Blonde Haired Mummies With Fine Hair Discovered in a Tennessee Cave

Blonde Haired Mummies With Fine Hair Discovered in a Tennessee Cave

This is a blonde-haired mummy from Peru.

Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge, 1880

    Haywood relates that, in the spring of the year 1811, the remains of two human beings were found in a copperas cave in Warren County, in West Tennessee, about fifteen miles southwest from Sparta, and twenty miles from McMinnville. One of them was a male, the other a female. They were interred in baskets made of cane curiously wrought, and evidencing considerable mechanical skill. They were both dislocated at the hip-joint, and were placed erect in the baskets, with a covering of cane made to fit the enclosure in which they were placed. The flesh of their bodies was undecayed, of a brown color, and adherent to the bones and sinews. Around the female, next to the body, was wrapped a well-dressed doe-skin ; next to this was a mat very curiously wrought from the bark of a tree, and feathers. The bark seemed to have been made into small strands, well twisted. Around each of these strands feathers were rolled, and the whole was woven into cloth of a fine texture, after the manner of our common, coarse fabrics. This mat was about three feet wide, and between six and seven feet in length. The whole of the fabric thus formed of bark was completely covered by the feathers, the body of it being about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and the feathers extending about one-quarter of an inch from the strand to which they were attached. The appearance was highly diversified by green, yellow, and black feathers, presenting different shades of color when exposed to the sunlight in different positions. The next covering was an undressed doe-skin, around which was rolled, in good order, a plain shroud, manufactured after the same plan as the one ornamented with feathers. This article resembled very much, in its texture, the bags generally used for the purpose of holding coffee exported from Havana to the United States. The female had in her hand a fan formed of the tail feathers of a turkey, bound with buckskin strings and scarlet-colored hair, so as to open and shut readily. The hair of the mummies was still remaining upon their heads, and was of a yellow cast and of very fine texture.