ERRORS AND FRAUDS.
No large amount of space need be occupied in the mention of recognized pictographic frauds, their importance being small, but much more than is now allowed would be required for the discussion of controverted cases.
There is little inducement, beyond a disposition to hoax, to commit actual frauds in the fabrication of rock-carvings. The instances where inscribed stones from mounds have been ascertained to be forgeries or fictitious drawings have been about equally divided between simple mischief and an attempt either to increase the marketable value of some real estate, supposed to contain more, or to sell the specimens.
With regard to the much more familiar and more portable material of engraved pipes, painted robes and like curios, it is well known to all recent travelers in the West who have had former experience that the fancy prices paid by amateurs for those decorations have stimulated their wholesale manufacture by Indians at agencies (locally termed “coffee-coolers”), who make a business of sketching upon ordinary robes or plain pipes the characters in common use by them, without regard to any real event or person, and selling them as curious records.
This pictorial forgery would seem to show a gratifying advance of the Indians in civilization, but it is feared that the credit of the invention is chiefly due to some enterprising traders who have been known to furnish the unstained robes, plain pipes, paints, and other materials for the purpose, and simply pay a skillful Indian for his work, when the fresh antique or imaginary chronicle is delivered.
Six inscribed copper plates were said to have been found in a mound near Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois, which were reported to bear a close resemblance to Chinese. This resemblance seemed not to be so extraordinary when it was ascertained that the plate had been engraved by the village blacksmith, copied from the lid of a Chinese tea-chest.
Mica plates were found in a mound at Lower Sandusky, Ohio, which, after some attempts at interpretation, proved to belong to the material known as graphic or hieroglyphic mica, the discolorations having been caused by the infiltration of mineral solution between the laminæ.
The following recent notice of a case of alleged fraud is quoted from Science, Vol. III, No. 58, March 14, 1884, page 334:
Dr. N. Roe Bradner exhibited [at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,] an inscribed stone found inside a skull taken from one of the ancient mounds at Newark, Ohio, in 1865. An exploration of the region had been undertaken in consequence of the finding of stones bearing markings somewhat resembling Hebrew letters, in the hope of finding other specimens of a like character. The exploration was supposed to have been entirely unproductive of such objects until Dr. Bradner had found the engraved stone, now exhibited, in a skull which had been given to him.