17 November: In the morning, weather like yesterday. At seven thirty, -1°R [29.8°F, -1.3°C]. At noon, extraordinarily warm. This forenoon Dr. Dake left us. Stroll in the afternoon with Mr. Say. Today he gave me some old Indian skulls that had been removed from the burial mounds near the dwellings of New Harmony. Only the top section was preserved: the facial bones were missing, and everything was extremely fragile and weathered. These burial mounds are now greatly leveled off. They are located in the enclosed wooded area in which Mr. Rapp had plotted his cemetery. Mr. Say informed us that these mounds were built before the time of the present-day Indians, for the latter knew nothing about them and did not bury their dead in this manner. I intended these heads for Blumenbach’s collection. There are also several fragments and half of a lower jaw among them, the alveoli of which were almost obliterated.