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ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 371 
digging was found in places, but no trace of skeletal remains was present in the 
material.! 
Extending ENE. and WSW. from the mound, which is near the western end, 
is a ridge with flat top, about 250 feet in width and 600 feet in length, and having 
a height, judging from holes put down from the surface to undisturbed clay, of 
about 4 feet. On the eastern end of this ridge is an elevation of about 3.5 feet. 
The ridge is artificial, or mostly so, and has grown up under prolonged occupancy. 
Over the surface of the ridge, the elevation, and part of the mound is abundant 
midden-debris, including shells, considerable pottery, and fragments of flint. 
The pottery, shell-tempered, is as a rule coarse and undecorated, some of the 
fragments, however, bearing very elementary, incised designs rudely executed. 
One sherd, however, of hard, smooth ware and having but little shell-tempering, 
if any, had an incised decoration of partly interlocked scrolls, fairly well executed. 
Another bore a design conferred by the aid of a stamp, and a fragment of yellow 
ware was found bearing part of a design in red paint. 
Finished artifacts on the surface were rare, the site evidently having been 
carefully searched by visitors from town, where there is a ready market for 
antiquities, and we learned that a former resident of Chattanooga had syste- 
matically dug into the ridge for a cons'derable period in search of artifacts to sell. 
The elevation at the end of the ridge, however, strangely enough, had remained 
uninvestigated. Our surface “finds” consisted of one rude celt; a number of 
arrowheads of flint, nearly all triangular, some slender, some almost equilateral, 
and nearly all less carefully made than the projectile points taken later from the 
graves by us; a part of a small pipe of earthenware, having much of the bowl 
missing and the marginal surfaces carefully smoothed to allow the part of the 
pipe remaining to serve some purpose; a small, undecorated pipe of soapstone. 
On various parts of the ridge and of the elevation at its eastern end were 
fragments of human bones. 
Trial-holes in the elevation which soon reached burials, showed it to be some- 
what unlike the ridge, the elevation being composed in part of midden debris, 
but having also local layers of clay of varying shades to within one foot of its 
surface, above which was midden deposit. Presumably the elevation had been 
built on the ridge and then lived upon. 
The ridge was carefully dug over by us, and burials were found to be widely 
scattered in it and to have almost no artifacts with them. Presumably, more 
important persons had been interred in the elevation, which was constructed 
for burial purposes exclusively. 
In all, one hundred and six burials were discovered, and numerous fragments 
and scattered bones. Such burials from the elevation as were comparatively 
1 Since our visit, two-thirds of Citico mound has been dug away in making the new River Road. 
We are informed by a friend in Chattanooga, who was greatly interested in the work, himself a 
collector, and explorer of mounds, that nothing of interest was found during the removal. Burials 
and some artifacts were encountered near the base. 
The newspapers, of course, made the most of the matter. 
