174 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
swords, paint bowls, and even copper ornaments. The top of the grave was then 
covered with one or more flat stones. "The upper slabs covering the graves were 
generally on a level with the surface of the ground. In some localities, however, 
and especially in the most carefully constructed burial mounds, the graves were 
covered with a foot of earth or more. . . . 
“In some localities the sides of the tombs stood up above the surface from 
four to eight inches, as in the case of the stone graves described by Bartram. 
When a number of coffins were placed together, the side stones of the first fre- 
quently constituted the side of the second, and so on. Many of the stone 
graves are quite small, and capable of containing only the body of a new-born 
infant. These small graves were constructed with great care, and the sides, 
bottom and top were formed of much thinner and smoother slabs than the 
graves of the adults. Many of the short, square graves, not more than eigh- 
teen inches or two feet in length, contained the bones of adults piled together, 
the erania being surrounded by or resting upon the arm and leg bones." 
Doctor Jones next proceeds to explode the theory advanced by certain writers 
of the old school who desired to appeal to the sense of wonder (a class not yet 
extinct), that the small graves contained remains of a pigmy race.! 
Thruston? describes the stone graves of central Tennessee as follows: 
“The rude cists or box-shaped coffins are made of thin slabs of stone. Some- 
times the stones are broken or eut, or rubbed down, so as to fit evenly and form 
a well-shaped case, but more frequently they are rudely joined together. Ое- 
casionally, they are found in mounds or layers, four or five tiers of graves deep. 
The graves are usually six or seven feet long, a foot and a half to two feet wide, 
and eighteen inches deep; but graves of greatly varying sizes and shapes are found 
intermingled with those of more regular form. The children's graves are pro- 
portionately smaller. Frequently the same cist contains two or three skeletons, 
and is not more than three or four feet long, the bones having been placed in a 
pile irregularly within it, indicating that they were probably interred long after 
death, and after some intermediate preparation or ceremonies similar to the burial 
eustoms of some of the historie tribes." 
The stone graves, unfortunately, are not so rich in artifacts as one might sur- 
mise from reading Doctor Jones's account. Professor Putnam in a personal 
letter writes us: “І think the great center of the stone-grave people was in the 
Cumberland Valley. There is where I did my work. Even there objects in 
the graves were not frequent. Certainly not more than one grave in twenty or 
more had any artifacts and not as many as that had pottery." 
Mr. W. E. Myer, of Carthage, Tenn., whose archeological work along Cumber- 
land river has been referred to, writes us: ^I have found not more than one grave 
! Putnam found in some of the cemeteries that the children’s graves were separated from the graves 
of adults, one portion of the cemetery being devoted to the children. It was such grouping of the 
graves, he believes, that led some of the early writers to think there had been a race of pigmies in 
Tennessee. 
* Op. ct. p. 29. 
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