98 HarsJiberger. — Maize; 



The garden plots, so-called, of the mound-builders described 

 in earlier publications are of uncertain value. 1 Locke 2 states 

 that from the Cincinnati mounds was obtained " carbonized 

 maize, with even the cob, leaves and stalk of the plant." In 

 the Museum of Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania, is 

 some charred corn found in a mound in Portage County, Ohio, 

 together with celts, gorget, arrow-points, clay pipe, copper 

 beads and charcoal. Mr. Stewart Culin informs me that the 

 specimens are authentic and undoubtedly pre-Columbian. A 

 quantity of Indian corn and fragments of the cob with the 

 grain still in place, and all very much charred, was sent to 

 Lucien Carr by William P. Bales and Rev. S. B. Campbell, of 

 Rose Hill, Va. They were found by drifting into the face of 

 the southern wall of the central shaft of a mound about fifteen 

 inches, and were on a level with the bottom of that shaft 

 about eleven feet from the surface. 3 Cyrus Thomas 4 describes 

 the Etowah mound, on the Etowah River, a few miles south 

 of Cartersville, Bartow County, Ga. : "When the first white 

 man visited it, a stately forest covered the works, as well as 

 the area. 5 Although the Cherokees made use of it as a fort 

 against the Creeks, they always denied having any knowledge 

 of the race by whom the mound was constructed." 6 In the 

 refuse layer, west and east of the three large mounds, four 

 feet below the present surface, were found some partially 

 burned corn-cobs. They were in a little heap surrounded by 

 charcoal. Proudfit 7 states that in 1879 Mr. Stillman made an 



1 Peet, S. D., American Antiquarian, vn, 15. 



2 Locke, Trans. Amer. Assoc. Geol., 1, 231 ; Trans. Chicago Acad. Sci., 1, 242. 



3 Carr, Peabody Museum, 11, 80. 



4 Thomas, Cyrus, Amer. Anthropol., iv, 109, 237. 



5 Jones, C C, Antiquity Southern Indians, 139; First description, Amer. Journ- 

 Arts and Sci. 1, Ser. 1, 322 (1814). 



The studies of Dr. Seler are very significant in connection with the mounds of 

 Georgia and the Ohio valley. He analyzed with care the mode of wearing the head- 

 dress, the clothing and weapons represented on the copper work of the Etowah mound- 

 builders in Georgia, and compared them with the figures on the shells from the Ohio 

 mounds. He concludes from his careful study that the Etowah builders and the Ohio 

 artists were in all probability related, and that possibly the mound-builders and copper- 

 working tribes were destroyed or driven' to the sea-coast by the invasions of tribes [Iro- 

 quois and Algonquins] from the north and west, at a period not very remote from the 

 discovery of the continent. Seler, Globus, Bd. lxii, No 11; Science, xx, 260. See page 

 107. 



7 American Antiquarian, in, 278. 



