Although the earth of the cave contains salts which would aid in preserving anything buried in it, these articles can not be assigned to any very ancient date, especially when it is added that with them were the remains of a dog from which the skin had not all rotted away. These were presumably placed here by the Cherokees of modern times, and they form a link not easily broken between the prehistoric and historic days. It is probable that few persons after reading this evidence will doubt that the mounds alluded to were built by the Cherokees. Let us therefore see to what results this leads. In the first place it shows that a powerful and active tribe in the interior of the country, in contact with the tribes of the North on one side and with those of the South on the other, were mound-builders. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that they had derived this custom from their neighbors on one side or the other, or that they had, to some extent at least, introduced it among them. Beyond question it indicates that the mound-building era had not closed previous to the discovery of the continent by Europeans. [Footnote: Since the above was in type one of the assistants of the Ethnological Bureau discovered in a small mound in east Tennessee a stone with letters of the Cherokee alphabet rudely carved upon it. It was not an intensive burial, hence it is evident that the mound must have been built since 1820, or that Guess was not the author of the Cherokee alphabet.] CHAPTER V. THE CHEROKEES AND THE TALLEGWI. The ancient works of Ohio, with their "altar mounds," "sacred enclosures," and "mathematically accurate" but mysterious circles and squares, are still pointed to as impregnable to the attacks of this Indian theory. That the rays of light falling upon their origin are few and dim, is admitted; still, we are not left wholly in the dark. If the proof be satisfactory that the mounds of the southern half of the United States and a portion of those of the Upper Mississippi Valley are of Indian origin, there should be very strong evidence in the opposite direction in regard to those of Ohio to lead to the belief that they are of a different race. Even should the evidence fail to indicate the tribe or tribes by whom they were built, this will not justify the assertion that they are not of Indian origin. If the evidence relating to these works has nothing decidedly opposed to the theory in it, then the presumption must be in favor of the view that the authors were Indians, for the reasons heretofore given. The burden of proof is on those who deny this, and not on those who assert it. It is legitimate, therefore, to assume, until evidence to the contrary is produced, that the Ohio works were made by Indians.