THE FEWKES GROUP 
During October, 1920, an unnamed Indian village group was par- 
tially excavated at Boiling Spring Academy, about 1 mile north of 
Moran Station on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and 6 miles 
northeast of Franklin, on the Little Harpeth River, in Williamson 
County, Tennessee. At the request of many citizens of Tennessee 
this site was named the Fewkes group in honor of Dr. J. Walter 
Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, who had 
visited it and recognized its possibilities a few months before. 
At least two different peoples had lived on this site. The earlier 
people, whom I have designated the flexed-burial people, on account 
of their mode of burial, built the mounds and most of the other 
remains. The traces of these flexed-burial people cover 14.6 acres. 
At a later date a smaller band of some other tribe located here. The 
flexed-burial people buried the bodies closely flexed in either hexagonal 
or almost circular stone-slab coffins. The later band buried in rec- 
tangular stone-slab graves, with body extended full length, on its back. 
The Fewkes group consists of five mounds, one on each of the four 
sides of a level town square and another on .the edge of the river 
bank. There are also traces of about a dozen house circles and a 
small remnant of what was once a considerable stone-slab cemetery. 
As far as can now be determined the circular buildings of the 
common people were scattered about the outer edges of the group 
of four mounds inclosing the town square. 
Most of these habitations were to the west of mounds Nos. 2 and 3 
and to the north of mounds Nos. 1 and 2, east of mound No. 1 and 
near mound No. 5 and possibly to the south of mound No.3. These 
sites are inclosed by dotted lines on the map. Some houses of more 
than usual importance adjoined mound No. 1 on the northeast side. 
Mound No. 2 on the map (pl. 124) is a low, oval mound situated 
on the western side of the town square. It is also shown in the 
photograph, Plate 125, b. The site of this mound had been lived 
upon for a time before the mound was raised. The mound was com- 
menced and raised to a height of 3 feet and a building or buildings, 
for unknown purposes, erected thereon. This building was later 
torn down, and then the mound was raised 3 feet higher and again 
used for unknown purposes for a period. Then the town house or 
ceremonial house was built upon it. This building had a rare, 
beautiful floor made of clay, smoothed, and then hardened by fire, 
and later covered with a thin black coating which was then polished. 
This coating was black and glossy when uncovered. 
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