THOMAS. THE CHEROKEES AS MOUND-BUILDERS. ed 
ing the strings by which they were to be held in position ; others were 
engraved with figures which would readily be taken for stars and half. 
moons, and one among the number had a cross engraved on it. The 
testimony in this case that these relics were the work of the Indians 
found in possession of the country at the time of the discovery is, there- 
_fore, too strong to be put aside by mere conjectures or inferences. If 
the work of the Indians, then they must have been used by the Chero- 
kees and buried with their dead. The engraved figures are strangely 
uniform, indicating some common origin, but the attempt to trace this 
is fortran to our present purpose. In ee mounds were found a large 
number of nicely carved soapstone pipes, usually with the stem made 
in connection with the bowl, though some were without this addition, 
consisting only of the bowl, with a hole for the insertion of a cane or 
wooden stem. 
By turning to Adair’s “History of the North American Indians,” ! 
we find the following statement: 
They [the Indians] make beautiful stone pipes, and the Cherokees the best of any 
of the Indians, for their mountainous country contains many different sorts and colors 
of soils proper for such uses. They easily form them with their tomahawks, and 
afterwards finish them in any desired form with their knives, the pipes being of a 
very soft quality till they are smoked with and used with the fire, when they become 
quite hard. They are often a full span long, and the bowls are about half as long 
again as those of our English pipes. The fore part of each commonly runs out, with 
a sharp peak two or three fingers broad and a quarter of an inch thick. 
Not only were pipes made of soapstone found in these mounds, but 
two or three were obtained precisely of the form mentioned by Adair, 
with the fore part running out in front of the bowl; and another of the 
same form has been found in 2 ae on the Kanawha, which is at 
least suggestive. Jones says: 
It has been more than hinted by at least one person whose statement 1s entitled to 
every belief, that among the Cherokees dwelling in the mountains there existed 
certain artists whose professed occupation was the manufacture of stone pipes, which 
were by them transported to the coast and there bartered away for articles of use 
and ornament foreign to and highly esteemed among the members of their own tribe. 
This not only strengthens our conclusion, drawn from the presence 
of such pipes in the mounds alluded to, but may also assist in explain- 
ing the presence of the copper ornaments in them. The writer last 
quoted says:* 
Copper implements are rarely found in Georgia. The present [a copper ax} is the 
finest specimen which, after no mean search, has rewarded our investigations. Na- 
tive copper exists in portions of Cherokee Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and 
Alabama, but it is generally found in combination with sulphur and not in malleable 
form. We are not aware of any locality among those enumerated whence the In- 
dians could haye secured that metal either in quantity or purity sufficient to have 
enabled them to manufacture this ump loment: 


' Page 423, naan of bie Boauen ititians p- 400. *Page 228, 
