396 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 182 



it seems to have spread, so that all of the deceased were given this 

 treatment, even though they appear to have been buried almost im- 

 mediately thereafter. This, however is not surprising, for every 

 culture, including our own, carries out practices whose original mean- 

 ings have been forgotten and which have become modified. 



The late date of the Clarksville site suggests the possibility of con- 

 tact with the earliest European explorers. Indeed, evidence of such 

 contact would help establish more closely the approximate period 

 when the site was occupied and abandoned. As Miller has stated, no 

 trade goods were found at the site, so that there is no archeological 

 evidence of European contacts. The skeletal remains give no positive 

 evidence either. Briefly summarizing the history of the area : French 

 and Spanish explorers had reached the Southeastern United States 

 in the early 1500's, and the English explorers had reached the mouth 

 of the Roanoke river, less than 200 miles from this site, by 1585, al- 

 though colonization of the Virginia- Carolina coast did not begin until 

 some 20 to 25 years later. Wlien the first inland explorers, among 

 them Lederer in 1670, visited the confluence of the Dan and Roanoke 

 Rivers, where the Clarksville site was located, the Occaneechi In- 

 dians were already carrying on a flourishing trade with the other 

 Indians of the Southeast. So well established was this trade that the 

 Occaneechi language had become current as the trade language of the 

 area, the tribe had absorbed members of neighboring groups, and the 

 Indians resented the attempts of the Europeans to trade competitively. 

 Although the first Europeans left a few trinkets during their initial 

 contacts with the Indians, these were prized, and not likely to be 

 passed on. Wliat they did leave, which would become widely and 

 rapidly distributed, was disease — smallpox, possibly syphilis, and 

 other disorders to which the Indians had no natural immunity. If 

 Southeastern Indian trade routes were as widely dispersed and well 

 traveled as those in other areas (cf. Morgan 1904, vol. 1 p. 45), one 

 would expect disease to travel at least as rapidly as goods. It is 

 noteworthy that the archeological remains at the Clarksville site 

 included various ornaments of copper, possibly from as far away as 

 the Great Lakes, and shells from the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and the 

 Georgia coast. The latter areas, of course, were those first reached 

 by the French and Spanish, and the areas into which diseases were 

 first introduced. One would think that if contagious diseases had 

 been introduced into those areas, they would have been brought north 

 by the same chain of exchange which brought the shell ornaments, 

 reaching the Clarksville area not much later than the trade goods. 

 If this did happen, the diseases reaching the area did not include any 

 of those, such as syphilis, which leave marks in the bones. The ab- 

 sence of evidence of European disease, then, is an argument for a 

 pre-Columbian dating for the site. 



