Fig. 620. (S. 1–2.) Copper fish. Hopewell Group. Field Museum collection, Chicago.
Ear-Rings
The fondness of the later Indians for such ornaments is well known, and it is quite probable that they were also in rather general use among the earlier aborigines.
In the S. D. Mitchell collection is a small crescent-shaped copper ornament which may have served as an ear-ring or nose-ring, being well adapted for such use. It measures one and three eighths inches in extreme width, and was obtained from an Indian village-site in Green Lake County. Similar specimens are in several other local collections.
The Reverend W. M. Beauchamp states that the earliest metallic ear-rings in use among New York aborigines were probably those of copper wire coiled and flattened, and believes it possible that perforated discs and coins may have served the same purpose in early historic times, but that they were more likely to have been employed in some other way. Glass and shell beads, and probably many other things, were so utilized.
Fig. 621. (S. 1–4.) Copper eagle. Hopewell Group. Field Museum collection, Chicago.
Ear-Spools or Ear-Plugs. (See Fig. 612.)
Professor T. H. Lewis has obtained ornaments of this class during mound explorations conducted by him at Prairie du Chien, Crawford County, and Wyalusing, Grant County, in Wisconsin. Ear-spools have been obtained from various localities in Ohio, Illinois, and the South. Some of these are rather elaborately ornamented with embossed figures. In the Field Museum collections are specimens which were taken from the mounds of the celebrated Hopewell Group in Ohio.
A specimen in the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society’s collections has still attached to it a fragment of the string or cord by means of which it was probably attached to the ear of its aboriginal owner. Similar objects of stone overlaid with sheet-copper have been described by various authors.