More curious still is the discovery of imitation pearls, made of clay, and apparently modeled from real ones as they reproduce all the irregularities of form of the true pearls. They could easily have been made more nearly spherical, as the beads cut from shell are so regular as to look as though made by machinery. These somewhat irregular clay imitations, found with the genuine pearls, were first coated with a pulverent mica and then burned so as to preserve a pearly appearance.
Other forms of art work were abundantly represented in the Harness mound, such as carvings and decorations in stone and bone; a variety of textile fabrics, of which remnants are preserved when they were in contact with plates of copper, the salts of the metal having penetrated the fabric and prevented its entire decay; very skilful work in copper, and to some extent in native silver and meteoric iron; and numerous fragments of pottery, more or less ornamental with simple impressed patterns. The “culture,” as a whole, appears to have been equal, and very similar, to that of the Hopewell community, and these are regarded as having been the most advanced among the Ohio mound-builders; while the term “Fort Ancient culture” is applied to a somewhat lower grade in the matter of arts, which has its chief illustration among the builders and occupants of that celebrated work. By such researches, thus minutely and systematically conducted, there is now beginning to be possible something like a classification of these ancient unknown tribes, which will doubtless be developed more fully, as investigation shall be extended and its results combined and compared.
As to pearls in the mounds of Illinois, we are informed by the veteran archæologist, Dr. J. F. Snyder, that in 1889 he found the skeletons of three adult Indians at the base of a small mound on the bluffs of the Sangomon River in Cass County. These skeletons were in a squatting posture; artefacts—such as greenstone celts, a bicave stone and a heavy pipe—had only been deposited with one of them. Around each wrist and ankle of this skeleton were perforated beads made from Marginella shells, and resting on the sternum was a solitary pearl which had evidently formed the center of a necklace of the same small marine shells. Although much decayed, it still retained something of its original luster. It was spherical, measured approximately seven eighths of an inch in diameter, and was perforated through the middle. Dr. Snyder also states that at the base of one of the large mounds he opened in 1895, in Brown County, on the west side of the Illinois River, he discovered a number of the large canine teeth of the bear, perforated at the roots, so as to be used for necklaces. On the convex side of each tooth were from two to four pits about one third of an inch in diameter, and the same in depth, in which gems had been inserted. Two small pearls were still in place. Near by were the remains of another necklace composed of alternate pearls and bone beads; the latter were oblong and perforated lengthwise. Eight of the pearls were recovered, ranging in diameter from one half to one third of an inch, and pierced through the center, but all were very badly injured by the action of fire.
Mr. David I. Bushnell, who has excavated the McEvers mound in Montezuma, Pike County, Illinois, for the Missouri Historical Society, found in this mound a cyst containing a skeleton six feet in height and also a skull reposing on a bundle of bones near which lay forty-five pearls, one of them weighing fifty-two grains and still showing a beautiful luster. Almost all the objects discovered in the mound will be presented to the Missouri Historical Society. The large pearl would be worth from $12,000 to $15,000 if it were in perfect condition.
We learn from Mr. Richard Herrmann, founder of the Herrmann Museum of Natural History, Dubuque, Iowa, that on the top of the high cliff from Eagle’s Point to its end at McKnight’s Spring, there were formerly a great many mounds which were long ago examined by government experts. Many ancient ornaments were found in these mounds, among them a string of pearls, greatly damaged from having been buried for a long period.[[561]] Mr. Herrmann believes that these pearls were taken from the Mississippi River by the mound-builders.
Enough has been said, in this general sketch, to give some idea of the extent to which pearls, largely those from the fresh-water Unios, were gathered and used by the native tribes of North America, from the ancient mound-builders of the Ohio Valley to the Indians encountered by the explorers and colonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The love of pearls shown by the Indians was as noteworthy as was their devotion to their dead and the superstitious mystery which enshrouds their funeral rites; for, when the human sacrifice was consummated, the act was performed in as earnest a spirit of devotion as was shown by Abraham in his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, and the Indians evidenced an almost pathetic sentiment either of reverence, duty, or supernatural dread.
Dr. J. Walter Fewkes writes that in none of his excavations has he ever noted pearls. Haliotis shells, conch shells, and fragments of the same have been found in the great ruins at Casa Grande, Arizona.
Dr. Charles Hercules Read, director of the Department of Archæology of the British Museum, states that the Mexican mosaic masks in the Christy collection, which are pre-Columbian in origin, and probably date hundreds of years in advance of the conquest, prove of special interest from the fact that five of them contain an inlay of mother-of-pearl shell. The first of these is a plain mask in which the eyes are of mother-of-pearl; the second is a dagger having the details of feather-work in mother-of-pearl; the third, a circular shield center having the eyes, teeth, fingers, and toes of the figures in mother-of-pearl; the fourth, a helmet with small pieces of pearl-shell representing collars around the necks of rattlesnakes; and the fifth is a jaguar in the side of which are similar inlays. These masks are described by Dr. Read in “Archæologia,” Society of Antiquaries, London, Vol. LIV, p. 383; in this volume the objects are shown in color. Dr. Read communicates that the pearl jaguar seems to be of more recent execution, but he believes the first four to be original. He is not entirely sure that these objects contain the true mother-of-pearl, the substance having changed so much as to make a decision doubtful even if it were extracted. He states, however, that it is a pearly, nacreous shell, resembling that of the ordinary pearl-oyster. In these masks are also other shells, among them a red shell, probably a spondylus, almost as red as coral. The mother-of-pearl is of special interest as it is quite possible that the shell itself was known, and it may be that pearls also formed part of a commerce that existed between the coast and the interior.
