EARTHWORKS ON HARPETH RIVERS. 



87 



European manufacture have ever been exhumed from the aboriginal mounds and 

 graves. 



Amongst these relics may be mentioned a large stone pipe in the form of a 

 partridge or quail, represented one-fourth the natural size in Fig. 53. 



Fig. 53. 



FiR. 5i. 



Fig. 5,3. Pipe of coarse yellow sandstone, from Old Town, one-fonrth natural size. 



Fig. 54. Implement of hard greenstone, from Old Town, banks of Big Uarpeth Kiver, Tennessee. 



The beautiful implement of greenstone and highly polished, 18 inches in 

 length, represented in Fig. 54, is also worthy of mention. 



I have seen several similar stone implements, fashioned upon precisely the same 

 pattern, out of the same hard greenstone, from various parts of the Cumberland 

 Valley. Several conjectures have been formed as to the use of tlicse singular 

 implements. Some have supposed them to have been used in agriculture, the flat 

 head being employed as a spade, and tlie round handle for making small holes in 

 the earth for the deposit of the grains of Indian corn ; others believe that they 

 were used to strip the bark from trees; others again that they were used in dress- 

 ing hides, in excavating caves, or in felling trees after the wood had been charred 

 by fire. It is possible that they may have been used for all these purposes, and 

 also as warlike weapons, since it would be easy to fracture or to cleave the human 

 skull with a single blow from one of these stone implements. 



Numerous stone wedges, hammers, and axes, siniilar to those represented in 

 Fig. 55, some of which wer^ over one foot in length, have been found from time 

 to time in cultivating the soil within and around Old Town. 



The stone hatchets, hammers, wedges, chisels, 

 and fleshing implements were made from hard 

 greenstone, serpentine, limestone, fossiliferous 

 rock, and sandstone. They were probably em- 

 ployed by the aborigines for various purposes, as 

 wedges, hammers for breaking bones and small 

 twigs, for battle-axes, as chisels or wedges, for 

 digging out canoes, and for dressing hides. 



Numerous spear and arrow-heads have also 

 been found at this locality. They were of various sizes and of various shapes, 

 The material from which they were made was most generally flint and jasper. 



Fig. 55. 



Celts from tlie valley of Big H irpeth 

 River, Tennessee. One-eigUth natural 

 size. 



