against
the time of his death and burial. A vivid account is given of the four
grotesque images that stood guard at the corners of this building, all
made "evill favouredly according to their best workmanship."1
The
use of pearls as ornaments, and their deposit with the remains of
chiefs and persons of distinction, have already been described as
familiar among the Indian tribes of tidewater Virginia, in the notes
above cited from early explorers and colonists. It is a curious
circumstance, however, that this habit does not appear to have
extended in that part of the country much beyond the dominions of
Powhatan, as no pearls have been noted in the Indian graves in
Maryland. This statement, in reply to a letter of special inquiry, is
made by Dr. P. R. Uhler, of the Peabody Institute of Baltimore, who has
been making very careful studies of all aboriginal remains in that
region, for the Maryland Academy of Sciences.
It
would seem from this and other evidence, that the use and appreciation
of pearls must have been in some way a tribal matter, familiar to some
and not to others, of the Indian peoples. In the Mississippi Valley,
the ancient population known as the mound-builders, by some regarded as
a distinct and earlier race, and by others as of true Indian stock,
although much more advanced in arts and culture, have left in their
mounds most remarkable quantities of pearls. But here again, the same
feature appears, that these treasures are not found wherever there are
mounds, but only in certain regions. Of these, by far the most
celebrated is that of the Scioto and Miami valleys, in Ohio. Outside
of these, no large amounts have been found, and only at a few
localities are they met with at all.
The
valleys of the Miami and Scioto rivers and their tributaries contain
many remarkable mounds and "earthworks," which have attracted much
attention, and have been more or less explored at different times,
with increasing care and thoroughness as archaeological science has
advanced. It may be well to give a brief, general account of these
investigations and some leading features of the mounds as a whole,
before going into particulars as to the occurrence of pearls.
The
first important and scientific study of these remarkable structures
was that conducted in the early forties by Dr. Edwin H. Davis and Mr.
E. George Squier, and published in their celebrated and standard work
entitled "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," issued by the
Smithsonian Institution in 1848. This book and the "Correspondence" in
regard to the mounds by the same writers, published in 1847, were the
first works issued by the Smithsonian Institution.
