Prof. Joseph Jones, whose investigations throw much valuable light upon the contents of the ancient tumuli of Tennessee, says: “I do not remember finding a genuine pearl in the many mounds which I have opened in the valleys of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Harpeth, and elsewhere. Many of the pearls described by the Spaniards were probably little else than polished beads cut out of large sea-shells and from the thicker portions of fresh-water mussels, and prepared so as to resemble pearls. I have examined thousands of these, and they all present a laminated structure, as if carved out of thick shells and sea conchs.” This point will be referred to again.
Dr. Charles Rau[[545]] writes: “I learned from Dr. Samuel G. Bristow, who was a surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland during the Civil War, that mussels of the Tennessee River were occasionally eaten ‘as a change’ by the soldiers of that corps, and pronounced no bad article of diet. Shells of the Unio are sometimes found in Indian graves, where they had been deposited with the dead, to serve as food during the journey to the land of spirits.”
Dr. Brinton saw on the Tennessee River and its tributaries numerous shell-heaps consisting almost exclusively of the Unio virginianus (Lamarck). In every instance he found shell-heaps close to the water-courses, on the rich alluvial bottom-land. He says: “The mollusks had evidently been opened by placing them on a fire. The Tennessee mussel is margaritiferous, and there is no doubt but that it was from this species that the early tribes obtained the hoards of pearls which the historian of De Soto’s exploration estimated by bushels, and which were so much prized as ornaments.”[[546]]
A source has recently been pointed out whence small pearls, and perhaps some fine specimens, could have been obtained by the Indians of Florida, and in considerable quantities. In the Unios of some of the fresh-water lakes of that State, there were found not less than 3000 pearls, most of them small, but many large enough to be perforated and worn as beads. From one Unio there were taken eighty-four seed-pearls; from another, fifty; from a third, twenty, and from several, ten or twelve each. The examinations were chiefly confined to Lake Griffin and its vicinity. It is said that upon one of the isles in Lake Okeechobee are the remains of an old pearl fishery, and it is proposed to open the shells of this lake, which are large, in hopes of finding pearls of superior size and quality.
The use of the pearl as an ornament by the southern Indians, and the quantities of shells opened by them in various localities, make it seem strange that it is not more frequently met with in the relic-beds and sepulchral tumuli of that region; but, after exploring many shell- and earth-mounds, Colonel Charles C. Jones failed, except in a few instances, to find pearls.[[547]] A few were obtained in an extensive relic-bed on the Savannah River, above Augusta, the largest being four tenths of an inch in diameter, but all of them blackened by fire. Many of the smaller mounds on the coast of Georgia do not contain pearls, because at the period of their construction the custom of burning the dead appears to have prevailed very generally; hence, it may be that the pearls were either immediately consumed or so seriously injured as to crumble out of sight.
This absence of pearls tends somewhat to confirm the opinion that beads made from the thicker portions of shells that were carved, perforated, and brilliant with nacre, were regarded by the imaginative Spaniards as pearls. More minute investigation, however, will doubtless reveal the existence of pearls in localities where the pearl-bearing shells were collected. Perforated pearls have been found in an ancient burying-ground located near the bank of the Ogeechee River, in Bryan County, Georgia; and many years ago, after a heavy freshet on the Oconee River, which laid bare many Indian graves in the neighborhood of the large mounds on Poullain’s plantation, fully a hundred pearls of considerable size were gathered.
It seems quite clear that many of the pearls reported by the early Spanish voyagers were really such, although it is well known also that shell beads have been found in mounds in connection with pearls; but the numbers found in Ohio, by Professor Putnam, Mr. Moorehead, and others, leave no room for doubt in this matter. That the Indians of the South also had these pearls, both drilled and undrilled, is beyond question.
The same fact comes to view, however, in these various accounts, that has been alluded to already, viz., that the use of pearls among the aborigines appears to have been local, and probably tribal. All the fresh waters of North America contain Unios, especially in the Mississippi basin and in the South, and all the Unios are more or less pearl-bearing; but it is only at certain points that pearls are found deposited in ancient graves, sometimes, however, in extraordinary quantities.
Father Louis Hennepin relates that the Indians along the Mississippi wore bracelets and earrings of fine pearls, which they spoilt, having nothing to bore them with but fire. He adds: “They gave us to understand that they received them in exchange for their calumets from nations inhabiting the coast of the great lake to the southward, which I take to be the Gulph of Florida.”[[548]]
The statement here made, that the Indians perforated their pearls only “with fire,” evidently refers to the use of a heated copper wire, or point, as mentioned by Pickett and others of the early explorers. This point is of importance, as apparently indicating a marked difference between the Indians met with by the first European visitors, and the mound-building people of an earlier time, among whom the perforation was made with small stone drills. On this point, a recent letter from Prof. Wm. C. Mills, who has conducted the very full exploration of the Harness mound in Ohio, is of interest. He describes the small and carefully-wrought flint drills, which he found, and believes to have been made and used for this purpose. In size and form they answer all requirements; they are delicate little implements, somewhat T-shaped or gimlet-shaped, an inch and a quarter long; the narrow boring part is about an inch in length and tapers from one eighth of an inch to quite a fine point; the wider upper end is abruptly expanded into the transverse handle, which is about a quarter of an inch thick, i.e., lengthwise of the instrument, and half an inch in span, i.e., across, so as to give a good hold for the fingers to rotate the drill, just as in an ordinary gimlet.