The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studiesWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
America -- Antiquities; Atlantis (Legendary place); Ethnology -- America; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
Some of the miniature representations of animals found here are
remarkable for their accuracy.”[96]
The descriptions thus furnished of the traces of aboriginal art in the
State of New York closely correspond to the remains recovered on the
sites of ancient Indian villages in Canada. A finely modelled clay-pipe,
with a serpent twined round it, and holding a human head in its jaws,
now in my possession, was dug up, along with numerous other clay-pipes,
bone pins, and other relics, in Norfolk County, on the north shore of
Lake Erie. I also possess casts of some ingeniously modelled clay-pipes
found a few years since in an ossuary at Lake Medad, near Watertown,
about ten miles west from Hamilton, Ontario. This no doubt marks the
site of an ancient town of the Attiwendaronks, or Neuter Nation, who
were finally conquered and driven out by the Iroquois in 1635, when the
little remnant that survived was adopted into the Seneca nation. Mr. B.
E. Charlton, who explored the Lake Medad ossuaries, after describing the
human remains, along with large tropical shells, shell-beads and other
relics, adds: “With these were found antique pipes of stone and clay,
many of them bearing extraordinary devices, figures of animals, and of
human heads wearing the conical cap noticed on similar relics in Mexico
and Peru.”[97] Similar discoveries rewarded the researches of Dr. Taché
in the Huron ossuaries on the Georgian Bay, examples of which are now in
the museum of Laval University.
On the site of the famous Indian town of Hochelaga, the precursor of the
city of Montreal, detached fragments, in well-burnt clay, including
modellings of the human head and neck, had been repeatedly found, before
the recovery of larger portions of the Hochelaga pottery showed that
projections modelled in this form within the mouths of their earthern
pots or kettles were designed to admit of their suspension over the
fire. Any projection within the mouth of the pot would have answered the
purpose of protecting the cord or withe from the risk of burning; so
that the moulding of it into the human form furnishes an illustration of
the play of the imitative faculty under circumstances little calculated
to call it forth.
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