Almost the entire surface of Atchison county, particularly where bordering streams, presents various traces of aboriginal occupancy, from the silent sepulchers of the dead and the mouldy rubbish of the wigwam, to the solitary arrowhead lost on the happy chase or the sanguinary war path. In many places these remains blend into the prehistoric, semi- historic and historic periods, showing evidences of a succession of occupancy. For instance we find the Neolithic stone celts or hatchets, the Neoeric iron tomahawks; fragments of fragile earthenware, mixed and moulded by the prehistoric potter, and bits of modern decorated porcelain made by some pale-faced patterner of Palissy; ornaments of stone, bone and shell; trinkets of brass and beads of glass, intermingled in confusion and profusion. These numerous relics of different peoples and periods, showing, as they do, diverse stages of culture and advancement, warrant the opinion that Atchison county, with its many natural advantages, was a favorite resort of successive peoples from time immemorial. Favorably situated at the great western bend of the Missouri river and at the outskirts of which was one of the richest Indian hunting grounds in the great wild West, embracing and surrounded by every natural advantage that would make it the prospective and wonted haunt of a wild-race, it was a prehistoric paradise, as it is today, a modern Arcadia. [Illustration: State Orphans’ Home, Atchison, Kan. ] The writer has personally examined hundreds of ancient Indian village, camp and workshop sites, and opened a number of mounds in Atchison county. The first ancient mounds ever opened in the county were on a very rugged hill known as the “Devil’s Backbone,” bordering Owl creek, and overlooking the Missouri river, in 1891. There were two of them, and they contained stone sepulchers in which the Indians had cremated their dead. Other stone grave mounds have been opened on the farms of John Myers, on Independence creek, in the northeastern part of the county; Maurice Fiehley, on Stranger creek, near Potter; George Storch, on Alcorn or Whiskey creek, just south of Atchison, and in several other places. The most interesting mound ever excavated in the county, however, was what is known as the Ingalls Mound, on land belonging to the estate of the late United States Senator John J. Ingalls, on a bluff of the Missouri river, at the mouth of Walnut creek, about five miles below Atchison. This mound was discovered by Senator Ingalls at an early day, and opened by the writer in 1907. It was fifteen feet in diameter, and was composed of alternate layers of stone and earth one on top of the other, the remains of several Indians being imbedded in the earth between the layers of stone. These remains were in a bad state of decay, most of the bones crumbling while being removed. The bones of each person had been placed in the mound in compact bundles, which seems to