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Vol. XY. NEW YORK, Mat 30, 1890. No. 383. 



CONTENTS: 



The Cherokees in Pre-Colum. 

 BiAN Times. Cyrus Thomas... 323 



Dr. Freire's Protective Inocu- 

 lation. George M. Sternberg 328 



Letters to the Editor. 

 Dr. Hann's Studies on Cyclones 



and Anticyclones. W.M.D... 3:2 

 An Hypothesis for the So-called 

 Encroachments of the Sea upon 

 the Land. Gilbert Thompson . . 333 



The Wirnebago County (Iowa) 



Meteorites. J. E. Todd E 



Tornadoes. M. A. Veeder l 



B o OK-R-E vie ws . 



Electricity in Modern Life l 



Evolution and Disease 5 



A Course of Lectures on the 

 Growth and Means of Training 



the Mental Faculty i 



Among the Publishers i 



THE CHEROKEES IN PRE-COLUMBIAN TIMES. 

 II. 



[Continued from p. 328.] 



What has been presented is isrobably sufficient to convince 

 any unbiassed mind that the Chei'okees were mound-builders, 

 nevertheless there is other evidence of a more general char- 

 acter which serves to show that the builders of the East Ten- 

 nessee and North Carolina mounds were contemporaneous 

 with the authors of the works of other sections. 



Proof that in general the mound-builders were Indians 

 would, as a matter of course, have a strong bearing on the 

 case under discussion, but this would require too much space 

 to be introduced here. The following extracts from Major 

 J. W. Powell's article on "Prehistoric Man in America," in 

 the Forum of January, 1890, will give what is now becom- 

 ing the settled conclusion of most of the leading archasolo- 

 gists of the present day: — 



"The research of the past ten or fifteen years has put this 

 subject in a proper light. First, the annals of the Colum- 

 bian epoch have been carefully studied, and it is found that 

 some of the mounds have been constructed in historical 

 time, while early explorers and settlers found many actually 



used by tribes of North American Indians: so we know 

 many of them were builders of mounds. Again, hundreds 

 and thousands of these mounds have been carefully exam- 

 ined, and the works of art found therein have been collected 

 and assembled in museums. At the same time, the works 

 of art of the Indian tribes, as they were produced before 

 modification by European culture, have been assembled in 

 the same rnuseums, and the classes of collections have been 

 carefully compared. All this has been done with the great- 

 est painstaking, and the mound-builders' arts and the In- 

 dians' arts are found to be substantially identical. No frag- 

 ment of evidence remains to support the figment of theory 

 that there was an ancient race of mound-builders superior in 

 culture to the North, American Indians. ... It is enough 

 to say that the mound-builders were the Indian tribes dis- 

 covered by white men." 



Once it is admitted that the mound-builders were Indians, 

 it requires much less proof to carry conviction that a partic- 

 ular tribe was accustomed to erect such structures. There 

 are, however, two facts which seem to carry back the Cher- 

 okees to the mound-building age, even independently of this 

 general argument. 



The first of these to, which attention is called, is that af- 

 forded by a certain class of stone graves or cists found in 

 great numbers in some sections. These cists, usually desig- 

 nated "box -shaped stone graves," are formed of rough un- 

 hewn slabs or flat pieces of stone, thus: first, in a pit some 

 two or three feet deep and of the desired dimensions, dug 

 for the purpose,' a layer is placed to form the floor; next, 

 similar pieces are set on edge for the sides and ends, over 

 which other slabs are laid flat, forming the covering; the 

 whole, when finished, making a rude box-shaped coffin or 

 sepulchre. Sometimes one or more of the six faces are 

 wanting; occasionally the bottom consists of a layer of 

 water-worn bowlders; sometimes the top is not a single 

 layer, but other pieces are laid over the joints; and some- 

 times they are placed in the fashion of shingles. They vary 

 in length from fourteen inches to eight feet, and in width 

 from nine inches to three feet. 



Now, it happens that quite a number of graves of this par- 

 ticular type are found on the site of one of the "Over-hill 

 towns" heretofore mentioned, and others are scattered over 

 parts of the Cherokee district. As the location of those 

 about the village site is such as to justify the belief that 

 they were contemporaneous with the existenceof the village, 

 we must conclude that the authors of the graves of this type, 

 and the Cherokees, were contemporaneous. Additional proof 

 of this is found in the seemingly conclusive evidence, which 

 is too lengthy to be introduced here, that the graves of this 

 form found south of the Ohio are due to the Shawnees. 

 The well-known* fact that the Cherokees and Shawnees were 

 long hereditary and bitter foes, almost constantly at war 

 with each other, would seem to forbid the above supposition 

 that a Shawnee colony was living in connection with a 

 Cherokee village; yet the following historical items furnish 

 a satisfactory explanation. 



Haywood, in his "Natural and Aboriginal History of 

 Tennessee," gives the following statement by Gen. Robert- 

 son: "In 1772 the Little Corn-Planter, an intelligent Chero- 

 kee chief who was then supposed to be ninety years of age, 

 stated, in giving a history of his own nation, that the Sa- 



