' 1896.] 375 [Gushing. 



blue and white — and incised, as on discs, stamps, or the ends of han- 

 dles, became perfectly evident to me as derived from the " navel 

 marks," or central involutes on the worked ends of univalvular shells ; 

 brt probably here, as in the Orient, they had already acquired the sig- 

 nificance of the human navel, and were thus mystic symbols of "the mid- 

 dle, " to be worn by priestly Commanders of the warriors. That the ear 

 buttons proper were badges, was indicated by the finding of larger num- 

 bers of common ear plugs ; round, and slightly rounded also at either end, 

 but grooved or rather hollowed around the middles. Although beauti- 

 fully fashioned, they had been finished with shark-tooth surface-hatch- 

 ing, in order to facilitate coating them with brilliant varnishes or pig- 

 ments. The largest of them may have been used as stretchers for ordi- 

 nary wear ; but the smaller and shorter of them were probably for ordi- 

 nary use, or use by women, and had taken the place of like, but more 

 primitive ornaments made from the vertebrae of sharks. Indeed a few 

 of these earlier forms made of vertebrae, were actually found. 



I could not quite determine what had been the use of certain 

 highly ornate flat wooden discs. They were too thin to have 

 been serviceable as ear' plugs, or as labrets. But from the fact 

 that they were so exquisitely incised with rosettes, or elaborately 

 involuted, obliquely hatched designs, and other figures — the two 

 faces difl^erent in each case — and that they corresponded in size to 

 the ear buttons and plugs, I came to regard them as stamps used in 

 impressing the gum-like pigments with which so many of these orna- 

 ments had been quite thickly coated, as also, perhaps, in the ornamen- 

 tation or stamping of other articles and materials now decomposed. Very 

 long and beautifully finished, curved plates of shell had been used 

 probably as ear ornaments or spikes, also ; since they exactly resembled 

 those depicted as worn transversely thrust through the ears, in some of 

 Le Moyne's drawings, of which representations I had never previously 

 understood the nature ; and many of the plummet-shaped pendants I 

 have before referred to, must have been used after the manner remarked 

 on in some of the old writers, as ear weights or stretchers, and some, 

 being very long, not only thuswise, but also as ear spikes for wear after 

 the manner of using the plates just described. While certain crude ex- 

 amples of these curious pendants had been used apparentlj'' as wattling 

 bobbets, still others, better shaped, had as certainly served as dress or gir- 

 dle pendants. On one of them, made from fine gray coral stone — in form 

 like a minute, narrow-necked, pointed flask — the attachments were so 

 completely preserved that the delicate cords, intricately and decora- 

 tively interlaced to and fro from the groove cord surrounding the neatly 

 turned rim, to the central knot over its small flat head, were still perfectly 

 visible, the whole having been coated with shining black gum or varnish. 

 I may add, however, that some of the cruder and heavier of these shell, 

 coral, and coral-stone plummets, must have served purely practical ends. 

 Not a few had almost unquestionably been used, as I have said, as wat- 



