Rude clubs have become weapons of curious construction and machinery of marvelous complication, and the pebbles and shells are the prototypes of numerous works in all materials. Rude rafts which served to cross primeval rivers have become huge ships, and the original house of bark and leaves is represented by palaces and temples, glittering with light and glowing with color.
The steps which led up to these results are by no means clear to us; they have not been built in any one place or by any one people. Nations have risen and fallen, and have given place to others that in turn have left a heap of ruins. We find it impossible to trace back through the historic ages into and beyond the prehistoric shadows, the pathway to culture followed by any one people. The necessity for groping increases with every backward step, and we pick up one by one the scattered links of a chain that has a thousand times been broken. So far our information is meager and fragmentary, and centuries of research will be required to round up our knowledge to such a fullness as to enable us to rehabilitate the ancient races, a result to be reached only by an exhaustive comparative study of the art products of all peoples and of all ages.
By collecting the various relics of art in shell I shall be able to add a fragment to this great work. Destructible in their character these relics are seldom preserved from remote periods, and it is only by reason of their inhumation with the dead that they appear among antiquities at all. A majority of such objects, taken from graves and tumuli, known to post-date even the advent of the white race in North America, are so far decayed that unless most carefully handled they crumble to powder.
It is impossible to demonstrate the great antiquity of any of these relics. Many of those obtained from the shell heaps of the Atlantic coast are doubtless very ancient, but we cannot say with certainty that they antedate the discovery more than a few hundred years.
Specimens obtained from the mounds of the Mississippi Valley have the appearance of great antiquity, but beyond the internal evidence of the specimens themselves we have no reliable data upon which to base an estimate of time. The age of these relics is rendered still less certain by the presence of intrusive interments, which place side by side works of very widely separated periods.
The antiquity of the relics themselves is not, however, of first importance; the art ideas embodied in them have a much deeper interest. The tablets upon which the designs are engraved may be never so recent, yet the conceptions themselves have their origin far back in the forgotten ages. Deified ancestors and mythical creatures that were in the earlier stages rudely depicted on bark and skins and rocks were, after a certain mastery over materials had been achieved, engraved on tablets of flinty shell; and it is probable that in these rare objects we have, if not a full representation of the art of the ancient peoples, at least a large number of their most important works, in point of execution as well as of conception.
Man in his most primitive condition must have resorted to the sea-shore for the food which it affords. Weapons or other appliances were not necessary in the capture of mollusks; a stone to break the shell, or one of the massive valves of the shells themselves, sufficed for all purposes.
The shells of mollusks probably came into use as utensils at a very early date, and mutually with products of the vegetable world afforded natural vessels for food and water.
For a long period the idea of modifying the form to increase the convenience may not have been suggested and the natural shells were used for whatever purpose they were best fitted. In time, however, by accidental suggestions it would be found that modifications would enhance their usefulness, and the breaking away of useless parts and the sharpening of edges and points would be resorted to. Farther on, as it became necessary to carry them from point to point, changes would be made for convenience of transportation. Perforations which occur naturally in some species of shell, would be produced artificially, and the shells would be strung on vines or cords and suspended about the neck; in this way, in time, may have originated the custom of wearing pendants for personal ornament. Following this would be the transportation of such articles to distant places by wandering tribes, exchanges would take place with other tribes, and finally a trade would be developed and a future commerce of nations be inaugurated.
Results similar to the foregoing would spring doubtless from the employment of substances other than shell, but that material most closely associated with the acquisition of food would come first prominently into use.