fireplace. About 1880, M. M. Trimmer, an Atchison contractor, in opening a stone quarry at the northeast point of the Branchtown hill, near the confluence of White Clay and Brewery creeks, in Atchison, unexpectedly encountered a pit or excavation, eighty feet long, sixty feet wide, and eighteen feet deep, in the solid rock formation of the hill. The surface of the hill is composed of drift or gravel, and the pit had become filled with this gravel to the original surface, thus obliterating all external evidences of its existence. The lower layer of stone, about six inches thick, had been left for a floor in the pit, and in the northwest corner this lower strata of stone for about four feet square had been removed. Water issued from the ground at this point indicating that a spring or well, or source of water supply, had been located here. A careful examination of the place at the time showed unmistakably that this excavation had been made by human hands at a very early period and was probably used as a fortification or defensive work. Prehistoric excavations of this character, made in the solid rock, are common in Europe, but almost unknown in America, except in the cases of ancient flint and steatite quarries, and the absence of either in the Atchison formation, except an occasional flint nodule, precludes the possibility that this was just an aboriginal quarry. The Smithsonian authorities at Washington pronounced the work worthy of careful study, but unfortunately it was obliterated by the progress of the quarrying. Many weapons and implements of the stone age have been found in the vicinity of this pit.

Almost the entire surface of Atchison county, particularly where bordering streams, presents various traces of aboriginal occupancy, from the silent sepulchers of the dead and the mouldy rubbish of the wigwam, to the solitary arrowhead lost on the happy chase or the sanguinary war path. In many places these remains blend into the prehistoric, semi-historic and historic periods, showing evidences of a succession of occupancy. For instance we find the Neolithic stone celts or hatchets, the Neoeric iron tomahawks; fragments of fragile earthenware, mixed and moulded by the prehistoric potter, and bits of modern decorated porcelain made by some pale-faced patterner of Palissy; ornaments of stone, bone and shell; trinkets of brass and beads of glass, intermingled in confusion and profusion. These numerous relics of different peoples and periods, showing, as they do, diverse stages of culture and advancement, warrant the opinion that Atchison county, with its many natural advantages, was a favorite resort of successive peoples from time immemorial. Favorably situated at the great western bend of the Missouri river and at the outskirts of which was one of the richest Indian hunting grounds in the great wild West, embracing and surrounded by every natural advantage that would make it the prospective and wonted haunt of a wild-race, it was a prehistoric paradise, as it is today, a modern Arcadia.

The writer has personally examined hundreds of ancient Indian village, camp and workshop sites, and opened a number of mounds in Atchison county. The first ancient mounds ever opened in the county were on a very rugged hill known as the “Devil’s Backbone,” bordering Owl creek, and overlooking the Missouri river, in 1891. There were two of them, and they contained stone sepulchers in which the Indians had cremated their dead. Other stone grave mounds have been opened on the farms of John Myers, on Independence creek, in the northeastern part of the county; Maurice Fiehley, on Stranger creek, near Potter; George Storch, on Alcorn or Whiskey creek, just south of Atchison, and in several other places. The most interesting mound ever excavated in the county, however, was what is known as the Ingalls Mound, on land belonging to the estate of the late United States Senator John J. Ingalls, on a bluff of the Missouri river, at the mouth of Walnut creek, about five miles below Atchison. This mound was discovered by Senator Ingalls at an early day, and opened by the writer in 1907. It was fifteen feet in diameter, and was composed of alternate layers of stone and earth one on top of the other, the remains of several Indians being imbedded in the earth between the layers of stone. These remains were in a bad state of decay, most of the bones crumbling while being removed. The bones of each person had been placed in the mound in compact bundles, which seems to indicate that they had been removed from some temporary place of interment, perhaps from dilapidated scaffold burials, and deposited here in final sepulture. In some of the layers not only the bones but the rocks and earth were considerably burned, indicating incendiary funeral rites, while in others there were not the least marks of fire. The undermost layer, about three feet from the top, was a veritable cinder pit, being a burned mass or conglomerate of charcoal and charred and calcined human remains, showing no regularity or outline of skeletons, but all in utter confusion. A solitary pearl bead was the only object that withstood the terrible heat to which the lower tier of remains had been subjected. In one of the upper tiers were the bones of two infants. With one of them was a necklace of small shells of a species not native here. With another bundle of bones were two small, neatly chipped flint knives, a flint scraper, a bone whistle or “call,” several deer horn implements, and a large flint implement of doubtful usage, known to archaeologists as a “turtle-back,” because of its shape. With another bundle of bones, and which they seemed to be clasping, were several mussel shells, badly decomposed. One small ornament of an animal or bird claw, several flint arrowheads, and some fragments of pottery, were also found. In one of the skulls was embedded the flint blade of a war-club. Thirty-one yards northwest of this mound was found another of less prominence. It contained a burned mass of human remains, covered with a layer of about six inches of clay, baked almost to the consistency of brick. Lack of space forbids a mention of many other interesting archaeological discoveries made in this county from time to time. Suffice to say that there is ample evidence that within the borders of Atchison county there lived and thrived and passed away a considerable aboriginal population.