some
very effective examples of turquoise inlaying by the Indians of an
earlier time who dwelt in this region. The symbolic forms, the precious
material used for the inlays, and the labor and skill expended in the
execution of certain of these works, indicate that they must have been
regarded as amulets. Perhaps the finest inlaying-work is shown in the
turquoise decoration of a fragment of bone of peculiar shape, having
alternate bands of jet with a chevron-decoration of interlaced
triangular pieces of jet and turquoise. Another of these jet and
turquoise amulets is a frog, the body being of jet and the protruding
eyes of turquoise ; about the creature's neck runs a band of turquoise
mosaic. Still another of these relics is a square plaque of jet with an
inlaid turquoise at each of the four corners ; two of these inlays
have fallen out.ea
The
history of the turquoise, a stone which has been mined in Persia for
thousands of years, and has long been prized as one of the most
beautiful and attractive of the semi-precious stones, has been very
fully and ably treated in an exceedingly comprehensive monograph
recently published by Dr. Joseph E. Pogue.7 This valuable
and interesting work contains extracts from all the older and more
modern writers on the subject, and also describes the stone fully from
a mineralogical point of view, besides discussing it from the historic
standpoints.
So
highly was the turquoise esteemed among the Pima Indians of southern
Arizona, that the loss of one was looked upon as a most ominous event,
portending for the owner a serious illness or physical disability,
which could only be cured by the magic rites of a medicine-man. When
one of
*» George H. Pepper. The plate is from the " American Anthropologist," New Series, vol. vii, pi. xvii.
*
" The Turquoie. A Study of its History, Mineralogy, Geology, Ethnology,
Archeology, Mythology, Folklore and Technology." By Joseph E. Pogue.
Third Memoir, vol. xii, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C,
1916, 162 p., platee 22, 4to.
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