the dead what they considered a
suitable resting place. In their construction they resemble somewhat, in
the care that is taken to prevent the earth touching the corpse, the
class of graves previously described.

A number of cists have been found in Tennessee, and are thus described
by Moses Fiske:[14]

There are many burying grounds in West Tennessee with regular
graves. They dug them 12 or 18 inches deep, placed slabs at the
bottom ends and sides, forming a kind of stone coffin, and, after
laying in the body, covered it over with earth.

It may be added that, in 1873, the writer assisted at the opening of a
number of graves of men of the reindeer period, near Solutre, in France,
and they were almost identical in construction with those described by
Mr. Fiske, with the exception that the latter were deeper, this,
however, may be accounted for if it is considered how great a deposition
of earth may have taken place during the many centuries which have
elapsed since the burial. Many of the graves explored by the writer in
1875, at Santa Barbara, resembled somewhat cist graves, the bottom and
sides of the pit being lined with large flat stones, but there were none
directly over the skeletons.

The next account is by Maj. J. W. Powell, the result of his own
observation in Tennessee.

The burial places, or cemeteries are exceedingly abundant throughout
the State. Often hundreds of graves may be found on a single
hillside. The same people sometimes bury in scattered graves and in
mounds--the mounds being composed of a large number of cist graves.
The graves are increased by additions from time to time. The
additions are sometimes placed above and sometimes at the sides of
the others. In the first burials there is a tendency to a concentric
system with the feet towards the center, but subsequent burials are
more irregular, so that the system is finally abandoned before the
place is desired for cemetery purposes.

Some other peculiarities are of interest. A larger number of
interments exhibit the fact that the bodies were placed there before
the decay of the flesh, and in many instances collections of bones
are buried. Sometimes these bones are placed in some order about the
crania, and sometimes in irregular piles, as if the collection of
bones had been emptied from a sack. With men, pipes, stone hammers,
knives, arrowheads, &c., were usually found, with women, pottery,
rude