Finger-rings are exceedingly rare among the remains of the prehistoric American peoples, although a few have been found in the Pueblo ruins of Arizona and New Mexico. These are usually cut out of shell. Some of them are skilfully cut from Pectunculus shells, and others from “cone-shells” (_Conus_). Of the former kind a number were unearthed at Chaves Pass, Arizona.[36] Many of the rings were incised with an ornamental design; one of the most beautiful of these was decorated with red figures representing clouds and lightning. This ring, large enough to fit an adult’s finger, was found, together with bones of a human hand, in one of the pre-Columbian graves, at Casa Grande, Arizona. The remains here also yielded a ring made out of a cone-shell, with incised decoration. The exceptionally fine specimen noted above almost certainly had a religious or talismanic character, and it may have been thought to protect the wearer from storms and thunderbolts. The skill with which the shells were utilized for rings as well as for other objects of adornment must have been the result of many generations of experiment and training, springing from that inherent artistic sense so often manifest in the Indians of the pueblos in contrast to the Indians of the plains. Often the circular form was already present in the shell, and this was utilized by dividing a part of the cone into sections, thus giving rings of varying diameter. The material was then smoothed and polished, and either left plain or decorated with an incised pattern, into the outlines of which appropriate coloring matter was introduced. In other cases, when the shell material did not offer a natural circlet, a disk was cut out, and a large perforation produced the rough circlet, to be worked up later into a finished ring. The attainable evidence in regard to the wearing of rings by the aborigines of North and South America is, in the main, negative. This is the case with the Pacific coast Indians, as well as with the Chiriqui graves and other ancient remains in the present United States of Colombia.[37] Indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the wearing of rings is essentially an Oriental fashion and was brought to the ancient peoples of Europe from the East. Still, here and there on the North American continent, as in the instance above noted, rings have been found in burials believed to be pre-Columbian.