It happens that few baskets have been recovered from mounds and graves, but they are occasionally reported as having been discovered in caverns and shelters where conditions were especially favorable to their preservation. Such specimens may as reasonably be attributed to the mound-building as to the other Indians. The following statement is from John Haywood: On the south side of Cumberland river, about 22 miles above Cairo, * * * is a cave * * *. In this room, near about the center, were found sitting in baskets made of cane, three human bodies; the flesh entire, but a little shrivelled, and not much so. The bodies were those of a man, a female and a small child. The complexion of all was very fair, and white, without any intermixture of the copper colour. Their eyes were blue; their hair auburn, and fine. The teeth were very white, their stature was delicate, about the size of the whites of the present day. The man was wrapped in 14 dressed deer skins. The 14 deer skins were wrapped in what those present called blankets. They were made of bark, like those found in the cave in White county. The form of the baskets which inclosed them, was pyramidal, being larger at the bottom, and declining to the top. The heads of the skeletons, from the neck, were above the summits of the blankets.[10] SIEVES AND STRAINERS. It is apparent that baskets of open construction were employed as sieves in pre-Columbian as well as in post-Columbian times. Almost any basket could be utilized on occasion for separating fine from coarse particles of food or other pulverulent substances, but special forms were sometimes made for the purpose, having varying degrees of refinement to suit the material to be separated. Bartram mentions the use of a sieve by the Georgia Indians in straining a "cooling sort of jelly" called conti, made by pounding certain roots in a mortar and adding water. Butel-Dumont describes the sieves and winnowing fans of the Louisiana Indians. The Indian women, he says, make very fine sieves-- With the skin which they take off of the canes; they also make some with larger holes, which serve as bolters, and still others without holes, to be used as winnowing fans. * * * They also make baskets very neatly fashioned, cradles for holding maize; and with the tail feathers of turkeys, which they have much skill in arranging, they make fans not only for their own use, but which even our French women do not disdain to use.[11] Le Page Du Pratz says that "for sifting the flour of their maiz, and for other uses, the natives make sieves of various finenesses of the splits of cane;"[12] and a similar use by the Indians of Virginia is recorded by John Smith: