MYER] THE FEWKES GROUP 611 
On page 263, “Myths of the Cherokee” (Nineteenth Annual 
Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, pt. 1), Mr. James Mooney 
states: 
The buffalo, the largest game animal of America, was hunted in the southern 
Allegheny region until almost the close of the last century, the particular species 
being probably that known in the West as the wood or mountain buffalo. The 
name in use among the principal gulf tribes was practically the same and can not 
be analyzed, viz, Cherokee, yiist’; Hichitee, ya’nasi; Creek, yéna’sa; Choctaw, 
yanash. Although the flesh of the buffalo was eaten, its skin dressed for blan- 
kets and bed coverings, its long hair woven into belts, and its horns carved into 
spoons, it is yet strangely absent from Cherokee folklore. So far as is known it 
is mentioned in but a single one of the sacred formulas, in which a person 
under treatment for rheumatism is forbidden to eat the meat, touch the skin, 
or use a spoon made from the horn of the buffalo, upon the ground of an occult 
connection between the habitual cramped attitude of a rheumatic and the 
natural “hump” of that animal. 
Mr. Mooney in the volume quoted only gives three or four instances 
of the mention of bison in the folklore of the Cherokees. 
It will be found by a study of the accounts of the early whites in 
middle Tennessee that they also killed very few of these ‘‘immense 
numbers of buffaloes.”” While many were sometimes seen to gather 
around the salt licks, as at the lick at Nashville and at Castalian 
Springs, it is very probable their numbers were small over the terri- 
tory asa whole. Granting this to be so, it is astonishing how rapidly 
they disappeared on the advent of the English settlers. One finds 
scarcely a mention of them five years after the first permanent. 
English settlers arrived. They vanished almost in a night. 
On the other hand, it is also well to remember that the bison for 
some reason does not enter to any appreciable extent into the myths 
or rituals of any of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River. 
However, Swan’s description of an Alabama Creek town in 1791 
(p. 513 of this volume), says the Creeks had a “buffalo family”’ at 
that time. The bison figures to a very considerable extent in the 
religious life of the plains Indians. 
The preponderance of the evidence at present indicates it is prob- 
able the bison had not yet come into the Cumberland Valley in 
middle Tennessee at the time the Gordon and Fewkes groups were 
inhabited. 
As was to be expected, no trace of vegetal food was found, save 
the charred maize and maize meal discovered in the Sacred Image 
House on mound No. 2, Fewkes group. 
