"The surface yielded fractured iron pots, delft or figured china of white man's manufacture, and rusty iron objects, besides flint scrapers and chips, potsherds, and the usual accumulations of a village prior to contact with white people. The writer cannot attribute the flint implements to the Omaha, but considers the favorable site on a plateau at the junction of two streams to have been used by another people long before the Omaha erected their lodges there." (Gilder, (1), p. 75.)
Innumerable ruins of earth lodges were to have been found in the vicinity of the present city of Omaha, the great majority of which stood in early days before the arrival of Europeans in the valley of the Missouri, and it is not possible to say by which tribe the villages were erected. Many large ruins were discovered on Childs Point, in the extreme northeastern corner of Sarpy County, just south of Omaha, and some 4 miles northeast of the small village visited by Kurz. Some of the ruins were carefully examined by Gilder. One, which appears to have been considered as possessing the typical characteristics of the group, was described by Gilder, who wrote: "In all house ruins similar to the one here described, the main fireplace, four or five feet in diameter, is situated near the exact center. From this fireplace the floor extends, nearly flat, to within ten feet of the extreme outer edge or periphery of the ruin. Here a platform, or step, twelve to fourteen inches high and almost vertical, rose from the floor and sloped rather sharply to the outer rim.... Around the line of the inner circumference of the platform, at distances of approximately five feet, the remains of posts six or seven inches in diameter were discovered. These were either in the form of charcoal or of wood dust. Sometimes bowlders lay about the remains of the posts, as if designed to aid in holding them in position. The grain of the charcoal posts indicated the wood to have been oak. About the posts, under the floor, and also under the platform, objects were more numerous than at other points in the ruin. The charred remains of four posts about eight feet apart surrounded the central fireplace. There were two features of house construction that stand out conspicuously: (1) the floor was approximately six to eight feet lower than the level of the surrounding ridge; (2) the angle at which the slabs, logs, or paling probably leaned inward from the periphery seems to indicate the highest part of the roof at about the same distance above the surrounding level as the floor was below, making the highest part of the roof about fifteen feet above the fireplace in the center of the dwelling.... Little besides broken flint instruments, flint chips, shells, potsherds, and fractured drift bowlders were found upon the floor itself; the major number of objects was beneath the floor surface, very often covered with bowlders, as if the latter had been placed to mark the spot. Small fireplaces were of frequent occurrence on all parts of the floor.