wbbb] ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NORRIS BASIN 377 



mitted tentatively as a possibility it would follow that these people 

 antedating the Cherokee occupation had a material culture in many 

 ways similar to the Cherokee, or, perhaps more correctly stated, the 

 Cherokee adopted after coming into the region many of the cul- 

 tural traits of this earlier people, which may in part account for 

 this widespread distribution of provisional Cherokee traits. 



In this connection it is important to note that Thomas did not find 

 any trade material in any of the mounds which were investigated and 

 no evidence of any white contact. The work of Thomas shows that 

 the mounds and their contents were all wholly within the prehistoric. 

 It has been reported, however, that certain commercial collectors 

 have excavated in areas surrounding these mounds and have encoun- 

 tered numerous trade objects, such as the Cherokee were known to 

 have possessed in protohistoric times. These trade objects were 

 associated with burials, and with many other artifacts of Indian 

 manufacture similar to those found on altogether prehistoric sites. 



It may well be that the coming of the Cherokee into east Ten- 

 nessee was the occasion for and marked the time when this earlier 

 people left the region. If so, the date of the last occupancy of these 

 large-log town houses may approximate the date of the coming of 

 the Cherokee. From an inspection of known Cherokee sites it does 

 not seem necessary to assume a very great age for them. It may be 

 found that the Cherokee, when Fort Loudoun was destroyed by them 

 in 1760, had not been in east Tennessee more than 100 years, if that 

 long. In fact, the author is inclined to the opinion that the Cherokee 

 first occupied Little Tennessee Eiver in the last quarter of the 

 seventeenth century. 



Further, if this idea is at all tenable that the Cherokee erected 

 historic circular town houses on earth mounds built by this earlier 

 people, it should be possible to find one mound as yet undisturbed in 

 the region of Cherokee settlement, which might show the pattern of 

 a "rotunda" at its top and a rectangular post-mold pattern at its 



If, however, the rotunda generally was covered only with a thin 

 coating of earth it may be that this earth layer was too thin to 

 afford any adequate protection to fallen structures, which would in 

 consequence be completely destroyed. This may account for the 

 fact that no remains of fallen town houses were reported by Har- 

 rington on the Tennessee River. On this point Bartram, 11 in de- 

 scribing the Cherokee town house, says, "and sometimes they cast 

 a thin superficies of earth over all." Thus, by inference, not all town 

 houses were earth covered, and further, if the film of earth was thus 

 insufficient to protect and preserve evidence of a "rotunda" there 



11 Bartram, 1928, p. 366. 



