376 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 118 



ing to his journal, he met at Tunissee the headmen of each Cherokee 

 town. These, as listed by him, were : Tunissee, Terriquo, Tullassee, 

 Suittico, Coosaw, Elejoy, Tamantley, Cheeowee, and Conustee. Rep- 

 resentatives were absent from the towns of Iwasee and Little Terriquo. 

 Had it been occupied by any other people immediately prior to that 

 time the Cherokee would certainly have had a tradition concerning 

 it. Haywood refers to a Cherokee tradition of a Creek settlement at 

 the mouth of the Hiwassee River when they first came to the Little 

 Tennessee River. Dr. Thomas Walker, 9 in his trip to Kentucky 

 in 1760, when he went through Cumberland Gap, which he named, 

 would certainly have made note of Indian settlements of Cherokee or 

 others which might have been in the region of the Norris Basin. The 

 lack of any early historic record or any Cherokee tradition of any oc- 

 cupancy of Norris Basin seems clearly to indicate that these sites had 

 been occupied by a people other than Cherokee at a time before the 

 coming of the Cherokee on the Little Tennessee, and the sites on 

 Clinch and Powell Rivers had been so long deserted that the Over 

 Hill Cherokee had no knowledge of this occupancy. In such case the 

 cultural connections of the builders of these large-log town houses 

 in Norris Basin must be sought elsewhere. 



In this connection it will be remembered that the Over Hill 

 Cherokee, who always built their town houses on earth mounds, re- 

 peatedly asserted, according to Mooney, 10 that they had not them- 

 selves built these mounds, but had found them there when they came 

 into the country. Could these mounds on Little Tennessee River 

 have been of similar origin as those in Norris Basin? It does not 

 seem wholly impossible. When Stephen Peete excavated the Toqua 

 town-site mound for Thomas, and reported "stakes driven in the 

 ground" and post molds, did he discover the pattern of a rectangular 

 town-house structure? Alas, we may never know, since all of the 

 mounds on Little Tennessee River were so "thoroughly explored" that 

 all information we now seek has been destroyed. The author feels 

 that the weight of probability is in favor of the conclusion that the 

 mounds on Little Tennessee River on which the Cherokee erected 

 many of their town houses were built by an earlier people — perhaps 

 the same people who built the large-log town-house mounds in Norris 

 Basin. 



Without attempting to say who these earlier people were, it is 

 believed that they left their remains of rectangular large-log town 

 houses widely scattered far beyond the limits of Norris Basin, and 

 it is perhaps one such site which Lewis has excavated at Dandridge, 

 the report of which has not yet been published. If this be ad- 



9 Walker, in Williams, Early Travels, p. 168. 

 "Mooney, 1900, p. 22. 



