MODES OF BURIAL. 11 



The preceding account of the pigmies of Tennessee is an example of how a wild 

 hypothesis may, from the love of the marvellous, be founded upon a few hasty and 

 imperfect observations. This tradition had been repeated so often that it was 

 generally believed in the State at the time of ray exploration, and I have, tlierefore, 

 given the facts upon which it appears originally to have been founded. It is 

 evident that these facts do not establish the existence of a race of small people 

 {plijhiies) in former times; the decayed state of tlie bones, and especially of those 

 of the crania in the graves opened by Mr. Lane and others, was almost conclusive 

 proof that they belonged to tlie skeletons of children. On the other hand, the skele- 

 tons of adults remain to this day in a good state of preservation in the stone graves. 

 Even Haywood, who was anxious to make out a special case, represents the testi- 

 mony of the pliysicians of Nashville as doubtful ; and one of the crania or cranial 

 bones sent Avas evidently that of a child. The color of the hair could not deter- 

 mine this question, as it had been buried in the moist eartli for more than a century 

 at the time of these examinations. 



I myself have examined the bones from fifteen diiferent aboriginal cemeteries, 

 and have never discovered a single skeleton of an adult of unusually small stature. 

 I have examined graves of all sizes, from those just large enough for the still-born 

 infant to those enclosing skeletons more than seven feet in length, but, in every 

 case, the small graves contained either the skeletons of children or the bones of 

 full-grown adults, which had been deposited in the square stone coffins, after they 

 had been separated from the flesh and disjointed. 



The experience of my lamented and honoi-ed friend, the late Col. A. W. Putnam, 

 was in like manner against the existence of a race of pigmies in former times. All 

 the small stone graves which he opened contained the bones of children, as was 

 evident from the state of the teeth. The testimony of Dr. Ti'oost, the learned 

 geologist of Tennessee, was also to the same effect. In liis "Account of some 

 Ancient Remains in Tennessee," after mentioning six extensive burying-grounds 

 in a circle of about ten miles diameter around Nashville, and after stating that the 

 burying-grounds on the banks of the Cumberland, in the suburbs of the city of 

 Nashville, to wliich we have alluded, extended at that time, 1844, about a mile in 

 length, almost to Mr. Macgavoc's, and that the stone coffins were constructed in 

 such a manner that each corpse was separated by a single stone from tlie next, he 

 says : — 



"Some of our inhabitants consider these places as battle grounds, and the graves as the graves 

 of the slain. The Indians do not bury their fallen foes, but leave them to be devoured by the 

 wolf, the cougar, and other carnivorous animals ; their own slain they carry to their towns, or hang 

 up in mats upon trees. They have afterwards burying festivals, when they collect the bones thus 

 preserved, and bury them; and thus, in my opinion, originated those small graves which are 

 attributed, but I believe erroneously, to pigmies. I have opened numbers of these small graves and 

 have found them filled with a parcel of mouldered bones, which, judging from some fragments I 

 have seen, belonged to common-sized men. In one of them I found amongst the mouldered relics 

 two occipital bones ; of course, here was a mere mixture of the parts of more than one skeleton. Tiiese 

 bones lay without any order. This is not the case with the relics of the old extinct race, whose 

 graves are much larger, the skeletons being generally stretched out. Nevertheless, I have found 

 them also more or less doubled up, so that the part of the thigh-bone ne.xt to the knee lay near the 

 lower jaw; in other graves I have found the head with the face downwards; in fact, they seem to 



