48 THE PROBLEM OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. 



The result of these explorcatioiis has beeu to briug to light some very 

 important data bearing upon the question now under consideration. In 

 fact we find here what seems to be beyond all reasonable doubt the 

 connecting link between the typical works of Ohio and those of East 

 Tennessee and Xorth Carolina ascribed to the Cherokees, 



The little stone vaults in the shape of bee-hives noticed and figured 

 in the articles in Science and the American Katuralist, before referred 

 to, discovered by the Bureau assistants in Caldwell County, jST. C, and 

 Sullivan County, Tenn., are so unusual as to justify the belief that they 

 are the work of a particular tribe, or at least pertain to an ethnic type. 

 Yet under one of the large mounds at Charleston, on the bottom of 

 a pit dug in the original soil, a number of vaults of i)recisely the same 

 form were found, placed, like those of the Sullivan County mound, in 

 a circle. But, though covering human remains moldered back to dust, 

 they were of hardened clay instead of stone. ^N^evertheless, the simi- 

 larity in form, size, use, and conditions under which they were found 

 is remarkable, and, as they have been found only at the points men- 

 tioned, the probability is suggested that the builders in the two sections 

 were related. 



There is another link equally strong. In a number of the larger 

 mounds on the sites of the " over-hill towns," in Blount and Loudon 

 Counties, Tenn., saucer-shaped beds of burnt clay, one above another, 

 alternating with layers of coals and ashes, were found. Similar beds 

 were also found in the mounds at Charleston. These are also unusual, 

 and, solar as I am aware, have beeu found only in these two localities. 

 Possibly they are outgrowths of the clay altars of the Ohio mounds, and, 

 if so, reveal to us the probable use of these strange structures. They 

 were i^laces where captives were tortured and burned, the most common 

 sacrifices the Indians were accustomed to make. Be this supposition 

 worthy of consideration or not, it is a fact worthy of notice in this con- 

 nection that in one of the large mounds in this Kanawha group one 

 of the so-called "clay altars" was found at the bottom of precisely the 

 same pattern as those found by Squier and Davis in the mounds of 

 Ohio. 



In these mounds were also found Avooden vaults, constructed in ex- 

 actly the same manner as that in the lower part of the Grave Creek 

 mound ; also others of the pattern of those found in the Ohio mounds, 

 in which bark wrappings were nsod to enshroud the dead. Hammered 

 copper bracelets, hematite celts and hemispheres, and mica plates, so 

 characteristic of the Ohio tumuli, were also discovered here; and, as in 

 East Tennessee and Ohio, we find at the bottom of mounds in this 

 locality the post-holes or little pits which have recently excited consid- 

 erable attention. We see another connecting link in the circular and 

 rectangular inclosures, not combined as in Ohio, but analogous, and, 

 considering the restricted area of the narrow valley, bearing as strong- 

 resemblance as might be expected if the builders of the two localities 

 were one people. 



