Giant Monkey Men Buried with Panther in Cincinatti, Butler County, Ohio Burial Mound
Cambridge City, Indiana Tribune, September 26, 1889
RELICS IN OHIO MOUNDS
A Gigantic Man Buried Alongside a Panther
Soon after the 1st of March I left for southern Ohio to collect relics to be placed on loan exhibition in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, say a writer in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. During the last two moths eleven large mounds have been opened and their contents taken to museums and placed on exhibition. These mounds vary in height from eight to thirty feet, are generally conical in shape, and contain all the way from 300 to 10,000 square yards of dirt. They were built by the aborigines in this country hundreds of years ago to serve as burial places for the distinguished dead. They are generally placed near some stream in a valley and not infrequently on high points of land which commanded a good view of the country, but the larger ones are in the valleys. These mounds are usually composed of clay, sometimes of sand, and often have layers off charcoal or burnt clay in them. These layers are often as brightly colored as if they had been painted.
The first mound opened was on rather high ground, the third river terrace. This mound was 13 feet high, 60 feet wide and 110 feet long. It took six men eight days to dig through. When about twenty feet from the eastern edge we came upon a thick layer of burned bone. The layer was six inches thick and the width of the trench. The ashes of which it was composed were either resultant from animal or human bones, we could not tell which, but at any rate, whether animal or human, it must have taken thirty or forty skeletons (if cremated) to have made that many ashes.
About five feet above this layer, or nine feet from the summit of the mound, was a skeleton of a very large individual which had buried by the side of it the bones of a panther. Whether the person had killed the panther and it was buried with him as an honor or whether the panther had killed the individual I can not say. This much however, can be said, that in forty-three opened no find of this nature has been made. It is therefore quit interesting and important. The skull of the panther was very large, teeth very long and sharp. It would take a mound builder of a great deal of nerve to attack a beast of this size if he had nothing but a stone hatchet and bow and arrows to defend himself with. So if he did kill the panther he certainly entitled to a great deal of credit.
Upon opening the large mound last fall, skeletons were discovered. Little attention was given to the bones which soon crumbled. When another mound was opened a few days ago, however, the excavators were struck by the peculiar cranial characteristics. The heads presumably those of men are very much larger than those of present day men. From directly over the eye socket the head slopes straight back, and the nasal bones protrude far above the cheekbones.
The jawbones are so long and pointed that one is struck with their resemblance to those of a monkey. The teeth in the front of the jaw resemble the molars in the mouths of persons today
