Native American Cave Burials Primitive Calvaras California Skull Natural or artificial holes in the ground, caverns, and fissures in rocks have been used as places of deposit for the dead since the earliest periods of time, and are used up to the present day by not only the American Indians, but by peoples noted for their mental elevation and civilization, our cemeteries furnishing numerous specimens of artificial or partly artificial caves. As to the motives which have actuated this 127mode of burial, a discussion would be out of place at this time, except as may incidentally relate to our own Indians, who, so far as can be ascertained, simply adopt caves as ready and convenient resting places for their deceased relatives and friends. In almost every State in the Union burial caves have been discovered, but as there is more or less of identity between them, a few illustrations will serve the purpose of calling the attention of observers to the subject. While in the Territory of Utah, ...
Smithsonian Institutes 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1878
Myths of the Cherokee
There is a dim but persistent tradition of a strange white race preceding the Cherokee, some of the stories even going so far as to locate their former settlements and to identify them as the authors of the ancient works found in the country. The earliest reference appears to be that of Barton in 1797, on the stayement of a gentlemen whom he quotes as a valuable authority up[on the southern tribes. "The Cherokee tell us, that when they first arrived in the country, which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain 'moon-eyed people', who could not see in the daytime. These wretches they expelled." He seems to consider them an albino race. Haywood, twenty-six years later, says that the invading Cherokee found 'white people' near the head of the little Tennessee, with forts extending thence down the Tennessee as far as Chickamauga Creek. He gives the location of three of these forts. The Cherokee made war against them and drove them to the mouth of Big Chickamauga Creek, whence they entered into a treaty and agreed to remove if permitted to depart in peace. Permission being granted they abandoned the country. Elsewhere he speaks of this extirpated white race as having extended into Kentucky and probably also into, western Tennessee, according to the concurrent traditions of different tribes.
Other Cherokee histories identify the Cherokee as the "White Indians"
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