The use of pearls by the aborigines of the territory now comprised in the United States is proven by their appearance in the mounds and certain graves of pre-Columbian date. This is of great interest in view of the unique system of burial and the great variety of objects buried with the pearls. It is evident from the quantities discovered in some of the mounds that a very great number of pearls, many of large size, must have been owned by these aborigines, and they were evidently quite expert in the art of drilling them. Pearls must have been freely used for ornamental purposes, and it is clear that many rivers in this region must have produced them in great numbers, when we consider that in all probability the mussels were taken only as they were required for food or for bait in fishing, and had probably reached their full growth.
It is not unlikely that pearls were used on this continent for a long period, and they may have been in use centuries before any employment was made of them in Europe. In the age of the mound-builders there were as many pearls in the possession of a single tribe of Indians as existed in any European court. We have no means of ascertaining the precise date of any of these burials, and there are no historical records relating to this region, such as were kept in Mexico as well as in Europe and Asia. No trace has been found of the employment of pearls, either for decoration or ornament, by the aborigines of Europe or Asia; either they did not use them or else the pearls have entirely passed away in the course of twenty or more centuries. We do know, however, that neither pearls nor Unio shells were used by any of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland or the adjacent countries.
Many eminent archæologists have investigated the finding and history of the pearls of the mound-builders of Ohio and Alabama, especially Squier and Davis, F. W. Putnam, Warren K. Moorehead, C. C. Jones, W. C. Mills, and Clarence B. Moore. The discoveries made up to 1890 were fully treated by one of the writers in several pamphlets (one of them, “Gems and Precious Stones of North America”).
It is not unlikely that the Indians of the Atlantic coast may have known of pearls from the common clam as well as from the edible oyster. The former may have often contained pearls weighing from fifty to one hundred grains each, as at that period the mollusks were permitted to attain their full growth, and perhaps were not eaten except when they were as small as little-neck clams; the larger ones were sought for the purple spot which held the muscle, and was used for wampum. We have no record of the finding of pearls in any graves north of Virginia, as the many graves opened in the past century have failed to reveal them, nor has the use of pearls been mentioned by any of the early writers. They may have been worn, but if so they have passed away or may have been mistaken for ashes if they had decrepitated.
The first English settlers found the Indians of the tidewater region of what now constitutes the Middle States using pearls quite freely and esteeming them among their favorite treasures and ornaments. Captain John Smith, and all the early chroniclers of the Virginia colony, have given many accounts of this aboriginal use of pearls.
In view of the general interest awakened by the tercentenary of the founding of Jamestown, and the exposition in commemoration thereof, the “American Anthropologist” devoted its first number for 1907 principally to topics relating to the Virginia Indians.[527] Among these articles is one of much interest by Mr. Charles C. Willoughby, of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts, dealing with the tribes occupying tidewater Virginia at the time of the first colonization, their habits and customs, their distribution, and their subsequent history of diminution and almost of extinction. These were a branch of the Algonquian stock, and extended as far south as the Neuse River in North Carolina. To the south and west they were hemmed in by tribes of Iroquoian and Siouan race, and on the north they were separated from other hostile Indians by the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The powerful confederacy under Powhatan comprised some thirty tribes or “provinces,” covering most of the tidewater region of Virginia proper. To the greater chiefs, John Smith states that tribute was paid, consisting of “skinnes, beads, copper, pearle, deere, turkies, wild beasts and corne.”[528] Many other references in this article confirm and illustrate this general statement, especially regarding pearls, both as to their use by the living and their deposit with the remains of the dead.
In the account given of the native clothing, the outer mantles are described, made usually of deerskin with the hair removed, and bordered with a fringe. These were often “couloured with some pretty work, ... beasts, fowle, tortayses, or such like imagery,”[529] or adorned with shells, white beads, copper ornaments, pearls, or the teeth of animals.[530] Strachey describes a wonderful cloak made of feather-work, belonging to an Indian princess, the wife of a deposed chief, Pipisco; with it she wore “pendants of great but imperfect couloured and worse drilled pearles, which she put into her eares,” besides a long necklace made of copper links.[531]
With regard to such ornaments, Mr. Willoughby says (p. 71) that “the ears of both sexes were pierced with great holes, the women commonly having three in each ear, in which were hung strings of bones, shell, and copper beads, copper pendants, and other ornaments. Captain Amidas met the wife of a chief who wore in her ears strings of pearl beads as large as ‘great pease’ which hung down to her middle.[532] The husband of this woman wore five or six copper pendants in each ear. It was a common custom for the men to wear a claw of a hawk, eagle, turkey, or bear, or even a live snake as an ear ornament.”
“Bracelets and neck ornaments of various kinds of beads were common. Beads of copper seem to have been most highly valued in the early colonial period. These were made of ‘shreeds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and wound up hollowe,’ and were sometimes strung alternately with pearls which were occasionally stained to render them more attractive.[533] Beads of polished bone or shell were strung into necklaces either alone or with perforated pearls or copper beads. Some of these chains were long enough to pass several times around the neck. Necklaces of such construction as to be easily identified were worn by messengers as a proof of good faith. Powhatan gave Sir Thomas Dale a pearl necklace, and requested that any messenger sent by Dale to him should wear it as a guaranty that the message was authentic.”[534]
“Pearls of various shapes and sizes were comparatively common, but symmetrical pearls of uniform size were more rare. Strachey writes of having seen ‘manie chaynes and braceletts (of pearls) worne by the people, and wee have found plentie of them in the sepulchers of their kings, though discoloured by burning the oysters in the fier, and deformed by grosse boring.’ One of Hariot’s companions obtained from the Indians about five thousand pearls, from which a sufficient number of good quality and of uniform size were obtained to make a ‘fayre chaine, which for their likenesse and uniformitie in roundnesse, orientness and pidenesse of many excellent colours, with equalitie in greatnesse, were verie fayre and rare.’[535]
“Those who have examined the thousands of pearls from the Ohio mounds, to be mentioned later, can readily understand these conditions. The pearl beads from the mounds vary in diameter from about an eighth of an inch to nearly an inch, the great majority being small and irregular, although there are many among them of good form and value. It is probable that most of the Virginia pearls were obtained from the fresh-water mussel (Unio)”; not unlikely from the common marine clam (Venus mercenaria), or the common oyster (Ostrea virginica).
As regards the burial of pearls with the dead and their use in religious rites, curious and quite full accounts are given by Strachey, Smith, Hariot, and Beverley.[536] There was a “temple,” also occupied as a residence by one or more priests, in the territory of every chief. This building was usually some eighteen or twenty feet wide, and varied in length from thirty to one hundred feet, with an entrance at the eastern end, and the western portion partitioned off with mats to form a sort of sanctuary or “chancel.” Within this were kept the dried bodies of deceased chiefs, and an image of the god, called Okee, made in the shape of a man, “all black, dressed with chaynes of perle.” Full descriptions of these idols and their manufacture are given by Hariot and Beverley, also of the process of preserving the remains of the chiefs.[537] After the body had been disemboweled, the skin was laid back and the flesh was cut away from the bones. When this operation was completed, the skeleton, held together by its ligaments, was again inclosed in the skin, and stuffed with white sand, or with “pearle, copper, beads, and such trash sowed in a skynne.”[538] It was then dressed in fine skins and adorned with all sorts of valuables, including strings of pearls and beads. The same kinds of treasures were also deposited in a basket at the feet of the mummy.
Captain Smith describes the temple of Powhatan, at Uttamussack, which was in charge of seven priests, and was held in great awe by “the salvages.” At a place called Orapaks, was also his treasure-house, fifty or sixty yards long, frequented only by priests, where he kept a great amount of skins, beads, pearls, and copper, stored up 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.”[539]
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 archæological 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.
According to Squier and Davis,[540] two quarts of pearls were originally deposited in one of these mounds. The writers consider that the pearls were probably derived from the fisheries in the southern waters, and they regard their presence in the Ohio mounds as a proof of “an extensive communication with southern and tropical regions and a migration from that direction.”
A number of pearls or pearl beads from the Ohio mounds and which formerly belonged to the Squier and Davis collection, are now in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury, England. According to a communication from Dr. H. P. Blackmore, director of the museum, these pearls, which originally formed five necklaces, have been much injured by the action of fire at the time the bodies of those interred in the mounds were burned. Mr. Blackmore considers that the greater part of the pearl beads are of mother-of-pearl cut from some large shell, made into a round shape and perforated, but, after very careful examination, he is of the opinion that about ten may be classed as natural pearls. Their present color is a dull, leaden gray, rather lighter than the “black pearl” of commerce. The size of these pearls or beads varies from four millimeters to twenty millimeters in diameter. One of the necklaces consists of thirty-three beads well graduated, but of a dead white color from the action of the earth.
A quarter of a century later, when the Centennial Exposition was in preparation, the Smithsonian Institution undertook the formation of a public exhibit illustrating American archæology, and engaged Prof. F. W. Putnam, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to open and examine some of the most remarkable of the mounds described by Squier and Davis. These explorations were continued for some years, partly for the government and partly for the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, and their results were exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. The mounds explored were chiefly in the valley of the Little Miami, and particularly those known as the Turner group.
A very important series of explorations was also carried on by Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, covering the years from 1887 to 1893, largely in preparation for the Columbian Exposition. These investigations were mainly in the Scioto valley, in the counties of Ross, Franklin, and Pickaway, Ohio. Among the most important results then obtained were those from the mounds of the “Porter” and “Hopewell” groups, in Ross County.
Since that time, much valuable work has been done by Mr. Moorehead and others, and particularly under the auspices of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society. The latest and most complete investigation was made for this society in 1903, by its curator, Prof. William C. Mills, in the Harness mound, seven miles north of Chillicothe, Ohio, near the Scioto River, in Ross County. This locality had been previously explored in part, by Professor Putnam in 1885, and Mr. Moorehead in 1896; it was now systematically examined down to the original surface at every point.
Squier and Davis divided these ancient monuments into four classes: (1) Altar mounds, which contain what appear to be altars, and are also called hearths, of stone or hardened clay; (2) Burial mounds, containing human bones; (3) Temple mounds, with neither altars nor bones, but seeming to have had some special religious significance; and (4) Anomalous mounds, including “mounds of observation” and others of mixed or uncertain character. The burials are found to be of two kinds, simple interment and cremation; and these are sometimes met with in the same mound.
This classification has been generally followed in describing these ancient structures, although the whole subject is obscure and difficult, from our ignorance of the purposes and conditions of their formation. In many of the mounds of the first two classes especially, not only have pearls been found, but quantities of interesting and remarkable objects, many of which have been brought from distant points, and prove clearly the existence of an extensive intertribal commerce at a remote period. Galena from Illinois and Wisconsin, mica from North Carolina, obsidian from beyond the Rocky Mountains, and sea-shells from the Gulf coast, are among these objects, and particularly native copper from Lake Superior, from which many articles were fashioned by hammering. Pearls are extremely abundant, and were at first supposed to have been brought from the coast, and may have been the pearls of the common clam and the common oyster, the pearls being found in opening the mollusks for food; but the recent development of pearl hunting in the western rivers, where the fresh-water mussels (Unios) are so abundant and produce such beautiful pearls, shows that these treasures were undoubtedly gathered, partly, if not wholly, in the region where the mounds exist. The enormous numbers found are, indeed, no source of surprise, as such quantities of pearls have been obtained, for over twenty years past, from the same regions. The mollusks are still abundant in all the streams of the Mississippi Valley, except where they have been reduced or exterminated by the reckless methods of pearl hunting employed where the “pearl fever” has prevailed.
It is quite possible that the fresh-water Unios were not sought for their pearls alone, but were also used as food, and perhaps as bait for fishing. They were evidently gathered in great quantities, as is shown by the old heaps of shells found along the banks of streams at many points; and doubtless there are multitudes of such heaps that have never been observed. They are known as far north as Idaho, as communicated by Dr. Robert N. Bell, State mineralogist, and they extend still farther north, as noted by Dr. Harlan I. Smith, in his “Preliminary Notes on the Archæology of the Yakima Valley.”[541] He says: “Small heaps of fresh-water clam-shells were examined, but these being only about five feet in diameter and as many inches in depth, are hardly to be compared to the immense shell-heaps of the coast.”
These Unio shell-heaps are frequent in the South, and some of the Spanish chroniclers of De Soto’s expedition in 1540–1541, describe the gathering and cooking of the mussels, and the finding of occasional pearls therein. The same writers also give glowing accounts of the pearls possessed by the natives. Some of these accounts may be exaggerated, but they cannot be wholly so. It would seem that some of the pearls may have come from marine shells, and others from those of the rivers and streams; but there are few pearl-producing shells on our own coasts, and it is not very likely that there was any trade or intercourse with the West Indian Islands, where marine pearls occur freely.
Albert H. Pickett, in his “History of Alabama,” refers to the accounts of De Soto’s historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, and holds that the pearls which he noted were evidently from the Unios of Alabama. “Heaps of mussel shells,” he says, “are now to be seen on our river banks wherever Indians used to live. They were much used by the ancient Indians for some purpose, and old warriors have informed me that their ancestors once used the shells to temper the clay with which they made their vessels. But as thousands of the shells lie banked up, some deep in the ground, we may also suppose that the Indians in De Soto’s time, everywhere in Alabama, obtained pearls from them. There can be no doubt about the quantity of pearls found in this State and Georgia in 1540, but they were of a coarser and more valueless kind than the Spaniards supposed. The Indians used to perforate them and string them around their necks and arms like beads.”[542]
The use of fragments of these shells in tempering the clay for pottery, alluded to in the preceding paragraph, is well known. Prof. Daniel S. Martin describes an old village site in South Carolina, near the Congaree River, a few miles south of the city of Columbia, where the ground had been plowed, and along the furrows the soil was gleaming with brilliant pearly fragments of Unio shells, intermingled with bits of pottery.
Mr. Clarence B. Moore discovered pearls pierced for stringing in 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.[543] 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.[544] 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 beads, some of which would correspond with the size and shape of the pearls mentioned by the Spaniards.”
Prof. Joseph Jones, whose investigations throw much valuable light upon the contents of the ancient tumuli of Tennessee, says: “I do not remember finding a genuine pearl in the many mounds which I have opened in the valleys of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Harpeth, and elsewhere. Many of the pearls described by the Spaniards were probably little else than polished beads cut out of large sea-shells and from the thicker portions of fresh-water mussels, and prepared so as to resemble pearls. I have examined thousands of these, and they all present a laminated structure, as if carved out of thick shells and sea conchs.” This point will be referred to again.
Dr. Charles Rau[545] writes: “I learned from Dr. Samuel G. Bristow, who was a surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland during the Civil War, that mussels of the Tennessee River were occasionally eaten ‘as a change’ by the soldiers of that corps, and pronounced no bad article of diet. Shells of the Unio are sometimes found in Indian graves, where they had been deposited with the dead, to serve as food during the journey to the land of spirits.”
Dr. Brinton saw on the Tennessee River and its tributaries numerous shell-heaps consisting almost exclusively of the Unio virginianus (Lamarck). In every instance he found shell-heaps close to the water-courses, on the rich alluvial bottom-land. He says: “The mollusks had evidently been opened by placing them on a fire. The Tennessee mussel is margaritiferous, and there is no doubt but that it was from this species that the early tribes obtained the hoards of pearls which the historian of De Soto’s exploration estimated by bushels, and which were so much prized as ornaments.”[546]
A source has recently been pointed out whence small pearls, and perhaps some fine specimens, could have been obtained by the Indians of Florida, and in considerable quantities. In the Unios of some of the fresh-water lakes of that State, there were found not less than 3000 pearls, most of them small, but many large enough to be perforated and worn as beads. From one Unio there were taken eighty-four seed-pearls; from another, fifty; from a third, twenty, and from several, ten or twelve each. The examinations were chiefly confined to Lake Griffin and its vicinity. It is said that upon one of the isles in Lake Okeechobee are the remains of an old pearl fishery, and it is proposed to open the shells of this lake, which are large, in hopes of finding pearls of superior size and quality.
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.[547] 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 undrilled, is beyond question.
The same fact comes to view, however, in these various accounts, that has been alluded to already, viz., 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 to understand that they received them in exchange for their calumets from nations inhabiting the coast of the great lake to the southward, which I take to be the Gulph of Florida.”[548]
The statement here made, that the Indians perforated their pearls only “with fire,” evidently refers to the use of a heated copper wire, or point, as mentioned by Pickett and others of the early explorers. This point is of importance, as apparently indicating a marked difference between the Indians met with by the first European visitors, and the mound-building people of an earlier time, among whom the perforation was made with small stone drills. On this point, a recent letter from Prof. Wm. C. Mills, who has conducted the very full exploration of the Harness mound in Ohio, is of interest. He describes the small and carefully-wrought flint drills, which he found, and believes to have been made and used for this purpose. In size and form they answer all requirements; they are delicate little implements, somewhat T-shaped or gimlet-shaped, an inch and a quarter long; the narrow boring part is about an inch in length and tapers from one eighth of an inch to quite a fine point; the wider upper end is abruptly expanded into the transverse handle, which is about a quarter of an inch thick, i.e., lengthwise of the instrument, and half an inch in span, i.e., across, so as to give a good hold for the fingers to rotate the drill, just as in an ordinary gimlet.
Passing now to the actual discoveries of pearls in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, these will be reviewed in the order of the successive explorations in which they were made known. As already stated, the only region where any large amounts have been encountered, is that of the Scioto and Miami valleys in Ohio. Even here, pearls are found only at certain points, and though the numbers are great, the graves which contain them are few. They were apparently buried only with the remains of individuals of especial distinction, probably either chiefs or eminent medicine men. The accounts of recent explorations in these mounds bring to mind very forcibly the statement before cited from Captain John Smith, as to Powhatan’s treasure-house, where all his most valued articles, including pearls, were collected and kept, in preparation for his death and burial. Pearls appear also to have been used only by the more cultured tribes, and were kept in the larger and more prosperous communities exclusively. They are confined to the great “mound groups,” and are not found in isolated mounds. The tumuli of northern Ohio, the hill mounds, and the village sites along the smaller streams, have yielded practically none.
According to the manner of burial, the pearls vary greatly in their present condition. Where they have been placed with cremated bodies, they are, of course, much damaged, being blackened and largely decomposed. Otherwise, although injured in color and luster, the mere fact of burial in the ground has not entirely ruined them. They are generally perforated, so as to be strung or attached to garments, and traces of both these methods of use are sometimes clearly shown.
The term “pearl beads,” often employed by writers, is uncertain in meaning; as it may refer either to actual pearls, bored so as to be strung, or to imitations thereof made from pearly shell. With regard to this point, although such quantities have been obtained, there seems to have been very little close examination as to their structure, which would at once indicate the facts, according as the minute layers of the pearly material are concentric or not. The only distinct testimony is that we have cited above from Prof. Joseph Jones,[549] who states that he has examined large numbers, and found them to be apparently cut from shells. He makes the suggestion that they may have been carved from the thicker portions of the fresh-water Unios. This is not only probable, but would go far to solve the mystery of the enormous numbers found, as compared with anything known of the yield of genuine pearls by these mollusks, even with all the pearl hunting of recent years. An interesting fact bearing directly on this question is the discovery in the Taylor mound, at Oregonia, Warren County, Ohio, of several Unio shells in which had been made a circular hole, two thirds of an inch in diameter, either for some ornamental use of the shell or to extract pieces to be shaped into beads. These may have been made in either of two ways. Firstly, by breaking pieces of the shell from one of the valves, as a lapidary “roughs out” a piece of gem material before he begins to grind it into shape; or, secondly, by cutting out a circular disk of shell by means of a hollow copper drill or a hollow reed, just as they perforated hard pieces of quartz or granite for pipes, or as they trephined circular disks from the skulls. Decorated disks of Unio shell were also found in the same mound. If the ancient people made beads in this manner, there is little difficulty in accounting for the quantities described, especially in connection with the evident gathering of Unios on a large scale, as shown by the widely distributed shell-heaps already described. They certainly did make beads from various marine shells, and these are found with the pearl beads in many of the mounds, as particularly noted by Professor Jones, cited above, and by others.
In the recent exploration of the Harness mound, by Professor Mills, a very curious discovery was made of imitation pearls of a kind never before met with; these were made of clay, modeled apparently after the larger natural pearls associated with them, and after being baked hard, had been “covered with a flexible mica,” so as to resemble pearls.[550] The mica was a silvery mica that may have been burned and would pulverize into a gray powder with a pearly luster, as almost all micas are too resilient to be attached in any other way.
Taking up now the history of pearl discovery in the mounds, the first definite record goes back to about 1844, when perforated pearls were found by Dr. Edwin H. Davis[551] on the hearths of five distinct groups of mounds in Ohio, and sometimes in such abundance that they could be gathered by the hundred. They were generally of irregular form, mostly pear-shaped, though perfectly round ones were also found among them. The smaller specimens measured about one fourth of an inch in diameter, but the largest had a diameter of three quarters of an inch.
The next great discovery of these Unio pearls was in the Porter group of mounds, in the Little Miami Valley, explored by Prof. Frederick W. Putnam, and Dr. Charles L. Metz, who procured over 60,000 pearls, nearly two bushels, drilled and undrilled, undoubtedly of Unio origin; all of them, however, decayed or much altered, and of no commercial value. In 1884 these scientists examined the Marriott mound, where they found nearly one hundred Unio shells, and among other objects of special interest six canine teeth of bears, that were perforated by a lateral hole near the edge at the point of greatest curvature of the root, so that by passing a cord through this, the tooth could be fastened to any object or worn as an ornament. Two of these teeth had a hole bored through near the end of the root on the side opposite the lateral perforation, and the hole countersunk in order to receive a large spherical pearl, about three eighths of an inch in diameter. When the teeth were found, the pearls were in place, although chalky from decay. Upward of 250 pearl beads were found here, concerning which they say: “The pearl beads found in the several positions mentioned are natural pearls, probably obtained from the several species of Unios in the Ohio rivers. In size they vary from one tenth of an inch to over half an inch in diameter, and many are spherical. They are neatly drilled, and the larger from opposite sides. These pearls are now chalky, and crumble on handling, but when fresh they would have formed brilliant necklaces and pendants.”[552]