Fig. 608. The base of the Effigy Mound, Hopewell Group. Explored in 1891–92. Copper axes and plates in the foreground, lying as found. Teams, thirty to forty feet distant, and two feet higher than the deposit.
6. Ridged socketed points. If we except from consideration the very numerous small awls and fish-hooks, we may truthfully state that this is by far the most common type of copper implement occurring in Wisconsin.
Thousands of these points have been collected in Wisconsin, and probably as many or an even greater number are yet to be recovered from the soil.
They are represented in greater or less numbers in every Wisconsin and in many other collections.
This type and its varieties are too well and widely known to require much of a description. They are frequently symmetrically and beautifully wrought, indicating a degree of skill on the part of their aboriginal makers that is unsurpassed. The blade varies considerably in length and breadth. The stem is provided with flanges which are bent straight upward or inward, thus forming an angular socket for the reception of the wooden shaft. Some points having fragments of this shaft still in place have been found. This form is rarely if ever provided with a rivet-hole. In most examples there is a dip or shoulder in the socket at the connection of the stem and blade, against which the head of the wooden shaft abutted. A distinctive feature of these points is the pronounced central ridge which traverses the back of the implement from end to end. It is this feature which has gained for this style of point the local name of “bayonet-backed spear-point.” The tip of the stem is also usually angularly pointed. A small number of these points have the upper surface of their blades ornamented with indentations variously arranged in double rows or lines. This type of copper point has been found as far to the south as the Gulf, as far east as New England, westward to the Missouri, and northward into Canada.
The largest example known to have been found in Wisconsin measures thirteen inches in length. It is in the E. C. Perkins collection. The average size is between three and five inches.
Fig. 609. (S. 3–5.) Large copper plate covered with shell beads, Seip Mound, Ohio. W. C. Mills’s collection.
6 a. Rolled socketed points. (Fig. 601.) This form is almost if not quite as common as the preceding, from which it is distinguished mainly by the fact that the back of the blade and stem are not usually upon the same plane. The central ridge also is absent. Many examples are provided with a rivet-hole (very rarely with two, one above the other) within the socket near the base of the stem. Specimens with a small copper rivet or nail still in place in the socket are of not infrequent occurrence in Wisconsin collections.