The
use of the pearl as an ornament by the southern Indians, and the
quantities of shells opened by them in various localities, make it seem
strange that it is not more frequently met with in the relic-beds and
sepulchral tumuli of that region ; but, after exploring many shell-and
earth-mounds, Colonel Charles C. Jones failed, except in a few
instances, to find pearls.1 A few were obtained in an
extensive relic-bed on the Savannah River, above Augusta, the largest
being four tenths of an inch in diameter, but all of them blackened by
fire. Many of the smaller mounds on the coast of Georgia do not contain
pearls, because at the period of their construction the custom of
burning the dead appears to have prevailed very generally; hence, it
may be that the pearls were either immediately consumed or so seriously
injured as to crumble out of sight.
This
absence of pearls tends somewhat to confirm the opinion that beads made
from the thicker portions of shells that were carved, perforated, and
brilliant with nacre, were regarded by the imaginative Spaniards as
pearls. More minute investigation, however, will doubtless reveal the
existence of pearls in localities where the pearl-bearing shells were
collected. Perforated pearls have been found in an ancient
burying-ground located near the bank of the Ogeechee River, in Bryan
County, Georgia; and many years ago, after a heavy freshet on the
Oconee River, which laid bare many Indian graves in the neighborhood
of the large mounds on Poullain's plantation, fully a hundred pearls of
considerable size were gathered.
It
seems quite clear that many of the pearls reported by the early Spanish
voyagers were really such, although it is well known also that shell
beads have been found in mounds in connection with pearls; but the
numbers found in Ohio, by Professor Putnam, Mr. Moorehead, and others,
leave no room for doubt in this matter. That the Indians of the South
also had these pearls, both drilled and un-drilled, is beyond question.
The same fact comes to view, however, in these various accounts, that has been alluded to already, vis., that
the use of pearls among the aborigines appears to have been local, and
probably tribal. All the fresh waters of North America contain Unios,
especially in the Mississippi basin and in the South, and all the Unios
are more or less pearl-bearing; but it is only at certain points that
pearls are found deposited in ancient graves, sometimes, however, in
extraordinary quantities.
Father
Louis Hennepin relates that the Indians along the Mississippi wore
bracelets and earrings of fine pearls, which they spoilt, having
nothing to bore them with but fire. He adds: "They gave us
1 "Antiquities of Southern Indians," p. 490.
