Perforation in charred, cut fresh-water pearl; weight, 5569 grams
Perforated fresh-water pearl; weight, 22,955 grams
FRESH-WATER PEARLS FROM HOPEWELL GROUP OF MOUNDS, ROSS COUNTY, OHIO
It is easy to see, even at a glance, that most of those in this great deposit of 60,000 are true pearls. Many are very irregular in form, and quite a number are the elongated, somewhat feather-shaped, “hinge pearls,” that are found in the region of the hinge teeth of Unios. A large and interesting exhibit of these is shown in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. But thousands of spherical pearls were also obtained, from the “altars” or “hearths” of mounds belonging to the first division of Squier and Davis’s classification, above noted. From the Turner group, in Clermont County, in the Little Miami Valley, Professor Putnam obtained for the Peabody Museum as much as half a bushel of pearls of this character. As these had been exposed to fire, nearly all were blackened, some cracked, and all greatly impaired.[[553]]
The next great series of explorations were those conducted by Mr. W. K. Moorehead in the Scioto Valley, in the counties of Ross, Franklin and Pickaway, Ohio. He opened and examined a number of mounds, and found pearls or pearl beads in ten or twelve of them, but the larger deposits were confined to certain limited districts, which seem to have been occupied by tribes more advanced in culture and in traffic than the rest. In these, the pearls and also objects of other kinds brought from a distance, are principally found. The scattered mounds, not associated with any village or community sites, have few of these valuable objects.
But even where they are found freely, pearls were apparently used or possessed by only a few individuals. Mr. Moorehead investigated in all 117 burial mounds, containing about 1400 skeletons. Pearls were met with in only seven of these mounds, and in connection with but twenty-two skeletons. These, however, yielded a total of 2600 pearls, apparently from Unios, the numbers found with single skeletons varying from 18 to 602, an average of 118. It thus appears that in Mr. Moorehead’s researches, pearls were found in about one mound out of seventeen, and in these, with about one skeleton out of eight.
From “altar mounds,” pearls have been in some cases taken in vast numbers. Professor Putnam’s discoveries are mentioned above; and Mr. Moorehead obtained tens of thousands from two altars or hearths in the Hopewell group, which will be described hereafter.
When found in the burial mounds with skeletons, pearls are generally seen to have been placed at the wrists or ankles, or about the neck, or in the mouth. Sometimes they are found on copper plates, and occasionally they show evidence of having been sewn or attached to a garment. Particulars on these points will be given further on. Mr. Moorehead has also found bears’ teeth, set with pearls, as Putnam and Metz did in the Marriott mound, lying with or near skeletons.