THE CHEROKEES AND CHOCTAWS DESCENDANTS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
If the account of Cusic and the Lenape traditions concur in solving the mystery of the mound-builders, and proving their identity with the Allegewi of the Lenape tradition, the evidence is strengthened by the concurrent testimony of language, which, as Mr. Hale and others have shown, renders it probable that the conquered race, fleeing down the Mississippi, were received and adopted by the Choctaws and Cherokees, who thus became in part their descendants. Both the language of the Cherokees lying to the southeast of the mound-builders' dominions, and who claim to have built the Grave Creek mound, and that of the Choctaws lying to the southwest, have in their vocabularies been largely recruited from a similar foreign linguistic element. One remnant of the Allegewi mingling with their conquerors, the Talamatan or Hurons, became in part the ancestors of the Cherokees. Living to the southeast of the mound-builders' dominions, the Cherokees had their council lodge on the summit of a vast mound, the construction of which they ascribed to a people who had preceded them. In grammar their language resembled the Huron-Iroquois, while in vocabulary it has been largely recruited from some foreign source.
The other remnant of the vanquished Allegewi, fleeing down the Mississippi "to the southward," would have been received and protected by the warlike Choctaws, themselves a mound-building people in comparatively recent times, and the peculiar foreign element in whose language, which differs considerably from that of the sister Creek and Chicasaw nations, would thus be explained.
CARVED "GORGET" FOUND ON THE HANSELL FARM, JANUARY 8, 1885.
While the foregoing pages were in course of publication, the carved "gorget" (fig. 23) was found on the Hansell farm, on Thursday, January 8, 1885.
The circumstances of the discovery were as follows: Late in the autumn of last year--1884--the writer had caused an excavation to be made at a spot in one of the fields on the Hansell property, where the carved stone (fig. 19) had been found. At this place the soil of the field, a yellowish clay, was very noticeably discolored as if by the fires and decayed refuse of aboriginal dwellings; the discolored spot was of a dark brown color, and covered an area of about twenty square yards.