SHELL BEADS WHICH ONCE ADORNED A MOUNDVILLE INDIAN.
Their food.
Living in a temperate climate amid forests teeming with wild game and streams abundant with fish, the Moundville Indians had little difficulty, experienced few uncertainties, in obtaining their food. In addition to meat and fish obtained from forest and stream there were vegetables from fertile fields which produced with little man-made effort an ample supply of maize, squash, beans and pumpkins.
Their implements.
A community of skilled artisans, these people fashioned many tools for food-getting, shelter-making and clothing-manufacture as well as for more aesthetic pursuits. With nets woven of vegetable fibre and barbless fishhooks of bone and copper they took fish from nearby streams and lakes. With small, skillfully chipped arrowheads they brought down fowl. Ingenious traps ensnared large game. Stone fleshers were used for stripping the meat and dressing the leather. With bone awls and needles sharpened on grinding stones they sewed leather garments. Stone mortars and pestles pulverized their grain. Stone chisels and axes felled, with the aid of fire, trees for their homes and temples. Cups and forks and spoons carved from shell were their cooking and eating utensils.
A MOUNDVILLE INDIAN’S SHELL CUP.
COPPER FISHHOOK USED AT MOUNDVILLE IN PREHISTORIC TIMES.