several
of the mounds at Moundville, Alabama. He also found a sheet-copper
pendant, elongated oval in outline, with an excised repoussé
decoration, embracing a swastika within a circle, and a triangle. This
pendant, which lay near the skull of burial No. 132, bears a
perforated pearl nearly seven millimeters in diameter and weighing
about nine grains ; it is fastened to the pendant by a piece of
vegetable fiber that passes through the pearl. With another burial (No.
162), the skeleton of an adult, was an elliptical gorget of
sheet-copper decorated with a pearl.1 In a personal
communication Mr. Moore states that all the pearls found by him in the
mounds were very much disintegrated by the lapse of time ; he also
writes that he has never found any shells immediately with the pearls,
although masses of Unio shells were often met with in the mounds. He
believes the shell-fish had been used for food.
Unio
shell-heaps exist likewise on the shores of the inland lakes of
Florida, and in middle Georgia and Alabama ; and several of them on the
banks of the Savannah River, above Augusta, are fully described by
Colonel Charles C. Jones.2 He says : "In these relic-beds no
two parts of the same shell are, as a general rule, found in
juxtaposition. The hinge is broken, and the valves of the shell, after
having been artificially torn asunder, seem to have been carelessly
cast aside and allowed to accumulate."
Thus,
in addition to the historical evidence, physical proof is abundant of
the pearl fisheries of the aboriginal tribes of the South. In order to
ascertain the precise varieties of shells from which the southern
Indians obtained their pearls, Colonel Jones invited an expression of
opinion from a number of scientists whose studies rendered them
familiar with the conchology of the United States. Their responses
throw considerable light upon this inquiry, though with some curious
variation.
Prof.
William S. Jones, of the University of Georgia, says that he has seen
small pearls in many of the Unios found in that State.
Prof.
Jeffries Wyman, on the other hand, after a careful and extensive
series of excavations in the shell-heaps of Florida, failed to find a
single pearl. "It is hardly probable," he remarks, "that the Spaniards
could have been mistaken as to the fact of the ornaments of the Indians
being pearls, but in view of their frequent exaggerations, I am almost
compelled to the belief that there was some mistake; and possibly they
may not have distinguished between the pearls and the shell
1 "Moundville Revisited," Reprint from z "Antiquities of the Southern Indians,"
the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sei- New York, 1873, p. 483; also, "Monumental
ences of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1907, Remains of Georgia," Savannah, 1861, p. 14. Vol. XIII, pp. 398-403.
