172 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
quities of Tennessee " (second edition, 1897), details in a most interesting way his 
explorations in the great cemeteries near Nashville, Tenn., and the archeology 
of the State in general. 
Mr. W. E. Myer, of Carthage, Tenn., who has widely explored aboriginal 
sites along Cumberland river and whose collection is so well known, has written 
“Ар Old Shawnee Town on Cumberland River," and “The Caverns and Rock- 
shelters of Cumberland Valley." 
As to the former inhabitants of Tennessee we are told! that, in later times, the 
area occupied by the Cherokee embraced the valley of the Tennessee. "lhruston? 
says that in the historieal period the Shawnee once held sway from the Ohio 
river to the Tennessee, and Doctor Jones? asserts that the Chaouanons, or 
Shawnee, inhabited the valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee, more especially 
the Cumberland, and cites Robertson’s statement that the region occupied by the 
Shawnee was from Tennessee river to north of the Cumberland. The ‘‘ Handbook 
of American Indians "* calls the basin of the Cumberland the early home of the 
Shawnee. Doubtless at one time the Shawnee occupied much? of what is now the 
State of Tennessee. | 
However, to adduce evidence that a territory was once peopled by a certain 
tribe is one thing, but to prove that this tribe constructed the mounds and graves 
found in that region is quite a different matter. Those who have written on the 
archeology of Tennessee have, with commendable conservatism, contented them- 
selves with ascribing to the “Stone Grave people" the mounds, graves, and arti- 
facts of that region, that are connected with the use of stone in sepulture, while 
aboriginal interments not associated with stone, have been, with equally praise- 
worthy caution, left unassigned to any particular tribe. 
The stone grave, the most distinctive feature of the archeology of Tennessee, 
though found in northern Georgia,’ West Virginia,’ Kentucky, southwestern 
Ohio, eastern Indiana," southern Illinois, and sparingly in Missouri,® and, as 
1 * Handbook of American Indians," Part 1, p. 616. 
TOS. cit... p. 22. 
3 Op. cit., pp. 147, 154. 
* Part 2, р. 531. 
5 And probably even to the south of Tennessee. Through the courtesy of Dr. Ales Hrdlička we 
give an extract from a letter to him from Dr. John R. Swanton. ““The Indians of Marshall County, 
Alabama,' by Oliver Day Street of Guntersville, Ala., published in the Transactions of the Alabama 
Historical Society, Vol. IV, p. 193-210. This writer brings forward historical and traditional in- 
formation to show that the Shawnee occupied the region of the great bend of the Tennessee in northern 
Alabama between 1660 and 1721. He even locates ‘their principal town’ ‘near Tennessee river,’ etc. 
Upon the whole there is reason to suppose that during the time when they were settled upon the 
Cumberland the Shawnee also made settlements on the Tennessee as well, but I do not think their 
occupancy of that region was of long duration.” 
* 12th An. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethn., p. 302 et seg. С. С. Jones, “ Antiquities of the Southern Indians," 
Chapter X, 
712th An. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethn., p. 571. 
* Gerard Fowke,“ Archeological History of Ohio," Chap. XI. 
? David I. Bushnell, Jr., ‘Archeological Investigation in Ste. Geneviéve County, Missouri," 
Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Vol. 46, рр. 641-668, 1914. Thruston, op. cit., p. 28, footnote. 
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