368 ETHNOLOGY. 



named may be received as satisfactory evidence of its having been a 

 luuiting-gTound to some not very distant village or encampment. The 

 burial-mounds near Chattanooga and Sparta indicate those places as 

 headquarters of the tribes for a long duration of time. 



Tiie fragments of pottery were generally of a dark color, not very 

 hard or compact, with white specks miugled through the mass as though 

 small pieces of shells had been mixed witli the clay, and had not been 

 converted into lime by the process of burning. The pestles and other 

 implements were fabricated from stones of different colors, apparently 

 of a clay basis, and corresponding, in appearance, to rocks which are 

 common to the Blue Ridge. jSTo such rocks occur between the Apa- 

 lachian chain and the Rocky Mountains. The arrow-heads were made 

 from quartz, which of this kind is not found in that country, the siliceous 

 miueials, except the sandstone, being more or less cherty, with a semi- 

 conchoidal fracture, often associated with and sometimes embedded in 

 the limestoue below the coal seams. Rarely an arrow-head of this 

 mineral was discovered. 



The mounds near Chattanooga have been already noticed by your 

 correspondents. I would it were in my power to direct attention to 

 another interesting locality. Of this my only knowledge is obtained 

 from a publication, I think in the year 1825, in the Beview, a newspaper 

 printed at Sparta, the seat of justice of White County. As well as my 

 memory serves me, Dr. Fiske and some other gentleman made an ex- 

 amination of an ancient cemetery near that town, and, finding no remains 

 of adults, came to the conclusion that the country had been inhabited 

 by a race of pigmies. The graves were numerous, covering more than an 

 acre, were generally three feet long and eighteen inches deep, with a " cof 

 fin" of. slaty rocks. The bones were so much decomposed that they fell 

 to pieces after a few moments' exposure to the atmosphere. Perhaps a 

 file of the Eeview for that year may be in the Department of State, for 

 in it were published the Jaws of Congress, and it was then the custom of 

 the Department to bind and preserve such papers. I mention this to 

 enable persons iuvestigating Tennessee antiquities to avail themselves 

 of the information furnished by writers who observed and described 

 those interesting objects before they were changed or obliterated by the 

 hand of civilization. In this connection no book will be so likely to 

 arrest the attention of the curious as Haywood's History of Tennessee. 

 It is to be regretted that this, one of the earlier books published beyond 

 the AUeghanies, is now so scarce in the State where the author was 

 one of the first and ablest of its jurists. 



In closing this communication, intending in another to notice the 

 locality of some mounds and fortifications not alluded to by any of your 

 correspondents as I have seen, I will state that when on an excursion into 

 the State of Arkansas in the year 1857, I came to a place where doubt- 

 less an immense number of arrow-heads had been manufactured. It 

 was near the summit of a ridge about two miles north of the Hot 



