Stone Tomb Contained the Remains of a Giant in a Mass Grave of Cremated Skeleton in Mason County West Virgina
12th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1890- 91
McCulloch mound
Five miles above the mouth of the Kanawha, on the south side, on the farm of Charles E. McCulloch, is the largest mound in this section. Unlike most of the large mounds, it is not on the river bottom, but on a sloping terrace nearly a hundred feet higher, and after long cultivations are still 20 feet high and nearly 300 feet in circumference. A circular shaft 11 feet in diameter was sunk down through the center to the bedrock a foot below the base of the mound. A rock heap at the top had been made in a depression evidently caused by the caving of a vault. This rock heap had been disturbed by parties who found a very large skeleton with some stone weapons. Beneath it sandstone slabs as heavy as a man could lift were scattered through the shaft, and at the bottom enough of them standing and lying at all angles to have covered the vault, and appearing to have been hurled thus by the caving in of the roof. Excepting the outside covering and 3 or 4 feet at the bottom of soil like that about it and the stones mentioned, the entire mound was composed of ashes, mostly pure, but in a few places slightly mixed with earth, all very light and easily shoveled. The somewhat sloping, natural surface had been leveled up by a layer of clay, then a bark floor laid down, and this covered with a layer of clean ashes over a space larger than the area of the vault, which must have been nearly square, about 12 feet on either side, and placed diagonally to the cardinal points. Prostrate in the ashes were the remains of at least 6 adults and some children, placed parallel, heads east. Owing to the condition of the mound at the bottom, being very wet, the bones were so decayed that it was impossible to tell how many persons had been buried here. Not a single relic of any kind was found with the remains.
