“About thirty-five specimens of the earthenware vessels of the Wisconsin Indians are now in existence. Most of these have been described and figured in the Wisconsin Archeologist. The largest of these vessels in the J. P. Schumacher collection at Green Bay is twenty inches in height and twenty-two inches in diameter at the widest part. It has the great capacity of two and one fourth bushels. The smallest specimen is in the H. P. Hamilton collection and is of about the size of an ordinary cup.
“Other pottery objects found in Wisconsin include pipes, a few beads, and perforated discs made of potsherds.”
I am indebted to Professor Holmes for Figures 637 to 646, 659, 660, 662 to 667, 675, 677, and to Mr. Moore for Figures 668 to 674.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HEMATITE OBJECTS
The hematite beds in various portions of the United States furnished the Indians with paint and with implements. Hematite, like copper, being different from other materials with which he was familiar appealed to the aborigine. Its bright red color attracted him, and although he found most of it very hard, yet he made use of it to a remarkable extent when one considers how refractory it was for him to work. Hematite is found on the surface in large quantities in portions of Missouri and Arkansas, in western Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere. Most of the hematite seems to come from Missouri. It was common there, and therefore the native made of it grooved hematite axes, which he did not do elsewhere in this country. One supposes that hematite was exchanged and bartered with remote tribes. Just as in the case of copper, the natives of Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and Michigan prized their hematite highly and made of it their most perfect plummet-shaped ornaments, hematite celts, and such other objects as it was possible for them to manufacture. The softer kinds of hematite were ground into paint, and there are frequently found on the village-sites along the Ohio River small blocks of hematite worn to flat surfaces. There is in the Arkansas region a very hard blue-red or blue-gray hematite. How the Indians cut this into symmetrical oval plummets has always been a mystery to me. If the rough nugget was ground by means of other stones or sand, one is scarcely able to conceive how the finished article was produced. The process must have been long and laborious, much more so than the manufacture of an effigy pipe, or the making of a problematical form.
Fig. 690. (S. 1–1.) Eight hematite objects from the Andover collection. In the upper right-hand corner is a hematite pebble, polished on two of its angles and rough on the other side. This illustrates how hematite was cut and ground until reduced to the desired shape. Flint scratchings are still plain on the surface. Just beneath it is a triangular bit of hematite. This is of soft hematite. The flat surface may be due to grinding in order to obtain paint. Beneath are two hematite cones. The four specimens to the left represent hematite objects in various stages of manufacture.
Fig. 691. (S. 1–2.)
These are from the collection of George Y. Hull, St. Joseph, Missouri.
1. Celt from mound, Andrew County, Missouri. Smooth and well made but not polished.
2. Plumb much pitted by age, surface find, Callaway County, Missouri.
3. A fine truncated cone used as a paint-grinder. Top of cone is worn and depressed from use. Surface find, Callaway County, Missouri.
4. Finely polished celt, surface find, Doniphan County, Kansas.
5. From an old grave near the village-site at Wathena, Kansas.
6. Axe with flat top and flat side,—a surface find, Callaway County, Missouri.
7. From an old village-site at King Hill, St. Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri.
The difference between the celts is self-evident, numbers 1 and 4 being square, and 5 and 7 oval.
The hard gray hematite referred to resists the knife and will wear an ordinary file in a short time, yet in the altar mounds of the Ohio Valley, and in the older graves (not graves of the historic period) are found numbers of these slender hematite plummets (see Fig. 700) worked from the hardest and most refractory iron ore. It is unfortunate that the earliest tribes known to the voyagers and explorers in this country had no hematite objects in use among them. If so, I fail to find references to such objects. This is unfortunate because hematite certainly was considered as more than of passing importance. It is quite likely that because it was so difficult to deduce it to the desired shape the so-called plummets were made use of, as Dr. Yates suggests, as stones used in certain ceremonies, or by shamans, or as charm-stones. I have seen unfinished hematite plummets, but cannot work out a satisfactory theory as to their manufacture.