Welch Burial Mounds in Brown County, Illinois
Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894
On the spur of the ridge upon which the Welch mounds of Brown county, hereafter noticed, are situated and about midway between them and Chambersburg, in Pike county, is a group of circular mounds, possibly the work of another people than those who built the effigies. They are mainly on the farm of Mr. W. A. Hume, who assisted in opening eight of them, of which but two are specifically noticed here...
The other, situated on the point of a commanding bluff, was also conical in form, 50 feet in diameter and 8 feet high. The outer layer consisted of sandy soil, 2 feet thick, filled with slightly decayed skeletons, probably Indians of intrusive burials. The earth of the main portion of this mound was very fine yellowish sand which shoveled like ashes and was everywhere, to the depth of from 2 to 4 feet, as full of human skeletons as could well be stowed away in it, even to two and three tiers. Among these were a number of bones not together as skeletons, but mingled in confusion and probably from scaffolds or other localities. Excepting one, which was rather more than seven feet long, these skeletons appeared to be of medium size, and many of them much decayed.
