Giant Human Race Discovered in South Charleston, West Virginia Mound Complex
The map represents a small section of the vast burial mound complex that was constructed along the Kahawha River at present South Charleston West Virginia. Almost every month that was dug into by the Smithsonian Institute contained a giant human skeleton.
The arrow above on the map points this burial mound that can still be viewed within a cemetery. The square enclosure that surrounded it is no longer visible.
Bureau of Ethnology, 5th Annual Report, 1883-4
“Below the center of No. 7 (see plate), sunk into the original earth, was a vault about 8 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. Lying extended on the back in bottom of this, amid the rotten fragments of a bark coffin, was a decayed human skeleton, fully 7 feet long, with head west. No evidence of fire was to be seen, nor were any stone implementsdiscovered, but lying in a circle just above the hips were fifty circular pieces of white perforated shell, each about 1 inch in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick.”
Bureau of Ethnology 12th Annual Report, 1894
Kanawha County
No. 11 is now 35 by 40 feet at the base and 4 feet high. In the center 3 feet below the surface, was a vault 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. In the bottom of this, among the decayed fragments of bark wrappings, lay a skeleton fully seven feet long, extended at full length on the back, head west. Lying in a circle above the hips were fifty-two perforated shell disks about an inch in diameter and one-eighth of an inch thick.
Bureau of Ethnology 12th Annual Report, 1894
Kanawha County
Mound 19, the one farthest to the east, is 60 feet in diameter and 5 feet high. It was found tocontain a rude vault of angular stones; some of them as much as two men could lift. This had been built on the natural surface and was 8 feet long, 4 wide, and 3 high, but contained only the decaying fragments of a large skeleton and a few fragments of pottery.
