Preble County Extra-Ordinary Large

many of them being very large

While men were engaged in digging and hauling from a gravel pit located on Clarence Singer’s farm adjoining Lewisburg, a small place eight miles north of Eaton, fifty skeletons were unearthed, the first being discovered on last Monday morning, which did not seem to cause any great enticement, for at various times before skeletons had been found in the vicinity of Lewisburg. The pick and shovel were applied more vigorously as the week wore on, while wagon-load after wagon-load of gravel was hauled away, increasing the number of skeletons to forty and causing great excitement to prevail at that place. So much so that the citizens quit their daily vocations to gather at the scene of action to form opinions over the strange site, while large numbers came to the adjoining towns to see the remains of the “unfortunate warriors,” as the workmen call them. Yesterday the number of skeletons had increased to fifty as one or two were unearthed every hour.

Who these people were and how their bodies came to be interred in such a strange place, is a question which the Lewisburgers would be most happy to have explained. A number of the wiseheads say they show proof of being the skeletons of Indians,  while others claim they are not, as the shape of the skull in most cases does not resemble that of an Indian’s in the least. In the same trenches (five in number), there were men, women and children, many of them being very large, while the phalanges were very long and the skull of good size and thickness.

There is a very good fact in regard to the burial of these bodies, as a great many seem to have been buried with their faces downward, and in some cases they were found in a circular position, and in the center of this ring was found a single skull, all of which were baked in a tremendous hot fire, as the clay in which they were burned had been heated to such an extent that that the ground for many feet deep was almost calcareous. Many suppose that the skull in the center ring was that of a distinguished chief, and that their curious way of burial, was a curious whim of their religious rites, while others think they were moundbuilders, and not Indians, as the remainder of a number of skulls were buried in trenches which radiate from this circular assemblage of skulls.

• The Osage City Free Press (Osage City, Kansas) November 1, 1878. Prehistoric Bones, Remarkable Discoveries of Skeletons in Ohio. “bones were extraordinary large.