Centennial History of Coshocton, County Ohio 1909
The missionary, Zeisberger, noted a hundred and thirty three years ago the numerous signs of an ancient race here. He referred particularly to the cemetery containing thousands of graves near the mound three miles south of Coshocton.
The skeletons reduced to chalky ashes, were three to four and a half feet long, smaller than the Indian or mound skeletons. These pygmies have led to much conjecture. Thus far no definite conclusion is recorded in any of the notices of this ancient city of the dead.
Skulls were described “as triangular in shape, much flattened at the sides and back, though not with the slant-brow of the Flat Head Indians seen in the West. A hole pierced the back of the head. The bones were displaced, the skull being found with the pelvis, from which it is inferred that the body was dismembered before burial.
The long rows of graves of the pygmy race at Coshocton were regularly arranged with heads to the west, a circumstance which has given rise to the theory that these people were sun-worshippers, facing the daily approach of the sun god over the eastern hills. In this respect, however, there is no resemblance to the various positions of the skeletons found in our mounds.
The iron nails mentioned by Hildreth as found in this ancient cemetery take on added interest in view of the discovery in a mound near Cincinnati, reported by F.W. Putnam, curator of then Peabody Museum. Masses of meteoric iron were found on an alter, with bars of iron and other objects made of metal.
The thousands of graves point only to the conclusion that the country around was the seat of a large population
Thousands of Pygmy Graves Discovered in Ohio
Living side by side with a giant race
Near this large burial mound, that can still be seen today, was the graveyard that contained the pygmy or Elf race
Centennial History of Coshocton, County Ohio 1909
Howes’s Historical Collections, Institution, quoted from Dr. Hildreth’s description in Sillmans Journal, 1835. This also mentions an ancient cemetery of pygmies near St. Louis. There the skeletons were found in stone sepulchers, while those in Coshocton, Ohio were in wooden coffins.