Gushing.] tJ^* [Nov. 6, 



the first clear evidence thus far known to us, of that kind of personifica- 

 tion-transfer by means of tattoo or paint, with which primitive artists 

 seem ever to have sought to animate tlieir own particular utensils — food 

 and water vessels especially — and to thus relate them personally to 

 themselves. And I can safely say that a prolonged study of these col- 

 lections, so strikingly and unusually suggestive in this respect, would 

 throw more light upon primitive decorations, as being in the nature of 

 symbolic investures, not primarily of artistic and aesthetic expression, 

 than any others yet, so far as I am aware, gathered. 



There was a feature in connection with these Tarpon Springs and 

 Anclote burial-mounds, that was more specifically significant to me. All 

 of them were surrounded by what at first appeared to be moats. Exca- 

 vation made it evident, however, that in case of at least the Saft'ord and 

 Hope mounds, these encircling depressions were rather the borders of 

 artificial basins, which had been not only purposely, but also most 

 laboriously, hollowed out, and in the midst of which, it was clear, 

 the mounds had been built, not at once, but in stages, corresponding to 

 successive periods of interment ; for they were distinctly stratified, and 

 moreover the remains in the lowermost stratum occurred at a depth 

 greater than that of the muck-filled bottoms of the moat-like depressions 

 surrounding them. This lake-mound kind of burial seemed to indicate 

 survival of key -dweller modes of burial — hence its specific significance 

 to me. That is, I looked upon it as probably being a later, an inland 

 form of bone deposition in an enclosed water-, or lake-court — here imi- 

 tative, no doubt — such as I had examined at Ellis' Place on Sanybel 

 Island. Moreover, the "Hammocks" or inland shell-heaps or camp- 

 sites, associated with these burial-mounds of the Tarpon Springs and 

 Anclote region likewise possessed key-dweller features ; in the earth- 

 works, graded w^ays, artificial lakes or pond-holes, and canals usually 

 contained within or around them ; as though these, in turn, were survi- 

 vals of or were copied from key-dweller modes of settlement — the works 

 of successors or descendants of the key dwellers following out here in 

 the marshes of the mainland, their characteristic — and erstwhile neces- 

 sary — modes of building and settlement in the shallow seas. From all 

 this and from evidence of similar survival in art shown abundantly by 

 the collections we gathered from these mounds and camp-sites of the 

 northerly Gulf region, I believed that a bridge, alike in time and in art 

 and cultural development, might be established between the pristine 

 key dwellers of the South, as exemplified by their great sliell structures, 

 fish courts, mound terraces, and works in wood and shell, and the liis- 

 toric mound-building Indians not only of northern Florida, but also, pos- 

 sibly even of our nearer Southern States — as pictured by the early 

 chroniclers — who describe them as having been settled in lowland 

 villages clustering around mounds or pyramids of earth that were sur- 

 mounted by temples and otlicr public buildings, approached by canoe 

 channels and graded ways, provided with fish-ponds or lakes, and with 

 temples of the dead sequestered in nearby deep Ibrests or swamps. 



