Gigantic Human Skeletons Discovered in Dearborn County, Indiana Burial Mound

Adena Hopewell enclosure called the Oberting site in Dearborn County, Indiana.

History of Dearborn and Ohio Counties Indiana, 1885 

"There is a large mound in Mr. Allen's field about twenty feet high, sixty feet in diameter at the base, which contains a greater proportion of bones than anyone I ever before examined, as almost every shovel full of dirt would contain several fragments of a human skeleton. When on Whitewater, I obtained the assistance of several of the inhabitants for the purpose of making a thorough examination of the internal structure of these monuments of the ancient populousness of the country. We examined from fifteen to twenty. In some, whose height was from ten to fifteen feet, we could not find more than four or five skeletons. In one not the least appearance of a human bone was to be found. Others were so full of bones, as to warrant the belief that they originally contained at least 100 dead bodies of children of different ages and the full grown, appeared to have been piled together promiscuously. We found several skulls, leg and thigh bones, which plainly indicate their possessors were men of gigantic stature. The skull of one skeleton was one-fourth of an inch thick; and the teeth were remarkably even, sound and handsome, all firmly planted. The fore teeth were very deep and not so wide as those of the generality of the white people. Indeed, there seemed a great degree of regularity in the form of the teeth in all the mounds."