ANTIQUITY OF THE PEARL
so
they came to be gathered and stored and displayed as things which
enriched the owner. How far back in the ages the use of pearls on this
continent extends cannot be estimated. The discovery of them in the
mounds east of the Mississippi, which are credited to an ancient race
that finally succumbed to the similar but more warlike red men found
here when the country was discovered by Europeans, suggests many
centuries. And the use of pearls to the extent manifest by the
discoveries, favors the theory that the mound-builders had reached a
degree of refinement never attained by the North American Indians of
record. When white men invaded the North American continent, they found
tribes of red men as rugged as the coasts of New England. Inured to
hardships, despising pain, contemptuous of death, they lived by hunting
and found their chief pleasure in the slaughter of their enemies.
Camping at will, their lodges were here to-day a*nd there to-morrow,
and brutal if heroic, they roamed over fields once inhabited by a race
which had passed, but left evidence that they were sufÂficiently
civilized to appreciate the pearl.
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