Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/174

 162 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

lined with slabs of stone. These remains are very primitive in character and although they have received considerable attention from the explorer, nothing which would seem to throw light upon the identity of their builders has appeared. But few relics are found with the burials, and the skeletons almost invariably are badly decomposed and scattered. A few artifacts taken from the graves suggesting the high culture groups to the north and south, can hardly be taken as indicative of the culture of the stone grave builders, but rather impress one as being intrusive thereto.

Dr. Cyrus Thomas was inclined to attribute the stone graves of southern Ohio to the Shawnee, 1 although his explorations un- covered many of them in supposed Cherokee sites on Little river, Tennessee. The best study of these peculiar tumuli is that of Fowke, who, after a careful and extended examination of the region, concluded :

It is impossible to assign a date to these graves or to determine what tribe of Indians may have constructed them. . . while the Shawnee method of setting slabs on edge around a body was largely followed in this locality, there are also found here radical departures from any known Shawnee graves. This may be due, however, to local customs slowly developed during a long period of quiet, unmolested occupation of the limited area where these cairns are found. The copper "spool-shaped" ornament and the flat-stemmed pipe (found in the stone graves) are objects which are commonly considered as pertaining to the "Mound Builders," but this people was certainly not concerned in the stone graves of this portion of the Ohio valley. 2

Stone graves are by no means confined to the district above mentioned. They occur not infrequently throughout Pike, Brown, and Highland counties, in the counties adjacent to the headwaters of the Muskingum, and were found by Moorehead in burial sites at Fort Ancient, Warren county. The stone graves at the last mentioned place, as shown by Moorehead, appear to be distinct from the Shawnee stone graves of Tennessee and Kentucky. Stone graves or cists are not uncommon in the mounds of eastern and southeastern Ohio, particularly in the territory occupied within historic times by the Delaware Indians, to whom they are attributed by Thomas. 3

1 Thomas: p. 697.

2 Fowke: p. 405. 3 Thomas: p. 697.

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