With failing confidence and a rising uneasiness, trade would naturally decrease and the incentive to fine workmanship decline. The larger cultural community split apart into a number of small tribes, who were isolationists and individualists. All the separate little tribal units were Woodland culturally with some small evidence of their Hopewellian heritage, but each differed in certain respects from its neighbors. Villages dwindled to the mere hamlets, widely separated one from another. The elaborate ceremonial dress, insignia, and jewelry, and the artistic creations (at least in durable materials) became a part of the past; the people found themselves reduced to the rude cultural level of their early Woodland ancestors. Huts were flimsy and left no discernible remains. Tools, weapons, and ornaments were, in general, carelessly made and poorly finished. Although tobacco was smoked and small patches of maize and beans may have been grown, the chief economic dependence undoubtedly was on hunting, fishing and collecting. [Illustration: Fig. 19. Group of mounds exhibiting bird, mammal, linear and conical mounds as they occur characteristically in Effigy Mound subculture of Final Woodland. (B.B.)] The religious beliefs, too, were probably simplified and mixed with magic and superstition, surviving relics of the religion of the past age. In a word, the social and religious customs of the little tribes were broadly similar but in minor details differed from each other much as do their artifactual remains. A study of the Final Woodland and other phases of Illinois history reveals certain relationships among some distinguishable differences of detail: 1. The almost complete lack of evidence of Hopewellian art, trade and religion in the late Woodland period gives little apparent indication that the people were the direct descendants and heirs of that civilization. On the other hand, the general resemblance of Final Woodland assemblages to those of the Initial phase seems marked. Let us examine further. [Illustration: Fig. 20. Graves near Quincy, Illinois, Stone Vault period. (Photographs through courtesy of O. D. Thurber.)] [Illustration: Stone mound after earth was removed.] [Illustration: Four excavated “vaults”, the third of which shows a “corridor” entrance with stone steps.] The tobacco pipe of the late phase with the stem projecting beyond the bowl is found in most aspects. Likewise, the vertically elongated pot is common but not the only form. Burials are often in mounds, frequently in a central chamber or grave, with skeletons in the flexed and/or extended positions, occasionally accompanied by grave offerings. All these are broadly reminiscent of Hopewellian customs and, in the writer’s opinion, indicate a continuing thread of tradition from Initial Woodland through Hopewellian into the Final phase.