the largest tree found on the ground was not over two hundred and fifty years old, the time of the abandonment of the cemetery can not be more than three hundred years ago. This would take it back to less than one hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus. The present State of Ohio was then probably occupied by a tribe of Indians known as the Eries, who were totally exterminated in 1656,[1] and it is possible we have in this cemetery one of the burial-places of this tribe of Indians.
Catlinite pipes were unknown to the mound-builders, yet some made of this material are found in this cemetery. Hogs rooting in the ground find sufficient nutriment in the bones to eat them greedily, and probably there would be fewer bone implements found if they had not been buried in ash-pits.[2]
Everything, therefore, tends to show the comparatively recent date of this cemetery, and I would state, as a reasonable conclusion, that the remains are those of a tribe of Indians, perhaps the Eries, and were deposited not more than three hundred and perhaps only two hundred and fifty years ago.
| THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL.[3] |
By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D.
GENTLEMEN: By your flattering estimate of my services, I have been unexpectedly summoned from retirement to assume the honors and the duties of the purple, and to occupy the most historically important office in the universities of Europe.
The present demands upon the rectorship somewhat resemble what we are told of the Homeric chief, who, in company with his council or senate, the Boulè, and the popular assembly, or Agora, made up the political constitution of the tribe. The functions of the chief, it is said, were to supply wise reason to the Boulè (as we might call our court), and unctuous eloquence to the Agora. The second of these requirements is what weighs upon me at the present moment.
Whatever may have been the practice of my predecessors, generally strangers to you, it would be altogether unbecoming in me to travel out of our university life for the materials of an address. My remarks, then, will principally bear on the University Ideal.
- ↑ "Some Early Notices of the Indians of Ohio," by M. F. Force, published by K. Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1879, pp. 1–11.
- ↑ For an account of these pits, see "Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iii.
- ↑ Rectorial Address to the Students of Aberdeen University, Wednesday, November 15, 1882.
