BEFORE THE WHITE MEN CAME

BEFORE THE WHITE MEN CAME 23 house on Big- Skin creek there is a similar village or camping site. The remains of an important village were fovind at Arnold, and nearby another mound. Near the mouth of Canoe run there was also a mound. It is on Hacker's creek, however, that the most im- portant archaeological discoveries have been made. Seven Indian village sites have been found in the main valley of the stream, besides one on McKinney's run and another on Jesse's run. Temporary camping sites and scattered Indian graves have been unearthed all through the valley. On practically every elevated knoll or con- siderable tract of high bottom land the first explorers found a space which had been cleared for a village and nearby a burial ground where the dead had been laid to rest, from immemorial centuries. The locations which have been identified are Minor Hall's residence within the corporate limits of the town of Jane Lew, a second bottom at the mouth of Jesse's run, two locations within a short distance of each other on the farm of the late John Alkire, the original John Hacker settlement about one mile below Berlin, the old Cozad farm in the same vicinity, and two sites in Upshur County, one at the mouth of Rover's run and the other several miles further up the stream. At the last named location there was a trace of Indian habitation of great interest to the antiquarian, When cleared in 1821 the site was covered with a growth of young sugar trees about twelve inches in diameter indicating that the place had in very recent times been occupied by Indians. The remains of a great ash-circle one hundred eighty feet in diameter are to be seen at the present time. It consists of a clear space sixty feet across surrounded by a heavy deposit of ashes in a belt sixty feet wide. The inside circle is thickly strewn with fragments of bone, mussel shells, pieces of broken pot- tery, flint more or less broken, and stone implements and ornaments. When first cleared the field is said to have been literally covered with fragments of shell and bones,
See more here