ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 379 



common dead, would liave assigned a largo number of their tribe, after 

 death, to a i)ronuscuous or general conliagration. Fire, as is \Yell 

 known, bore an important part in the obsequies of the " mound builders," 

 but so as to show neither in the extent and comi)osition of the charred 

 layers, nor in the kind of relics preserved, the design of the burnings. Two 

 other mounds were found in Ohilhowee Valley, which will be described 

 at some future time. The tradition, as derived from a lady over eighty 

 years of age, who lived in her youth among the Cherokees, is, that these 

 mounds were made by a people inhabiting the country long before the 

 recent Indian race; that their fathers found them there and did not dis- 

 turb them, a statement which confirms all oral testimony respecting 

 those monuments. 



Leaving Chilhowee Valley and crossing the Alleghany range toward 

 North Carolina, in a southeast course, having Little Tennessee Eiver on 

 my right and occasionally in sight from the cliffs, my attention was 

 called, along the road, to "stone heaps," a class of antiquities not often 

 mentioned and seldom distinguished in books. After an examination 

 of the objects and a talk with Indians and the oldest inhabitants, I came 

 to the conclusion that there were two kinds of these remains in this part 

 of Tennessee, which are sometimes confounded, viz, landmarks, or stone- 

 piles, thrown together by the Indians at certain points in their journeys, 

 and those which marked a place of burial. At a pass called " Indian 

 Grave Gap," I noticed the pile which has given its name to the mountain- 

 gorge. The monument is composed simply of round stones raised three 

 feet above the soil, and is six feet long and three feet wide. As the grave 

 had been disturbed I could make no satisfactory examination of its con- 

 tents. On the opposite side of "The Gap," a stone heap of another 

 description was observed, which had been thrown together in accord- 

 ance with Cherokee superstition, that assigned some good fortune to the 

 accumulation of those piles. They had the custom, in their journeys and 

 war-like expeditions, at certain known points, before marked out, of 

 casting down a stone and upon their return another. In this way, in 

 time, a landmark became a conspicuous object. It may be distinguished 

 from grave-stone heaps, which wer<i composed of large round stones of 

 uniform size; the other of small stones, of no particular shape, such as 

 could be easily taken up and hastily thrown down. Four miles from 

 "Indian Grave Gap," on the west side of my path, on a ridge destitute 

 of vegetation, I observed twenty-five of these stone heaps which covered 

 human remains. I examined a number of them, which were four or five 

 feet high and eight in diameter, and shaped like a hay-cock. Trees 

 three and four feet thick had grown and decayed on some of them. In 

 one I found pieces of rotten wood that had been deposited there, frag- 

 ments of bones, and animal mold. The deposit had been made on the 

 surface of the earth, covered with wood and bark, and crowned with a 

 cone of round stones. From the center of one heap three small bells 

 were extracted, having the letters J II engraved on them. They much 



