378 ETHNOLOGY. 



responding members of the skeleton, which had crumbled and fallen 

 down together, and which would naturally occur if the body had been 

 set upright or slightly bent over. 



I did not expect to find rock graves in a mound of earth, but after 

 clearing away rubbish and penetrating six feet below the top, near the 

 center, the workmen struclc a slab of slate, which proved to be part of 

 the covering of a stone tomb. It was much like those scattered over 

 the "river-bottom" — more nicely constructed, however, and fitted with 

 more care — being arched over the top, at an acute angle, with pieces of 

 slate three inches thick. Owing to its situation, raised above the level 

 of the river and covered with sand to the depth of six feet, its contents 

 were better preserved than those of the graves just mentioned. At the 

 head of it I took out a vessel composed of fine red clay and pulverized 

 muscle-shells, a foot in diameter, gourd-shaped, having a handle and spout 

 six inches long, and holding about a quart. It was i^reserved nearly 

 whole. Artificial fire had been kindled in the tomb, but it had been 

 smothered by the throwing in of sand before all the contents were con- 

 sumed. Besides some entire bones of the human skeleton, flint arrow- 

 heads and a large number of shell and stone beads were removed. The 

 beads could be traced along the lines of the legs and arms, as if they 

 had been attached to the garment in which the dead was buried. Fur 

 tlier excavations disclosed two more of these stone sepulchers, the first 

 three feet below the one described, the other two feet from it, in the same 

 plain. They contained only fragmeiit.f of bones, charcoal, and ashes. 



The mound, which was conical in shape, must have been fifteen feet 

 high and fifty feet in diameter. Successive floods had impaired its orig- 

 inal dimensions. The last carried away a section on the west side, ex- 

 posing a tomb and some valuable relics, wliich have not been preserved. 

 Among them were large shells — pyrulas, probably, judging from the de- 

 scription, from the Gulf of Mexico — such as 1 have discovered in two 

 other mouiids on the banks of the Tennessee, and which are deposited 

 in the Peabody Museum of Harvard College. In connection with ma- 

 rine shells, images in stone were found in this tomb. The mound was 

 composed of sand-loam taken from the bank of the river and raised 

 upon a foundation of water-washed rocks, four feet high from the bed 

 of the stream hard by. There 'had been extensive burnings throughout 

 this mound, at various depths, indicated by layers of charcoal, ashes, 

 and burned clay, simply in honor of the dead or to consume their eftects 

 and mortal parts, or for human sacrifices to their manes. 



As no relics, except fragments of charred bones, not even stone imple- 

 ments, that would escape destruction by fire were found, after careful 

 searching among extensive layers, I am inclined to the opinion that cap- 

 tives in war were freely slain and burned, for a sacrificial ofl:ering to the 

 dead in the tombs. It is not probable that a people so particular about 

 their burial-rites, as shown not only in the mound-sepulchers, but in 

 those scattered over the plain, which we may suppose contained their 



