Loudon county – Skulls large and small
BONES FOUND IN INDIAN MOUND
Skulls and human bones, believed to be the remnants of a 250-
Skulls and human bones, believed to be the remnants of a 250- g ’ – $
year-old Indian burial place, have just been unearthed on the Trita-
poe farm near Point of Rocks, eight miles from Leesburg, Va. ‘
Doctor Ales Hrdlicka, director of the Smithsonian’s bureau of ‘ ”jS
ethnology, who has examined the skulls and bones, states the
Smithsonian Institution may send agents to investigate the Tritapoe JS
mound. Farmer Tritapoe made the discovery while plowing last >■
week.
By JOSEPHINE TIGHE. LEESBURGH, Va., June 19 — For thirty years, Harvey Tritapoe, a farmer living near Point of Rocks, eight miles from Leesburg, has each spring plowed over a ten-foot rise of ground in one of his fields and nothing ever happened. But last week, in a furrow left by the plowshare on the side of the “rise,” Farmer Tritapoe was amazed to see skulls, large and small, and other human bones. He decided to “dip a little deeper” and uncovered not only more bones but also stone tomahawks, utensils, crudely made stone implements for scraping and cleaning the inside of hides, and arrowheads of flint and slate stone.
As the land was virgin forest when cleared by Mr. Tritapoe three decades ago, he knew that his find must be of ancient origin and was eager to have the bodies submitted to experts for a decision. Sections of the skulls and bones were taken to Doctor Ales Hrdlicka, director of the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, whose verdict was that the fragments submitted are the remains of Indians and that the hillock in the Tritapoe cornfield is, in reality, an Indian burial mound.
The laboriously-built Indian mounds, according to Doctor Hrdlicka, were used for four purposes – religious ceremonials, burial places, gathering places, and boundaries of tribal territories. The fact that some of the bones examined by the Smithsonian authority were bones of women and children as well as of men proved that the mound near Point of Rocks was a burial one.
All evidence obtainable indicates the remains are those of the Susquehannock tribe who inhabited this part of the country until driven across the river by the Doegs and Senecas in about 1674, before any white persons except an occasional trapper had come this far up the Potomac.
- The Washington times. [volume], June 19, 1924, Page 3, Image 3