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Show MOOXBY] EARLY DWELLING- PLACES 21 of violence, but were evidently the accumulation of long years from the neighboring Indian town. The distinguished writer adds: " But on whatever occasion they may have been made, they are of considerable notoriety among the Indians: for a party passing, about thirty years ago [ i. e., about 1750], through the part of the country where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it without any instructions or enquiry, and having staid about it some time, with expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road, which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and pursued their journey.'* 1 Although the tribe is not named, the Indians were probably Cherokee, as no other southern Indians were then accustomed to range in that section. As serving to corroborate this opinion we have the statement of a prominent Cherokee chief, given to Schoolcraft in 1846, that acccording to their tradition his people had formerly lived at the Peaks of Otter, in Virginia, a noted landmark of the Blue ridge, near the point where Staunton river breaks through the mountains. 2 From a careful sifting of the evidence Haywood concludes that the authors of the most ancient remains in Tennessee had spread over that region from the south and southwest at a very early period, but that the later occupants, the Cherokee, had entered it from the north and northeast in comparatively recent times, overrunning and exterminating the aborigines. He declares that the historical fact seems to be established that the Cherokee entered the country from Virginia, making temporary settlements upon New river and the upper Holston, until, under the continued hostile pressure from the north, they were again forced to remove farther to the south, fixing themselves upon the Little Tennessee, in what afterward became known as the middle towns. By a leading mixed blood of the tribe he was informed that they had made their first settlements within their modern home territory upon Nolichucky river, and that, having lived there for a long period, they could give no definite account of an earlier location. Echota, their capital and peace town, fc% claimed to be the eldest brother in the nation," and the claim was generally acknowledged. 3 In confirmation of the statement as to an early occupancy of the upper Holston region, it may be noted thatfc * Watauga Old Fields," now Elizabeth town, were so called from" the fact that when the first white settlement within the present state of Tennessee was begun there, so early as 1769, the bottom lands were found to contain graves and other numerous ancient remains of a former Indian town which tradition ascribed to the Cherokee, whose nearest settlements were then many miles to the southward. While the Cherokee claimed to have built the mounds on the upper 1 Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on Virginia, pp. 136- 137; ed. Boston. 1802. * Schoolcraft. Notes on the Iroquois, p. 163.1847. » Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 233, 236, 269, 1823. |