Museum
of Natural History, Dubuque, Iowa, that on the top of the high cliff
from Eagle's Point to its end at McKnight's Spring, there were formerly
a great many mounds which were long ago examined by government experts.
Many ancient ornaments were found in these mounds, among them a string
of pearls, greatly damaged from having been buried for a long period.1 Mr. Herrmann believes that these pearls were taken from the Mississippi River by the mound-builders.
Enough
has been said, in this general sketch, to give some idea of the extent
to which pearls, largely those from the fresh-water Unios, were
gathered and used by the native tribes of North America, from the
ancient mound-builders of the Ohio Valley to the Indians encountered
by the explorers and colonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
The
love of pearls shown by the Indians was as noteworthy as was their
devotion to their dead and the superstitious mystery which enshrouds
their funeral rites ; for, when the human sacrifice was consummated,
the act was performed in as earnest a spirit of devotion as was shown
by Abraham in his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, and the Indians
evidenced an almost pathetic sentiment either of reverence, duty, or
supernatural dread.
Dr.
J. Walter Fewkes writes that in none of his excavations has he ever
noted pearls. Haliotis shells, conch shells, and fragments of the same
have been found in the great ruins at Casa Grande, Arizona.
Dr.
Charles Hercules Read, director of the Department of Archaeology of
the British Museum, states that the Mexican mosaic masks in the Christy
collection, which are pre-Columbian in origin, and probably date
hundreds of years in advance of the conquest, prove of special
interest from the fact that five of them contain an inlay of
mother-of-pearl shell. The first of these is a plain mask in which the
eyes are of mother-of-pearl; the second is a dagger having the details
of feather-work in mother-of-pearl; the third, a circular shield center
having the eyes, teeth, fingers, and toes of the figures in
mother-of-pearl ; the fourth, a helmet with small pieces of pearl-shell
representing collars around the necks of rattlesnakes; and the fifth is
a jaguar in the side of which are similar inlays. These masks are
described by Dr. Read in "Archseologia," Society of Antiquaries,
London, Vol. LIV, p. 383 ; in this volume the objects are shown in
color. Dr. Read communicates that the pearl jaguar seems to be of more
recent execution, but he believes the first four to be original. He is
not entirely sure that these objects contain the true mother-of-pearl,
the substance having changed so much as to make a decision doubtful
even if it were
1 Herrmann, "Mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley," pp. 92, 93.
