EUSHNELL] NATIVE CEMETERIES AND FORMS OF BURIAL. 69 



for, notwithstanding so much has been removed, there is yet a depth 

 of four feet, chiefly of broken human bones." (Thomas, (l),p. 285.) 



Other instances are recorded where a small room or cavity within 

 a large cave had evidently been set apart and converted into a tomb. 

 Haywood mentioned a cave "" near the confines of Smith and AVilson 

 Counties, on the south side of Cumberland river, about '2'-2 miles above 

 Cairo, on the waters of Smith's Fork of Cany Fork," The outer 

 portion of the cave was examined and small cavities were entered 

 through natural passages. They reached " another small aperture, 

 which also they entered, and went through, when they came into a 

 narrow room, 25 feet square. Every thing here was neat and smooth. 

 The room seemed to have been carefully preserved for the reception 

 and keeping of the dead. In this room, near about the centre, were 

 found sitting in baskets made of cane, three human bodies; the flesh 

 entire, but a little shrivelled, and not much so. The bodies were those 

 of a man, a female and a small child. . . . The man was wrapped in 

 14 dressed deer skins. The 14 deer skins were wrapped in what those 

 present called blankets. Thfey were made of bark. . . . The form of 

 the baskets which enclosed them was pyramidal, being larger at the 

 liottom, and declining to the top. The heads of the skeletons, from 

 the neck, were above the summits of the blankets." (Haywood, (1), 

 pp. 191-192.) This would have been near the center of the State of 

 Tennessee. 



The same writer records another example quite like the preceding. 

 (Op. cit., p. 195.) This was in Giles County, Tennessee, which touches 

 the Alabama line. The cave was on the east bank of a creek, 7^ miles 

 north of the village of Pulaski. The cave contained several cavities 

 or rooms, " the first 15 feet wide, and 27 long; 4 feet deep, the upper 

 part of solid and even rock. In the cave was a passage, which had 

 been so artfully covered that it escaped detection till lately." When 

 the stones closing the opening had been removed, and the cavity en- 

 tered, human bones were found scattered over the floor, which had 

 been formed of " flat stones of a bluish hue, being closely joined to- 

 gether, and of different forms and sizes." 



Various other burials, similar to those already mentioned, could be 

 described, but without adding materially to the details. Many such 

 discoveries were undoubtedly made by the early settlers and pioneers, 

 all traces of which have been lost and to which no references have been 

 preserved. It is within reason to attribute these burials in caves to 

 the same people who constructed the stone-lined graves, but in the lat- 

 ter all objects and material of a perishable nature have long since 

 disappeared, whereas garments and wrappings when deposited in 

 caves in contact with certain natural salts have been preserved. 

 Therefore, if the hypothesis is correct, and the builders of the stone- 



