The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
It has been estimated that the pearl beads found in the altars of the
Hopewell Group, when new and undrilled, were worth upwards of a million
dollars.
Practically all shell ornaments were made from the larger unio shells
and also from the busycon and pyrula shells of Florida and the
Carolinas. Fig. 522 presents one of these shells as yet uncut which was
found in a mound at the Hopewell Group and another which has been cut
down into the form of a large dipper or drinking-vessel.
[Illustration:
FIG. 524. (S. varying.) Shell ornaments from California. Peabody
Museum collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 525. (S. 3–7.) This figure illustrates some of the shell
hairpins, rather rare in Ohio, but frequently found in the South.
These are from the collection of Mr. John T. Reeder, Houghton,
Michigan, and were found in Alabama and Tennessee. It would be
impossible to drill with these, and by common consent they are
called hairpins.
]
The ornamentation on large shell gorgets is complicated and
characteristic. I am not sufficiently familiar with California shell
gorgets to state whether they are ever engraved. Fig. 529, from
Professor Barr’s collection, presents as highly developed gorgets as I
have seen from the Pacific Coast. It is in the mounds and stone graves
of the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys that the art in engraving or
decorating gorgets seems to have reached its height. In Figs. 530, 531,
532, 533. 534, and 535 are presented beautiful specimens from the
collections of Mr. John T. Reeder, Colonel Young, and the Smithsonian
Institution.
[Illustration:
FIG. 526. (S. 1–2.) An engraved shell gorget found in the glacial kame
burials in northern Ohio. This is shown half size and is a
remarkable specimen. The material is from a large fresh-water unio.
]
Professor William H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution has studied
shell objects more than any one else in this country. I quote from his
description of Fig. 534:[20]
[Illustration:
FIG. 527. (1–2.) Two small shell ornaments from the collection of John
T. Reeder, Houghton, Michigan. These were found in a mound on Long
Island, Tennessee. The one to the right is especially interesting in
that the body of the shell is cut out, forming the bars of the
cross. Such gorgets are exceedingly rare.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 528. (S. 1–2.) Four flat pendants found in Pilot Mound, Manitoba,
by Henry Montgomery. Two copper beads and one shell bead, Pilot
Mound, Manitoba. Two bone whistles, respectively nine and ten inches
long, from mound near Sourisford, Manitoba.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 529. (S. 1–3.) James A. Barr collection, Stockton, California.
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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