Local Indian Mounds
(From the Wilkes-Barre Record 1931)
Typed by Irene Transue

Modern homes and the march of progress are rapidly creeping over one of
the last historical spots of the West Side. The site referred to is one
where the aborigine, or prehistoric Indian, built his mounds in what is
now Kingston Borough. The last vestige of the mounds was wiped out in
the great flood of 1865, it is said, but the big field where they were
located still remains in part.
  Not far from the new million dollar high school on Chester street,
between Chester street and Hoyt street and on the banks of Little Toby's
creek, or the "pond holes" as the creek is better known, was an
exceedingly large mound. It is thought to have been built 800 or 900
years ago at least. An oak tree that was cut down from the mound was
found to have been approximately 700 years old.
  This settlement, by people who were doubtless the ancestors of the
present Indians, was the first in the valley. The mound builders of the
West Side are thought to have been the kinsmen of those mound builders
who left so many tell-tale marks in the Mississippi valley. When the
first settlers  came into the Wyoming valley the embankment or
fortification of this early village was in a fair state of preservation.
Isaac A. Chapman, the historian, inspected it in early times and in 1817
described it as follows: "It is an oval form and has its longest
diameter from northwest to southeast, at right angles to the creek, 337
feet, and its shortest diameter northeast to southwest, 272 feet. on the
southwest appears to have been a gateway about twelve feet wide. It was
a mound or rampart constructed of earth." 
Canoes could ascend the creek or pond holes to a point directly in front
of the village.
  The origin of the Kingston aboriginals has been the subject of much
conjecture by historians. A spearhead or other instrument of hammered
copper was found on the Kingston mound. This would indicate close
kinship with the mound builders of the Mississippi valley, who were
skilled in the manufacture of copperwork. The soil of the valley, with
its recurring floods, was very fertile and the human beings were
attracted here just as the later Indians came here and then the white
settlers.
  The big new high school almost touches one point of what must have
been the mound. Houses are rapidly being erected around the large field
where the mound was located in the main and before long the whole
section will have been covered with houses.