138 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



walls of rock, overhanging the water, and these were, without doubt, devoted to 

 sacred purposes. They seem to have been emblematic of the sun and moon, which 

 are supposed to have been worshipped by this people, as well as by the Natchez 

 and Mexicans. 



The painting representing the sun, on the rocks overhanging the Big Harpeth 

 River, about three miles below the road which crosses this stream and connects 

 Nashville and Charlotte, can be seen for a distance of four miles, and it is probable 

 that the worshippers of the sun assembled before this high place for the perform- 

 ance of their sacred rites. 



At Buffalo Gap, on the same stream, where the ancient trail of the buffalo is 

 still distinct, a line of these animals is painted on the cliff of rocks which over- 

 hangs the river. 



The hollow formed by the projecting rocks at Buffalo Gap, on Big Harpeth, is 

 capable of sheltering at least one thousand men, and it would appear that this was, 

 in ancient times, a favorite resort of the Indian hunters. 



In company with Dr. Carter, who acted as my guide, I visited both these 

 localities (the one above and the other below the extensive aboriginal remains of 

 Mound Bottom), and sketched the paintings. 



Father James Marquette, in his earliest voyage of discovery on the Mississippi, 

 describes similar paintings on the face of a perpendicular rock between the 

 Missouri and the Illinois. 



" The painted monsters," says Stoddard, " on the face of a high perpendicular 

 rock apparently inaccessible to man, between the Missouri and Illinois, and known 

 to the moderns by the name of Pisa, still remain in a good degree of preserv- 

 ation."! 



John Haywood^ has some observations on the sun and moon painted upon 

 rocks. 



Pipes. 



The aborigines of Tennessee displayed great taste and skill in the carving of 

 pipes from sandstone and steatite, as we have shown by the specimens figured and 

 described in the preceding chapters. The large parrot-shaped pipe (Fig. 68), carved 

 out of chocolate-colored steatite, is 12 inches in length, and was discovered in the 



vicinity of aboriginal remains, near Murfreesboro. The 



Pig. 74. . ,•' . ^ . ' , ^ . 



large lieavy pipe representing, apparently, an American 

 quail (Fig. 53), and obtained near Old Town, was formed 

 from dense, coarse, light-brown sandstone. I have seen 

 some of these aboriginal pipes fashioned of hard green- 

 stone and highly polished, wliich were over eighteen 

 inches in length. In Fig. 74 we have the representation 

 Smiii sfone pip,^ from a mnnnd of a beautiful highly polished stone pipe, which was carved 



near Hickman, Kentucky. One- r j i i- i i i . .•■ rni 



fourth natural size. irom a dense, rcddish-grecn and brown steatite. Ihe 



^ Discovery and E.xploration of the Mississippi Valley, by John Gilmary Shea, p. 39. 

 ' Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 113:-115. 



