Large Skeleton Removed From a Sand Hill Overlooking the Eel River in Indiana

History of Clay County, Indiana

Large Skeletons Discovered on the Eel River

Sandy Knoll, about a mile west of the Eel River, east of a line from Coffee to Howesville, has 

attracted more attention, as such, than any other, or perhaps, all other points in the county. 

All of the skeletons discovered were of gigantic proportions, a stature of seven feet, or 

thereabouts, all in a sitting posture, with fractured femurs, or thigh bones, a phenomenon 

unexplained. John B. Poe, one of the early pioneers, himself six feet in height and 

proportionally developed, who made excavations and tests, found the tibia (bone of the lower 

leg) in all cases from one to two inches longer than his own, and could place the maxillary. 

(lower jaw bone) over his own, flesh and all.