In the H. P. Hamilton collection there is a series of ten fish-hooks obtained from the bank of the Little Wolf River, in the township of Muckwa, in Waupaca County. These are from two and a half to two and three fourths inches in length, the strongly and broadly curved hook reaching up to about opposite the middle of the shank. Some are circular and others square in section, and all are of a nearly uniform thickness of one fourth of an inch. Several have the tips of the shank flattened, and all are heavily incrusted with soil and verdigris, plainly indicating the manner in which they had lain upon and across each other.
Peculiar Implements
In a few of the large Wisconsin cabinets are to be seen a very small number of implements whose exact functions are unknown and which cannot be placed in any of the various classes here described.
Fig. 618. (S. 1–2.) Remarkable effigy in copper. Collection of J. M. Wolfing, St. Louis, Missouri.
One of these, in the H. P. Hamilton collection, is eight and one quarter inches in length. It is circular in section and tapers to a point at either extremity. It is seven eighths of an inch in diameter near the thicker extremity and is knotty all over the surface. Mr. Hamilton suggests that it may have been employed as a club or bludgeon. It weighs eight and one half ounces and comes from Little Chute, Outagamie County. In the same collection there is also to be seen a long, curved, flattish implement which, it has been suggested, may have served as a sword. It is about twenty inches in length and about one inch in width near the middle. It was obtained with a cache of six other copper implements at Oconto, Oconto County, Wisconsin.
Banner-Stones
The only specimens in native copper of this interesting and widely distributed class of ceremonial objects are in the H. P. Hamilton collection. One is of the ordinary butterfly pattern with expanding wings. Both specimens were found at Oconto, Oconto County, and were included in a remarkable cache of copper implements and ornaments, consisting of a crescent, sword, chisel, leaf-shaped blade, and two arrow-points. This specimen, weighing five ounces, is three and one half inches in length, and one and one fourth inches in width across the elevated part at the middle. The broad wings are one and one fourth inches in length and one and one half inches in width across their outer edges. The perforation at the middle is of one inch in length and has a short diameter of half an inch. A second specimen in the same cabinet is of the so-called “pick” shape. It weighs two and one fourth ounces. It is five inches in length and only one inch in width across the widest part, near the middle. The narrow wings are two and one fourth inches in length and taper to a rounded point, the perforation at the middle being half an inch in diameter.
Beads. (See Figs. 569, 570.)
The most common local form of copper bead is somewhat spherical in shape and was fashioned by rolling together a small, narrow strip or welt of native metal, varying in thickness from less than one eighth to one fourth of an inch or more, only one or two turns of which were necessary to make a rude bead of quite large size. Beads of this kind have been obtained in large numbers from Wisconsin village-sites, graves, and, sometimes, from the mounds. Quantities of them, as many as one hundred or more, have occasionally been taken from a single grave.