358 ARTIFICIAL SHELL DEPOSITS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



deposit of shells, probably left by the Cherokees, who so long used this spot as 

 one of the headquarters of the Overhill tribes. It was taken by our troops as a 

 military post, and embankments thrown up around the summit of the mound. 

 The excavations made for this purpose abundantly proved its wholly artificial 

 origin. In all instances I found the shell-heaps close to the water courses, on 

 the rich alluvial bottom lands. The mollusks had evidently been opened by 

 placing them on a fire. The Tennessee muscle is margaratiferous, and there is 

 no doubt but that it was from this species that the early tribes obtained the hoards 

 of pearls which the historians of De Soto's exploration estimated by bushels, and 

 which were so much prized as ornaments. ( See Irving, Conquest of Florida, p. 

 246.) It is still a profitable employment, the jewellers buying them at prices 

 varying from one to fifty dollars. 



The great size of some of these accumulations may furnish some conception 

 of the length of time required for their gradual accretion, and consequently of the 

 period during which these shores have been inhabited. That at the mouth of 

 the Altamaha river covers ten acres of ground, and contains about 80,000 cubic 

 yards. Many of them equal in cubical contents the largest ihounds of the Ohio 

 valley. That at the mouth of the Pickasvaxent creek, eighty miles from Wash- 

 ington, is so considerable that a kiln was erected many years since for the pur- 

 pose of burning the shells into lime, and may be still in operation. On account 

 of their occasional very considerable magnitude, some geologists have been in- 

 clined to deny or discredit their artificial origin, and have pointed to the ex- 

 istence of similar deposits presenting indubitable characteristics of lacustrine and 

 litoral formation, such as the oyster-shell heaps of southern New Jersey, (see 

 Second Annual Keport of the Geological Survey of New Jersey, pp. 76, 84,) and 

 the beds of Chiathodnn cuneatus at Mobile harbor, (American Journal Science, 

 second series, vol. xi, p. 164,) but the distinctions I have pointed out will dispel 

 any doubt upon this subject. 



In estimating the comparative archseological value of these monuments of the 

 aboriginal tribes, with a view to ascertain the amount of light they may be ex- 

 pected to throw on the habits and social condition of their constructors, we must 

 place them far below the similar remains in the north of Europe. These latter 

 reveal to us a race of whom we possess few or no other memorials, and are a 

 principal source of information concerning nations whose very existence was 

 forgotten; but my somewhat extended studies of this class of American antiquities 

 convince me that they are the work of known tribes of Indians concerning whom 

 we possess many and superior sources of information, and that they only serve 

 to illustrate and confirm the knowledge we already have of their social status 

 and means of subsistence. 



