Bones of indigenous animals are found worked into daggers, awls, and similar implements; or as ornaments in the form of beads. Similar use was made of the teeth and talons of beasts and birds. Teeth of the bear, wolf, panther, alligator, and shark, have been found, some of the latter being fossils, together with large quantities of teeth resembling those of the whale, but not fully identified.
Five varieties of marine shells, all from the gulf shores, have been examined, with pearls whose size and numbers prove that they are not of fresh-water origin. Both are used for ornaments, chiefly in the form of beads. Pearls are also found in a few instances serving as eyes for animal and bird sculptures. Some articles of bone and shell have been mistaken for ivory and accredited with an Asiatic origin, through ignorance that their material is found on the shores of the gulf. Many articles found in the mounds, and not perhaps included in the preceding general description, are interesting, but could only be described in a detailed account, for which I have no space; but most relics not thus included are of doubtful authenticity, and a doubtful monument of antiquity should always be attributed to modern times.
ANCIENT MINES.
The ancient miners have left numerous traces of their work in the region of Lake Superior. At one place a piece of pure copper weighing over five tons was found fifteen feet below the surface, under trees at least four hundred years old. It had been raised on skids, bore marks of fire, and some stone implements were scattered about. There is no evidence that the tribes found in possession of the country by the first French missionaries ever worked these mines, or had any tradition of a people that had worked them, although both they and their ancestors had copper knives hammered from lumps of the metal, which are very commonly found on the surface. All the traditions and Indian stories of 'mines' may most consistently be referred to these natural superficial deposits. The ancient mines were for the most part in the same localities where the best modern mines are worked. Most of them have left as traces only slight depressions in the surface, the finding of which is regarded by prospectors as a tolerably sure indication of a rich vein of copper. The cut represents a section of one of the veins of copper-bearing rock worked by the ancient miners. The mass of copper at a weighed about six tons. At the top a portion of the stone had been left across the vein as a support. Copper implements, including wedges used in mining as 'gads,' are found in and about the old mines; with hammers of stone, mostly grooved for withe handles. Some weigh from thirty to forty pounds and have two grooves; others again are not grooved at all. In one case remains of a handle of twisted cedar-roots were found, and much-worn wooden shovels often occur. There are no enclosures, mounds, or other traces of a permanent settlement of the Mound-builders in the mining region. It is probable that the miners came each summer from the south; in fact, it would have been impossible to work the mines in winter by their methods.
Section of an old Copper Mine.
ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS.
Nearly all the coins, medals, stone tablets, etc., that have been discovered within the region occupied by the Mound-builders, bearing inscriptions in regular apparently alphabetic characters, may be proved to be of European origin; and the few specimens that do not admit of such proof should of course be attributed to such an origin in the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary. Rude delineations of men, animals, and other recognizable objects, together with many arbitrary, perhaps conventional, characters, are of frequent occurrence on the walls of caves, on perpendicular river-cliffs, and on detached stones. They are sometimes incised, but usually painted. Most bear a strong resemblance to the artistic efforts of modern tribes; and those which seem to bear marks of a greater antiquity, have by no means been identified as the work of the Mound-builders. These eastern rock-inscriptions do not call for additional remarks, after what has been said of similar carvings in other regions. Many of the figures have a meaning to those who make them, but that meaning, as in all writings of this class, perishes with the artist and his immediate times. Attempts by zealous antiquaries to penetrate the signification of particular inscriptions—as that on Dighton Rock, Massachusetts, and other well-known examples—have failed to convince any but the determined advocate of such theories as seem to derive support from the so-called translation. My father saw a stone tablet taken from a stone mound near Newark, covered with carved characters, which the clergyman of the town pronounced to be the ten commandments in ancient Hebrew. I have no doubt that the figures did closely resemble the ancient Hebrew in one respect at least—that is, in being equally unfamiliar to the clergyman.
CONCLUSIONS.