36 



THE PROBLExM OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. 



Joues says:' 



It lias been more tliau hinted at by at least one person whoso statement is entitled 

 to every belief, that among the Clieroliees dwelling in the mountains there existed 

 certain artists whose professed occupation was the manufacture of stone pipes, which 

 were by them transported to the coast and there bartered away for articles of use 

 and ornament foreign to and highly esteemed among the members of their own tribe. 



This not only strengthens the conclusions drawn from the presence of 

 such pipes in the mounds alluded to, but may also assist in explainiug 

 the presence of the copper and iron ornaments in them. 



Duriug- the fall of 1886 a farmer of east Tennessee while examining a 

 cave with a view to storing potatoes in it during the winter unearthed 

 a well preserved human skeleton which was found to be wrai)ped in a 

 large piece of cane matting. This, which measures about G by 4 feet, 

 with the exception of a tear at one corner is perfectly sound and pliant 

 and has a large submarginal stripe running around it. luclosed with 

 the skeleton was a piece of cloth made of flax, about 14 by 20 iuches, 

 almost uniujured but apparently uufiuished. The stitch in which it is 

 woven is precisely that imprinted on mound pottery of the type shown 

 in Fig. 96 in Mr. Holmes's paper on the mound-builders' textile fabrics 

 reproduced here in Fig. 4.^^ 



fivMWW'^^ 



Fig. 4. Twined fabric imprtsseil on a piece of jjottery obtained from a mound in Jefferson County, 



Tennessee. 



Although the earth of the cave contains salts which Avould aid in pre- 

 serving anything buried in it, these articles can not be assigned to any 

 very ancient date, especially when it is added that with them were the 

 remains of a dog from which the skin had not all rotted away. 



These were presumably placed here by the Cherokees of modern times, 

 and they form a link not easily broken between the prehistoric and hi,'5- 

 toric days. 



It is probable that few persons after reading this evidence will doubt 

 that the mounds alluded to were built by the Cherokees. Let us there- 

 fore see to what results tliis leads. 



In the iirst place it shows that a powerful and active tribe in the in- 

 terior of the country, in contact with the tribes of the Xorth on one 

 side and with those of the South on the other, were mound-builders. 

 It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that they had derived this cus- 



' Autiij. So. Indians, p. 400. ■ - Fifth Ann. Kept. Bur. Ethnol., p. 415, Fig. 9G. 



