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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



courage art. Such delicate and perishable ornaments need espe- 

 cial protection from dust and injury. Receptacles of some sort 

 must be provided, and usually sucli would themselves be dec- 

 orated. In buying war feathers from the Sacs and Foxes, we 

 found them kept in neatly made wooden boxes with slide covers. 

 These boxes were usually carved and painted. The New Zea- 

 lander for his choicest feathers made, with an infinity of toil and 

 pains, elegant carved boxes of hard green jade. 



Pendants have been used from an early date and are much 

 prized by barbarous people. Akin to them are all sorts of breast- 

 plates, brooches, etc. Wood describes the dibbi - dihhi of the 

 Australian. This is ordinarily fan-shaped and made of shell. 

 It is also, however, at times crescentic and nearly as large as a 

 cheese-plate. They are ornamented with drilled and engraved 

 designs. Very much like them are the shell gorgets that have 

 been found in the mounds of Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. 



They are among the finest 

 specimens of art from the 

 mounds. From two to five or 

 six inches in diameter, these 

 are disks, neatly carved from 

 shell. The upper surface is 

 concave and usually bears a 

 carved design, often conven- 

 tional but always well done — 

 a spider, a rattlesnake, com- 

 binations of circles, spirals, 

 and dots, a human figure, etc. 

 While speaking of ornaments 

 of this shape and size we may 

 refer to the salcalion of the 

 Sacs and Foxes. These are 

 still made by the native jew- 

 elers from German silver. 

 Those worn by men are pen- 

 dent ; those for women have 

 a pin for attachment, form- 

 These scikalion are ingeniously 

 made and are worn in great nuinbers — one little girl's dance- 

 waist bore two hundred of them. They are usually about an 

 inch and a half in size. Among our Iowa Indians these pin- 

 ning sakahon are only used by women, but Mrs. Harriet Maxwell 

 Converse has a great numlier of very small ones, of silver, not 

 more than a half-inch in diameter, which were formerly worn by 

 the famous Iroquois orator Red Jacket. Beads are highly prized. 

 The earliest were made of shell or stone, and later these were 



Fig. 7. — Nose Ornament. New Guinea, 



ing what is called a fibula. 



