ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 307 
collection of these small Tennessee arrow-points in this country. Not more 
than 500 have been found, and he has in his cabinet a collection of 350. They 
have attracted attention and created much interest wherever exhibited and 
for a long time many people were disposed to believe they were- counterfeit 
productions of the present time. In order to satisfy himself of the absolute 
authenticity and genuineness of these arrow-points, Col. Young, on two occasions 
visited the place where they were found. Не crawled on his hands and knees 
over the sand, sifting it, and after three days’ hard work secured two very fine 
specimens and found hundreds of broken pieces, showing that these arrowheads 
were made at Moccasin Point [Bend] in large numbers. The spawls from the 
agate and flint are still found in large quantities; but whatever race made them 
had evidently attained the highest possible skill and perfection in the manu- 
facture of arrowheads and obtained a knowledge which had not been communi- 
cated to other tribes, for in the same locality, within a hundred miles of this 
point, no similar articles have ever been found." 
Descriptive of the illustrations of some minute arrowpoints and other small 
points of remarkable appearance, Professor Moorehead quotes Colonel Young’s 
letters as follows: 
“The most unusual of the objects on this card is the flint fish-hook, which 
has a well defined barb. The small drills at the top of the plate and one at the 
bottom are very unusual, some have square, some have rounded heads. АП 
of these came from Williams Island in the Tennessee river, at Moccasin Bend. 
They are not only of splendid material—many of them being of agate—but the 
points are very sharp, the serration is regular and even, and the shoulders to 
the points are not only very much prolonged but the points are fine as a needle. 
These were evidently made in modern times. It is impossible to conceive of 
such serrations on arrowheads of such small size without the use of metal imple- 
ments of some kind, either for the purpose of sawing the material from which 
these points were made or for the purpose of cutting them." 
Colonel Young courteously replied to inquiries from our Academy in rela- 
tion to his connection with the minute arrowpoints, stating, among other things: 
“Т secured nearly all these small arrowpoints. І first got them from а dealer 
in Cincinnati—long since dead—who had a sort of trust with the person who 
found them in Moccasin Bend. These points were so remarkable that their 
genuineness was questioned, and some ten or twelve years ago I went to Chatta- 
nooga and stayed three days. I got numerous perfect ones. The way I secured 
them was to take the sand which washes down from the first and second dams 
of the Tennessee river and at the deposit where there would be a pool of water 
caused by the flow from the first and second dams we would sift the sand with a 
very fine sifter and in this way we got not only the perfect but the imperfect 
arrowpoints. I must have gotten a thousand broken ones, some fairly good 
even though not perfect.” 
The facts as to these minute points (so far as it is advisable to publish them 
