222 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
Traces of four burials were come upon, three resting on the sand and covered 
by the upper layer of clay, and one (Burial No. 4) completely in the sand, 40 
inches from the surface. 
Burial No. 1 consisted of traces of bone and two crowns of teeth. Burial 
No. 2 was remains of the skeleton of an adult, which had been flexed to the right, 
the head SSW. Burial No. 3 showed only indications of bone; no teeth or trace 
of the skull were recovered. 
Burial No. 4, fragments of the skeleton of an adult, which had been partly 
flexed to the left, the head SE. At the left shoulder was a small, undecorated 
pot of very inferior ware, which had possessed two loop handles, опе of which 
was missing. At the right of the skull was a small bowl on edge, somewhat 
broken, undecorated save for a rude effigy of the head of a bird rising from the 
rim on one side, and a conventional tail extending horizontally on the other side. 
MOUNDS NEAR PERKINS BLUFF, HARDIN County, TENNESSEE. 
Immediately back of the landing at Perkins Bluff is high ground, property 
of Mr. G. L. Perkins, of Crump, Tenn., the fields on which have in places small 
deposits of midden debris. In light woods bordering the fields are a number 
of small mounds from a few inches to 4 feet in height and from 15 to 35 feet in 
diameter. 
The largest of these mounds, evidently very symmetrical originally, had been 
dug out thoroughly as to its central portion prior to our visit, and human bones 
lay at the border of the hole. We were told that a shell on which were “letters” 
(a gorget, if anything) had been found with the skull of a skeleton lying on the 
bottom of the mound. Four equidistant trenches, each about 3 feet wide, were 
put in by us from the margin of the mound along its base to where the previous 
digging had been, through raw clay in three instances, the fourth trench in clay 
and gravel. Our efforts were without success. 
Nine other mounds, including one in a cultivated field, some of which had 
been previously dug into, were carefully investigated by us. In one, but a few 
inches in height and about 15 feet across, was a skeleton 7 inches down, partly 
flexed on the right, the head NW. The skeleton lay on raw, undisturbed clay 
in dark, loamy soil containing some midden refuse. 
In another mound in which some digging had been done, part of a human left 
femur lay at the edge of the hole. 
A number of other mounds at this place, similar outwardly to those described 
by us, and probably inwardly also, were left uninvestigated. 
MOUND NEAR PITTSBURG FERRY, HARDIN County, TENNESSEE. 
About 300 yards NNE. from the landing at Pittsburg Ferry, which is opposite 
Pittsburg Landing, in a cultivated field belonging to F. C. Williams, D.D.S., of 
Savannah, Tenn., is a mound that evidently has been under cultivation for a 
considerable time, and whose dimensions may have differed greatly from those 
| 
| 
