Scientific American,
1883
“A Tradition of
Giants,”
Two
miles from Mandan, on the bluffs
near the junction of the Hart and Missouri rivers is an
old cemetery of fully 100 acres in extent filled with bones of a
giant race. This vast city of the dead lies just east of Fort
Lincoln Road. The ground has the appearance of having been filled
trenches piled full of dead bodies, both man and beast, and covered
with several feet of earth. In many places mounds from 8 to 10 feet
high, and some of them 100 feet or more in length have been filled
with bones and broken pottery, vases of various bright-colored flints
and agates. The pottery is of a dark material, beautifully
decorated, delicate in finish and as light as wood, showing the work
of a people skilled in the arts and possessed of a high state of
civilization. This has evidently been a grand battlefield, where
thousands of men and horses have fallen. Nothing like a systematic
or intelligent exploration has been made, as only little holes two or
three feet in depth have been dug in some of the mounds, but many of
the bones of man and beast and beautiful specimens of broken pottery
and other curiosities have been found in those feeble efforts at
excavation. We asked an aged Indian what his people knew of these
ancient graveyards. He answered: “Me know nothing about them.
They were here before the red
