EARTHWORKS ON HARPETH RIVERS. 99 



strewed with the unburied dead ; whole aud large villages were depopulated, and 

 some entire tribes have disappeared." 



This mortality, he says, " extended not only from the cascades to the Pacific, 

 but from very far north to the coast of California." 



These facts, which might be greatly multiplied, show clearly how entire nations 

 might have been destroyed in the interior of the country, as in Tennessee and 

 Kentucky, and in the great valley of the Mississippi, by an epidemic, without 

 leaving any records or memorials, except their sepulchres, bones, mounds, earth- 

 works, stone implements, pottery, aud objects of worship. 



