number of pre-Columbian contacts of which we have no record, only legends.”
“If you’ll forgive me, I’ll stick to facts that are on record.”
“Then what about the Melungeons over in Tennessee? They’re not Indians, though they were here before the first pioneers, and even today anthropologists aren’t certain of their ancestry.”
Brandon pressed on. “There are small pockets of people all across the country—not just in these mountains—whose ethnic origins defy pinning down. And there are legends of others—the Shonokins, for example...”
“Now you’re dealing with pure myth!” Kenlaw shut him off. “That’s the difference between us, Brandon. I’m interested in collecting historical fact, and you’re a student of myths and legends. Science and superstition shouldn’t be confused.”
“Sometimes the borderline is indistinct,” Brandon countered. “My job is to make it less so.”
“But you’ll have to concede there’s often a factual basis for legend,” Brandon argued doggedly. “And the Cherokees have a number of legends about the caves in these mountains, and about the creatures who live within. They tell about giant serpents, like the Uktena and the Uksuhi, that lair inside caves and haunt lonely ridges and streams, or the intelligent panthers that have townhouses in secret caves. Then there’s the Nunnehi, an immortal race of invisible spirits that live beneath the mounds and take shape to fight the enemies of the Cherokee—these were supposedly seen as late as the Civil War. Or better still, there’s the legend of the Yunwi Tsunsdi, the Little People who live deep inside the mountains.”
“I’m still looking for that ‘factual basis’,” Kenlaw said with sarcasm.
“Sometimes it’s there to find. Ever read John Ashton’s Curious Creatures in Zoology? In his chapter on pygmies he quotes from three sources that describe the discovery of entire burying grounds of diminutive stone sarcophagi containing human skeletons under two feet in length—adult skeletons, by their teeth. Several such burial grounds—ranging upwards to an acre and a half—were found in White County, Tennessee, in 1828, as well as an ancient town site near one of the burials. General Milroy found similar graves in Smith County, Tennessee, in 1966, after a small creek had washed through the site and exposed them. Also, Weller in his Romance of Natural History makes reference to other such discoveries in Kentucky as well as Tennessee. Presumably a race of pygmies may have lived in this region before the Cherokees, who remember them only in legend as the Yunwi Tsunsdi. Odd, isn’t it, that there are so many Indian legends of a pygmy race?”
“Spare me from Victorian amateur archeology!” Kenlaw dismissed him impatiently. “What possible bearing have these half-baked superstitions on the mines of the ancients? I’m talking about archeological realities, like the pits in Mitchell County, like the Sink Hole mine near Bakersville. That’s a pit forty feet wide and forty feet deep, where the stone shows marks of metal tools and where stone tools were actually uncovered. General Thomas Clingman studied it right after the Civil War, and he counted three hundred rings on the trees he found growing on the mine workings. That clearly puts the mines back into the days of the conquistadors. There’s record of one Tristan de Luna, who was searching for gold and silver south of there in 1560; the Sink Hole mine contained mica, and quite possibly he was responsible for digging it and the other mines of that area.”
“I’ve read about the Sink Hole mine in Creecy’s Grandfather’s Tales” Brandon told him. “And as I recall the early investigators there were puzzled by the series of passageways that connected the Sink Hole with other nearby pits—passageways that were only fourteen inches wide.”
The archeologist sputtered in his drink. “Well, Jesus Christ, man! ” he exploded after a moment. “That doesn’t have anything to do with Indian legends! Don’t you know anything about mining? They would have driven those connecting tunnels to try to cut across any veins of gold that might have lain between the pits.”
Brandon spread his big hands about fourteen inches apart. He said: “Whoever dug the passageways would have had to have been rather small.”
•III•
Afternoon shadows were long when Dell drove the other two men down to the house in his pickup. The farmhouse was a two-storey board structure with stone foundation, quite old, but in neat repair. Its wide planks showed the up-and-down saw marks that indicated its construction predated the more modern circular sawmill blade. The front was partially faced with dark mountain stone, and the foundation wall extended to make a flagstone veranda, shaded and