384 ANTIQUITIES OF JACKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE HAILE. 



wbich had been upturned by a fallen tree a fragment from the neck of 

 a vessel, with square indentations on the surface, and a flint, flat on one 

 side and regularly chipped to a concave surface on the other. Still l\ir- 

 ther down the river, at the mouth of Breckinridge Creek, is a single 

 mound, which has not been opened, except a slight excavation, which 

 developed the customary lumps of charcoal. This point is about four 

 miles north of Fort Wayne, and is the most southerly point in the 

 county at which mounds or earth-works are known to exist. 



Still, on the ridges, implements and ornaments of the " stone age " 

 and fragments of pottery are often found in many parts of the county, 

 and many of these articles have a beauty of design and a polish un- 

 known to the Indians who were found here on the advent of the whites. 

 Some of the flints are beveled, and others seem to have been cut in a 

 winding form, probably for the same purpose as the beveled ones — to 

 ■give a rotary movement to the weapon. They are of every variety of 

 flints or cherts, and one I possess is a beautifully veined agate. Pro- 

 fessor Foster criticises Longfellow's lines — 



There the ancient arrow-maker 

 Made his arrow-heads of sandstone — 



and says, " Sandstone was never used by the mound-builders as a mate- 

 rial for arrow-heads." I have in my collection a broken arrow-head 

 chipped from sandstone, which proves that Longfellow was right and 

 his critic wrong. 



Some of the stone ornaments are of a material not found in this local- 

 ity, except in a worked form. The ribboned siliceous slate seemed to 

 have been held in special estimation, and I have part of one which 1 

 presume to have been an emblem of authority. It differs from any I 

 have seen figured. It is of a reddish-veined slate, and had two perfo- 

 rations for the handle, but is broken through both holes, the interme- 

 diate piece being lost. The holes are about | of an inch in diameter, 

 regularly drilled. 



I send you with this rude drawings of other implements and weapons 

 in my collection, which I have selected as types of the relics of the 

 stone age found in this vicinity, and which I hope may prove of inter- 

 est. They are all from this county, except those noted as from De Kalb. 

 They are drawn the exact size of the originals, and the flaking and 

 chipping represented as exactly as my artistic skill, or rather want of 

 it, will i^ermit. 



ANTIQUITIES OF .lACKSOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE. 



By Eev. Joshua Hai^le, of Gaixesborough, Tenn. 



[Communicated by James W. McHeury, of Nashville.] 



There is a mound in this county, on the field of Mr. Philip M. Eay, 

 about iorty yards in diameter and nearly 8 feet high, though lower at 



