The serpent has had a fascination for primitive man hardly surpassed by its reputed power over the animals on which it preys. In the minds of nearly all savages it has been associated with the deepest mysteries and the most potent powers of nature. No other creature has figured so prominently in the religious systems of the world, few of which are free from it; and as art, in a great measure, owes its existence to an attempt to represent or embellish objects which are supposed to be the incarnations of spirits, the serpent is an important element in all art. Wherever the children of nature have wandered its image may be found engraved upon the rocks, or painted or sculptured upon monuments of their own construction. It is found in a thousand forms; beginning with those so realistic that the species can be determined, we may pass down through innumerable stages of variation until all semblance of nature is lost. Beyond this it becomes embodied in the conventional forms of art or looks back from its obscure place in an alphabet through a perspective of metamorphism as marvelous as that visible to the creature itself could it view the course of its evolution from the elements of nature. So well is the serpent known as a religious symbol among the American peoples that it seems hardly necessary to present examples of the curiously interesting myths relating to it. We are not surprised to find the bird, the wolf, or the bear placed among representatives of the "Great Spirit," and hence to find them embodied in art; but it would be a matter of surprise if the serpent were ever absent. With the mound-builders it seems to have been of as much importance as to other divisions of the red race, ancient or modern. It is of very frequent occurrence among the designs engraved upon gorgets of shell, a multitude of which have been thus dedicated to the serpent-god.