Cincinnati photographer Isaac Bonsall traveled to Union occupied
Chattanooga in 1864 to photograph soldiers and as an afterthought,
the Tennessee River Valley. A mile or so upriver from the city where
Citico Creek entered the Tennessee, Bonsall took several photographs
of an Indian mound located on the river terrace above the east bank
of the creek (Figs. 1,4,6). Local tradition held the mound to be
an old Cherokee burial ground. Most recently, the twenty-foot tall
mound had been used as a Union army signal station, but by the time
of Bonsall’s visits, it was part of a recreational area serving
convalescing Union soldiers. In 1864, a two-story octagonal wood
frame structure sat atop the mound—possibly built by the signal
corps, but now used as the office of the gardener of the United States
Sanitary Commission, surrounded by a budding formal garden. Bonsall
photographed the mound on two occasions with Union soldiers milling
around, posing and waving for the camera.
In 1864, archaeology was more treasure hunt than science and little
was known about the builders of earthen mounds. Historically, it
was known that the Spanish passed through the Tennessee Valley in
July 1540 and encountered Native Americans. At the time of the American
Revolution, pro-British Cherokee occupied a village, known as “Citico” after
a famous chief, on the Little Tennessee river near present day Knoxville.
Pressured by the American militia, the Cherokee, under the leadership
of Dragging Canoe, moved down the Tennessee to the mouth of Citico
Creek ( the named is derived from the famous chief) and established
a new town in 1776. This village was abandoned in 1782 when the Cherokee
exodus southwest continued. A few natives had returned to the area
by 1785. At the conclusion of the American-Cherokee conflict in 1794,
the Citico Creek village was reoccupied, although it remained small
and uninfluential in the Cherokee hierarchy. Cherokees remained in
the area until removal in the late 1830s. In 1836, a Cherokee identified
as Water Lizard farmed thirty acres of bottom land near the mouth
of Citico Creek in the vicinity of the prehistoric
mound.
With the war winding down in early 1865, the Citico mound attracted
the attention of Matthew C. Read, an Ohio agent for the United States
Sanitary Commission, a relief organization for Union soldiers. Read
was an attorney with a budding interest in zoology, geology and archaeology.
The earthen mounds of Ohio, and now Tennessee, and their unknown
creators piqued Read’s curiosity. Directly east of the mound
and covering a wide area was what Read called “an ancient pottery
and manufactory of flint.” Pottery sherds, flint chips, arrowheads,
broken hammerstones, stone pipes and circular discs were readily
found by local collectors, small boys and bored Union soldiers. Digging
an unknown number of test holes eighteen inches deep in the field,
Read discovered ashes, burned clay, bone fragments and more pottery
sherds.
The ovoid, platform mound, its long axis oriented almost true north,
was Read’s true interest. After determining that the mound
measured 158 x120 feet at base, 82 x 44 on the flat top and was 19
feet tall, Read decided to dig a tunnel into it. As an excuse for
his excavation, Read claimed that he was digging a cold cellar for
the sanitary commission to store vegetables! Starting from the east
side, Read tunneled toward the center at ground level. Carefully
examining the tunnel walls, Read could see that the mound was composed
of alternating layers of earth and thick layers of ashes, which he
attributed to burned vegetation. At the level of edge of the upper
platform, a row of postholes was uncovered. Two feet down, below
grade, two skeletons were unearthed in a pit less than three feet
in length. Near the center of the mound, another row of postholes
was discovered along with the subsurface burial of a young woman
and two children. Aside from pottery sherds, Read made no mention
of grave goods.
Despite his lack of archaeological experience, Read has been credited
with finding the human burials, recognizing structural remains, observing
strata in the mound’s construction, finding “painted
pottery” and accumulating a collection of typical Mississippian
period village debris. Read’s investigations ceased when Chattanooga’s
heavy cannon were fired to mark the Confederate surrender in Virginia
causing his tunnel to collapse, burying tools and vegetables alike.
Read suggested that a future explorer would find the buried tools
and vegetables and consider them “as proof of the intelligence
of the race of the mound builders.”
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