When the Warm Fork River overflowed from major spring flooding, the rushing waters unearthed a burial site on its banks. After the canoeists reported their find, state, county and local law enforcement officers spent hours excavating the bones.

Police Chief David Bailey and the other officers recovered part of a skull, a full set teeth, and other bone fragments, as well as a spinal column embedded in a clump of dirt.

It apparently was a man about 20 years old who likely died about 150 years ago, according to an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who has looked at photographs of the site and the bones. A flattened musket ball found near the remains led the anthropologist to surmise the man was hastily buried during the Civil War -- or maybe before.

Given the shreds of facts about guerrilla skirmishes around the Ozarks, historian William Piston says that would fit.

But the 20-year old was not alone. More fragments are still visible and buried where the ancient remains were discovered, leading to another scenario: an improvised family cemetery plot.

The burial site is upstream from Mammoth Spring, a known encampment before and after white settlers arrived. It could've been the water that killed them. History confirms as many Confederate and Union forces died from diseased water as bullets and bayonets.

As soon as archeologists learn as much as they can learn about those river people, whoever they were, Bailey hopes they can have a respectable and final resting place. He says trespassers and grave robbers will be prosecuted if caught at the burial site. That's why officers asked KY3 News not to reveal the exact location near Thayer until Missouri Department of Natural Resources archaeologists can excavate it.