Karl Monroe Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Karl Monroe 12
Q: Did you know this Me1 Fowler?
A: Yes. He doesn't care for me. I held my pictures of one of his digs
one summer a whole summer because he didn't want them published yet for
fear that the people would come and bother him or maybe disturb his
digging. So I held them all summer and then he published the whole thing
in Wisconsin before I got to do it. And I told him I didn't care for
that. So I don't think he cares for me very much.
They've had a lot of problems with this Mound 72 with guarding it because
it's right next to one of the roads that runs through the park. There's
a loop road that runs south and comes looping around an old, well it
looks like a lake. Actually they think it's the place where they dug up
a Lot of the dirt that was used to build a mound. But at any rate this
road goes right by this mound so that it's kind of an accessible tourist
attraction.
Well, this mound is not only notable for this pole and this detective
story, it's also the place where an Indian chief, say one of these prehistoric
Indian chiefs, was found buried, laid out with his arms out, flat on his
back, on top of a gorgeous, what must have been a gorgeous bird shaped
arrangement of shells. Undoubtedly they were all woven together when
they were put there, some kind of a bird thing. Thousands of these
beautiful shells were in the area with this skeleton laying on top of
them. In the same mound with him, in the same pit with him, were the
jumbled skeletons of 57 maidens from about 17 to 25 years old, a11 female
and just lots of bones. It wasn't a classy bural. Apparently they had
slaughtered them and dumped them in there.
In the same mound they found four well defined, well preserved skeletons
with the head severed and the hands severed and the feet severed. The
heads are there but they're not there with the rest of the skeleton.
They found a number of so called basket burials with the legs and arms
all pulled up under the chin, the knees pulled up to the chin, all bunched
together, which was apparently a method of burial used in a different
period. Maybe these were from a different tribe and they didn't bother
burying them classy. They found one group 05 burials that they suppose
were prisoners in which the knees, the feet, and the elbows had been tied
together. Evidently they tied the elbows behind the skeleton, behind the
body. And I think, as I recall the head was off that one too. Probably
prisoners.
In that same mound they found a collection, apparently a showing of
respect or something, of absolutely gorgeous high quality arrowheads,
thousands of them, of various materials. Some of them obviously brought
from the East Coast, the Gulf, various places because the stone is not
stone that's found around here. Incidentally, there are ample evidence
already dug up of arrowheads and other articles whlch had to come from
far down in the Ozarks, a few copper articles that came from down in the
Ozarks, things that weren't found around here. Well, I've talked too
much about the Indians.
Q: You've been around here all your life and have seen the growth and
development of this area and the decay of some of it. East St. Louis