RELICS FROM THE MOUNDS AND STONE GRAVES. 131 



filled with fragments of human bones; the others seemed to be composed of com- 

 pact clay and sand two and a half feet high. 



" The large square mound is flat on the top, and, if the trees at the base were 

 cut away, it would command a view for miles around. It has been constructed so 

 as to face the cardinal points exactly. 



" The head and part of the body in this image are still preserved ; and I should 

 have had it entire, but for the accident of having my house burned in 1857. I 

 had a great many curiosities burned with my cabinet, and now take little interest 

 in such things. 



" There is an old town site, at or a little above the mouth of the Hiawassa River, 

 made perhaps by the same people. The spring freshet of 1867 washed the sur- 

 face from the island, and long rows of graves, clay pots, teeth, and other relics are 

 found in abundance. I found a tibia and fibula three and a half inches longer 

 than in the average leg of the white race, and two singular molar teeth, with four 

 fangs and six apices. 



" The Idol, when entire, was in a sitting posture — the left knee and fore-leg 

 resting on the ground, the left arm against the body, and the hand resting on the 

 knee. The body stooped forward slightly; the right knee was elevated to the 

 shoulder; the arm rested against the body, with the hand on the knee." 



In the spring of 1845, Mr. Hartsfield ploughed up an image of stone, about 

 eight miles north of Paris, Tennessee, in a piece of table-land which had been 

 cultivated for seven years. There is a wall around this table-land, perhaps a mile 

 or more in circumference, made of pipe clay. Within the inclosure, there are 

 seven mounds, a deep reservoir in the centre, and two aqvieducts, twenty or thirty 

 feet wide, leading from the Obion River to the reservoir. 



The mounds, wall, reservoir, and other objects indicate this to have been the 

 site of a camp; Messrs. R. E. Dunlap, John W. Dunlap, John H. Gee, and 

 Dr. G. Troost, State Geologist of Tennessee, have all given their certificates of 

 the truth of the foregoing statements. 



The general expression of this idol is similar to that of the large male idol, 

 previously described, and represented in Figs. 67 and 68. The outline, however, is 

 more spirited, the forehead is more elevated, the brow more distinct, the nose 

 better formed, and the mouth is more expressive. The eyes, however, are not as 

 carefully carved, as in the male idol. The mode of arranging the head-dress was 

 similar in both, with this difference, that the Henry County idol has several 

 notches upon the summit of the head-dress. 



The Henry County image will compare favorably, in the perfection of its out- 

 line, with many of the sculptures of the Egyptians and Grecians ; and it is but 

 reasonable to suppose that its author was capable, under favorable circumstances, 

 of attaining a high degree of perfection in his art. 



The small male image (Fig. 71, A), seven inches and a half in length, carved 

 from coarse reddish-brown sandstone, was exhumed from a mound surrounded 

 with stone graves, in Perry County, fuur miles south of the Tennessee River near 

 Clifton. 



