out, there were found mixed with it in great abundance fragments of pottery, a quantity of charcoal, many charred and half-burned pieces of bark which had passed through several stages of combustion, some of them being in part entirely unaltered by the fire; and, above all, several large lumps of unworked clay, partially hardened by fire. The neighbors inform me that this clay must have been brought from a considerable distance, as none like it, and, indeed, no clay at all, is found within many miles of this place. In the specimens of pottery sent, I would call your attention to the peculiar markings on the concave surfaces of most of it. I at first supposed that these were made by some artificial process for decorative purposes, though it seemed strange to place decorations inside, the objects; but a neighboring gentleman called my attention to the exact resemblance these markings bore to the corrugations on beech-bark, and I was led to the conclusion that the pottery had been molded around an interior core constructed of beechbark. I think there is no doubt but that the excavation I have described was an oven or kiln for baking the pottery.

3d. The presence of infant skeletons in great number, buried with the same elaboration in all its details as above described in the case of the adult sepulchre. Some fragments of cranial bones from these are inclosed in package No. 7. The undeveloped and imperfectly ossified condition of the infant cranium renders it improbable that entire infantcrania will be discovered; which is the more to be regretted as it would be interesting to observe the bones in the early stage of the flattening process, which seems to have been customary in this tribe.

To sum up this part of my view, then: The elaborate and substantial character and large number of the graves, the evidences of arrangement for the manufacture of stone implements and pottery, and the presence of a considerable number of infant skeletons, all carefully buried, satisfy me that this burial-place was an appendage to some permanentlyoccupied Indian village.

But, when? There are some considerations which seem to throw us back upon prehistoric times for an answer—that is, what are to us Americans prehistoric times.

In Europe, these flint-weapons would carry us back to the mysterious nationalities which occupied the site of Troy before the Troy of Priam and Hector existed, or to those unknown tribes which lived in Hebron before the seed of Abraham had germinated in Palestine. With us, prehistoric times come down to a much more recent period. Anything previous to the permanent occupation of a region by the European races is with us prehistoric, and west of the Rocky Mountains there are tribes still in the neo-lithic stage of development, using just such flint arrowheads and hatchets as I send you, to-day.

The evidences that, relatively to the Boones and Donelsons and Robertsons who first settled these regions, the remains now under discussion are prehistoric, are as follows:

First. I have had conversations with very old settlers-persons whose recollections extend back fifty and even sixty years, and they report that no Indian village existed in that locality or anywhere near Clarksville; and not only so, but they speak of conversations with the Indians, who, in their childhood, frequently came here on hunting-expeditions, and that none of them knew of any tribe or had any tradition of any who ever had any permanent residence either near this burial-place or in the region at all; it was never within their knowledge anything but a hunting-ground.

Secondly. In his first visit to Kentucky, Daniel Boone spent a whole winter encamped near the mouth of Red River, (a small affluent of the Cumberland ;) in other words, on what is now the site of Clarksville; and that during that winter he did not see a single Indian, the country being only visited for hunting-purposes in summer-time.

This last statement I have on the authority of my friend, Professor Stewart, well known to your Institution. I have no means of verifying it by documents, though in Washington you have, I suppose, the means of doing so in the National Library.

Supposing, then, that I have rightly interpreted the facts so far before us, we are thrown back on all prehistoric times for the period of our village's existence, and have no means of determining whether it dates before or after the discovery of the American continents by the European races.

The small package, No. 8, contains an invaluable relic in reference to our chronological difficulty. On examination you will find it to be a leaden bullet, completely covered with a bony accretion. This was found in close contact with the scapula of one of the exhumed skeletons. The manner in which it is enveloped with bony matters convinces me that it was lodged in the shoulder long before the Indian's death, and carried there for years. This proves that the Indians in question had relations, hostile at least, if not more intimate, with persons possessing fire-arms, and so brings down the antiquity of our village to a date subsequent to the appearance of the European races in the valley of the Mississippi. The closest estimate, then, we can make of the period when the vil lage existed from which these relics are derived, is that it was prior to the permanent settlement of this portion of the basin of the Cumberland, and subsequent to the first visit of European races, which still leaves us a range open to conjecture extending from the middle of the seventeenth century to, say, the time of the revolutionary war-a range of from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty years. This much premised, I would call your attention to some matters of detail in the relics to which this paper refers.

Opening the packages Nos. 4 and 5, I think you will be struck by a great diversity in the workmanship of the different articles. Thus, most of them are as roughly chipped out of the original flint as anything we know of in the rudest paleolithic times, and others are shaped with

some artistic skill to a predetermined form. Give your special attention to one article in package No. 5, wrapped in a separate piece of newspaper-probably the blade of a tomahawk. You will observe that it is ground down to a preconceived shape with a precision and finish which would do credit to a modern lapidary. I have also given a separate envelope to a curious implement made of a thin lamina of flint, in package No. 4. I am informed by persons acquainted with present Indian usages, that an exactly similar implement is now employed to scrape clean the inner surface of raw hides, prior to curing them for use.

Now, a few words about the three crania. Those in the packages 1 and 2 present the ordinary type of the Indian skull; narrow, with a low facial angle, and with the prognathous character very strongly marked in the facial bones-these characteristics being most pronounced in No. 2. But No. 3 rather puzzles me. The American Indian type is here much less pronounced, the facial angle higher, and the prognathous type scarcely marked at all. In all respects it seems to approximate the Caucasian type. You will also observe that the process of artificial flattening, so common among Indian tribes, has been applied to Nos. 1 and 2 with complete success, the flattening of the occiput being so great as to render the plane extending from the occipital condyles to the ver tex absolutely vertical.

Now, on No. 3 this process has been very incompletely effected, having succeeded not at all on one side, and only imperfectly on the other.

If I knew more than I do of the tribe whose remains we are studying, I think I should venture upon the conjecture that No. 3 is the cranium of a half-breed, which would imply a still more intimate association with the white race than that short and sharp interview suggested by the impacted bullet.

Such as they are, however, the foregoing remarks are submitted to your riper judgment; they have been considerably longer than I anticipated when I commenced them, but I think that some interesting problems are suggested by the relics, and could not resist the temptation of attempting a solution.

I should remark that, although a large number of entire skeletons was exhumed, I did not see much to be gained by sending you anything beyond the crania. The only thing really noticeable about them was their great thickness, especially that of the maxillaries and the bones of the extremities; some of the femurs, though evidently not those of tall men, would, in bulk and weight, largely surpass those of any white man I have seen.

I forgot to state that the crania Nos. 1 and 2 are presented by Dr. W. T. McReynolds, of this place, who had obtained possession of them before my exploration.

ANTIQUITIES OF BLOUNT COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

BY MISS ANNIE E. LAW, OF HOLLISTER, CAL.

The relics sent were all found in the vicinity of a large mound in Chilhowee Valley, on the banks of the Little Tennessee River, Blount County, Tennessee, except the beads and axes, which were found on Tellico River, Monroe County, Tennessee. The mound in Chilhowee Valley was partially washed away during a high tide. It contained seventeen skeletons buried in a sitting posture, surrounded by stone slabs. The mound was some twenty-five feet in diameter, and the graves were in three tiers. With each had been buried water-jugs of crumbling pottery, beads, and stone implements. These had been carried off by relic-hunters before I was there. Those I got were plowed up afterward from sand-beds in the bottom-lands, where the strong current had carried them..

ANTIQUITIES OF ORLEANS COUNTY, NEWYORK.

BY FRANK H. CUSHING, OF MEDINA, N. Y.

In the town of Shelby, Orleans County, New York, about three miles southwest from the village of Medina, are the remains of one of the most interesting ancient earthworks in the State.* This work is situated at the summit of a slight and not abrupt elevation. It consists of two mural embankments, which are now about two feet in height parallel, and twelve feet distant from each other. They describe almost an exact circle, having a diameter of four hundred and thirty feet and an area of three and one-third acres. Two fences upon original "sectionlines," running, one north and south, the other east and west, divide this inclosure into four nearly equal parts or quadrants. Those portions of the work included in the northeastern and south western quadrants have for many years been under cultivation, and the embankments are nearly obliterated. The northwestern and southeastern portions are still cov ered with forest-trees. In these portions the walls are interrupted only by two sally-ports or openings for passage. These openings occur at nearly opposite points in the circle. The passage through the outer wall is not in either exactly opposite to that through the inner. In one they are sixteen and in the other thirty feet apart. To avoid two large bowlders of Niagara limestone, the inner wall at one point makes a slight deflection from its regular circular course.

Upon these embankments are standing trees and the stumps of trees that had commenced their growth long before the Jesuit fathers had ex

* This work has previously been described in Squier's Aboriginal Monuments of New York, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. II, 1851.

plored the region now comprising Western New York. Traces of a moat which once encircled this work are still discernible at intervals. This moat is broad in proportion to its present depth, and in this respect is not regular. It was probably made by the removal of earth for the construction of the walls, and perhaps it was not intended as an addi tional defense, though it must to some extent have served as such.

Three features presented by this work add much to its interest: first, it is almost exactly circular in form; secondly, it consists of two parallel embankments; thirdly, the openings for passage are not opposite in the two walls. These three peculiarities distinguish this from all other earthworks known east of Ohio.

Ten rods south of this work lies a peat-swamp, two miles in length by one in breadth. This swamp is or has been covered by a heavy growth of black-ash timber. A vertical section of seven feet in this swamp shows first the remains of trees to the depth of two feet, next below the remains of marsh-plants, gradually becoming peat, which, as the depth increases, changes in character and color from dark brown to light blue. At all depths in this peat are to be seen the remains of leaves evidently brought by the winds from the forests of the surrounding higher land. Underlying this peat is a stratum from three to five inches in thickness, composed entirely of fresh-water shells, mostly univalves; some of which are apparently species of Pauludina. Beneath this stratum there occurs another, composed of blue clay, intermixed with sand, containing occasionally the remains of shells, among which have been found specimens of the fresh-water clam, (Unio.)

These facts lead to the conclusion that this peat-swamp was probably a shallow lake at the time when the works were constructed. This conclusion is also strengthened by the fact that there is no evidence of the existence of a permanent supply of water elsewhere within a mile of the work.

It is proper to state that the supply of fish in this ancient lake was abundant; replenished during the time of high water in the spring of each year from Lake Ontario, thirteen miles distant, through Oak Orchard Creek, into which its outlet flows.

West from the work, at a distance of half a mile on the eastern slope of a sand-hill, is a large "bone-pit," where the bones of many hundreds have been deposited. It is said by "old settlers" that those portions of the work now included in the cultivated fields spoken of, originally presented the same features now seen in those which the forest includes.

Of course exaggerated stories are told of the relics which have been plowed up in these fields. Without doubt many which would be of great interest to an ethnologist have been found, kept for a while, and then given to the children as playthings by those who knew nothing of their value as relics.

On making excavations in those portions still uncultivated, many specimens of great interest are found. They usually lie from six to