nevertheless, my intention to give the comparative number of specimens of this class, but other duties have not yet afforded me time to examine the Smithsonian collections, nor the reports of the many other collections in the country in reference to this particular inquiry. If I may be permitted, however, to speak upon the strength of a general and comprehensive study of the copper question for nearly a year and a half and a personal examination of all the large collections of copper relics in the country, this class of specimens about equals in number, if it does not actually exceed, the aggregate of all other specimens of native copper that have been found in mounds. In this estimate I include only such specimens which can be safely regarded as of native copper; all that are positively European and all of a doubtful origin being excluded. As to the doubtful ones, neither a magnifying glass nor chemical tests have, as yet, succeeded in determining whether the metal is native or refined.

But the best assurance of the later fabrication of our copper specimens is to be found in the fact that a vast quantity are found upon the surface, particularly in the States bordering upon Lake Superior, while an extremely small percentage have come from the numerous mounds existing in the same territory. I examined, last summer, two hundred and thirty-one copper specimens in the possession of the Public Museum at Milwaukee and two hundred more in the cases of the Wisconsin Historical Society at Madison. Not one was found in a mound, but all were either picked up from the surface or turned up with the sod in the cultivation of the field. Now these specimens, more or less exposed as they were to the action of the air, bear scarcely any indications of greater decomposition than the specimens found deep in the mounds. How can this be if they antedate the advent of the whites? They are mostly, if not all, implements, and all have been shaped out of native copper by patient hammering, doubtless with the assistance in some cases of stone moulds. Some are of such shape as to give rise to the suspicion that the workman must have attempted an imitation of some tool or weapon which he had seen in the hands of the French pioneers. The resemblance of the knives and chisels to European ones is very marked, while several of the spear-heads are indeed close copies of the old-fashioned French pike which must have been carried in those days in establishing the Jesuit missions. In proof of this I saw last summer, in Illinois, one of these old iron pike-heads which had been taken from a mound near by. It had the same three-sided or beveled

feature, formed by a slight ridge running through the center of one side, which is so often seen in our spear-heads of native copper. Many of these spear-heads also have sockets and a perforation for a rivet. Now it is hard to realize how these two ideas of a socket and a hole for a rivet, if they are not imitations, can predominate, as they do, over the simpler form of a tang or notch and the customary Indian method of fastening; for the Indian's first impulse in handling copper would be to imitate the types of spear-heads that he had already fashioned in stone. Then, too, the imitation of these types in stone would have been the simplest forms in the fabrication of copper; and the simplest must, in the natural order of things, be the first that occurs to the uninfluenced native mind. That this suspicion is well founded is demonstrated by the discovery of one of these socket spear-heads in which a broken rivet remained. This rivet proved to be iron. The specimen was plowed up in a Wisconsin field, and is described by Dr. J. D. Butler in the American Antiquarian, vol. IV, p. 232.

Indian wares, we know, by successive barter or by appropriation by right of war, traversed a vast and extensive territory; yet it must be noted that there is no continental distribution of this class of copper implements such as is observable in other objects of aboriginal art. They seem confined almost strictly to the territory reached by French influence, for in this limited area they outnumber by a surprising majority the aggregate of all specimens of a similar class, mound or surface, found elsewhere in the country.

Whatever may be said concerning the antiquity of such of the Lake Superior mining pits as have been explored, it is scarcely probable, if there are as many as are reported, that they were all worked at the same time. Investigations, therefore, as to the age of those which are unexplored or concerning whose age no report has been made may show more recent abandonment, if we admit the force of the argument as to the age of those explored.

But even these explored ones, it seems, bear evidences of having been worked with European steel; for, according to the report of Col. Chas. W. Whittlesey, the wooden shovels found in the débris have handles which appear to be shaped with a knife, and both the skids and copper, in certain instances, appear to have had the application of a sharp axe or chisel. Then, too, the wooden shovels, so called, that were sound in the rubbish do not deviate in any particular from the paddles which the Chippewas used for their canoes,

except that they are worn obliquely upon the blade, this being the result of their being put to duty as shovels in the mines.

Valuable tstimony bearing upon the probability of these observations is furnished by Dr. P. R. Hoy, of Racine, Wis. This gentleman found in a grave in his State two crude pieces of mined copper together with two blue-glass beads of European make. These two lumps of copper had sharp angles and ridges, showing conclusively that they had been mined, for if they had been float copper they would have been more or less worn and rounded. But this is not all. Among other things associated with those two little European beads was also a copper lance-head, similar in type and fabrication to one gathered from the débris of the Keweenaw mines.

In the light of such facts as these, the question naturally arises, Were not the best part of the copper implements that have been found in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois fabricated since the advent of the French? It does not seem to have occurred to the writers who describe such specimens that in those remote, unsettled parts of the country the Chippewas and Winnebagos could have possessed and worked native copper for many years without the fact being generally known. That this was the case, even up to as late as the second decade of the present century, is shown by the following extract from a letter of Satterlee Clark, who was the Indian agent for the Winnebagos from 1828 to 1830:

"When I first came among the Winnebagos many of them had copper-headed weapons. Many of them carried lances headed with copper. Masses of virgin copper were often scattered about, but particularly in the sand upon the beach of the Wisconsin. This was so pure and soft that it was no trouble to shape it to suit them."

This letter confirms so well the view that has been herein presented that with it I can afford to close.

CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND STRANGE FREAKS OF THE

MOUND-BUILDERS.

BY PROF. CYRUS THOMAS.

The explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology have brought to light some curious customs and strange freaks of the Mound-Builders, a few of which we notice as possibly of interest to the readers of the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST.

The use of fire in connection with burial ceremonies has always been common among savage and semi-civilized people; it is therefore not surprising to find it playing a part in the mortuary customs of the Mound-Builders, yet some of the modes in which it was employed are so singular as to deserve special notice.

In several of the Ohio and West Virginia mounds, where the body buried was wrapped in bark, it appears that a layer of bark was first placed on the bottom of the grave or on the surface of the ground; then clean hickory ashes were sprinkled over this to the depth of one or two inches, the body deposited on these and covered with bark. In some cases the ashes were sprinkled down first.*

In a mound in East Tennessee, where the burials were in little cobble-stone vaults in the shape of bee-hives and the whole surrounded by a circular stone wall, the area within the wall was first covered over with charcoal, and the vaults covering the squatting skeletons built on this.

In a mound of North Carolina, heretofore described in the American Naturalist,† was found a stone heap covered to the depth of three or four inches with charcoal, in which were imbedded the bones of three skeletons which bore no indications of heat. An altar-shaped stone heap found in an Iowa mound had been subjected to a fierce heat, while the bones on it showed not the faintest traces of fire.

In a mound of Northern Illinois was a single skeleton; this was carefully covered from the feet to the waist with stone slabs placed

* See statement in Clark's Onondaga, Vol. I, p. 50.

† March, 1884.

over it so as to form a roof-shaped covering. Neither the stones nor that part of the body under them—including the right arm, which had been dislocated and placed by the side of the lower limbs bore any indication of fire, while the chest and head had been almost entirely consumed, the remnants being buried in coals and ashes. In a group of mounds in Northeastern Missouri the burials appear to have been made in this singular manner: The body, or more probably the bones, were partially burned and then with the ashes and wet clay formed into a mass and several of these masses placed in a heap, and the whole covered with stones, or with stones and earth intermingled, to form the mound.

In two instances the bones of the right arm were found stretched out at right angles to the body, imbedded in a line of ashes, though no other indications of fire were observed.

In two conical mounds of a Wisconsin group the burials, which were confined to a central column eight or ten feet in diameter, were made in this wise: First a layer of stones, then a layer of skeletons on these, over these dirt; then another layer of stones, and another layer of skeletons-the whole being covered with earth and stones. Something similar has, I believe, been observed in a Kentucky mound. A strange custom, which appears to have prevailed to a limited extent in Northeastern Missouri, was to place a layer of stones on the ground, on which the body was laid horizontally, the head resting on a large stone, other stones laid on the head, so that the skull was always found in a crushed condition.

In a large mound in West Virginia, which contained one of the so-called "clay altars" similar to those observed in the Ohio mounds, were found the evidences of a very singular burial, which can be attributed only to a sudden freak. Immediately over, but a little distance above, the "altar" were two large skeletons in a sitting posture, face to face, with their extended legs interlocked to the knees. Their arms were extended forward and slightly upward, as if, together, holding up a sandstone mortar which was between their faces. This stone, somewhat hemispherical in shape and two feet in diameter, was hollowed artificially in the shape of a shallow basin or mortar. It had been subjected to the action of fire until burned to a brick red. The cavity was filled with white ashes, containing small fragments of burned bones, probably animal; immediately over this, and of sufficient size to cover it, was a slab of bluish-gray limestone about three inches