Gushing.] Oil) [Nov. 6, 



tling weights and netting bobbetts, their hurried finisli, their adaptabil- 

 ity to such uses and their numbers and the uniformity of many of tliem, 

 all indicated this. Others, no doubt, had served as fish-line weights. 

 Still, several of the more elaborate of them were not only decorated, but 

 were so beautifully shaped and so highly polished that they could have 

 been employed only as combined stretchers and ornaments or as insig- 

 nia of a highly valued kind. 



The remains of fringes and of elaborate tassels, made from finely spun 

 cords of the cotton-tree down — dyed, in one case green, in another 

 yellow — betokened high skill in such decorative employment of cord- 

 age. The remains, too, of what I regarded as bark head-dresses quite 

 similar to those of Northwest Coast Indians, were found. Associated 

 witli these, as well as independently, were numbers of hairpins, some 

 made of ivory, some of bone, to which beautiful, long flexible strips of 

 polished tortoise shell — that, alas, I could not preserve in their en- 

 tirety — had been attached. One pin had been carved at the upper end 

 with the representation of a rattlesnake's tail, precisely like those of 

 Cheyenne warriors ; another, with a long conical knob grooved or 

 hollowed for the attachment of plume cords. Collections of giant sea- 

 crab claws, still mottled with the red, brown, orange, yellow and 

 black colors of life, looked as though they had been used as fringe- 

 rattles and -ornaments combined, for the decoration of kilts. At all 

 events their resemblance to the pendants shown as attached to the loin- 

 clotli of a man, in one of the early paintings of Florida Indians pre- 

 served in the British Museum, was perfect. Here and there, bunches 

 of long, delicate, semi-translucent fish-spines indicated use either as 

 necklaces or wristlets ; but geuerall}^ such collection were strung out 

 in a way that led me to regard them as pike-, or shaft-barbs. 



Certain delicate plates of pinna-shell, and others of tortoise-shell, 

 square — though in some cases longer than broad — were pierced to facili- 

 tate attachment, and appeared to have been used as dress ornaments. 

 Still other similar plates of these various materials, as well as smaller, 

 shaped pieces of diff'ering forms, seemed to have been inlaid, for they 

 were worn only on one side, the outer, and a few retained traces of black 

 gum on the backs or unworn sides. 



Considerable collections or sets of somewhat more uniform tortoise- 

 I)one and pinna-shell plates, from an inch and a lialf to nearly three 

 inches square, were found closely bunched together, in two or three 

 separate places. None of them were perforated. Moreover, nearly all 

 were worn smooth on both faces, and especially around the edges, as 

 though by much handling. Hence it appeared that they had not been 

 used as dress ornaments, or for inlaying or overlaying. One charac- 

 teristic was notew<)rth3^ In each collection, or set, which consisted of 

 from twenty or more to forty or more pieces, a small i)roportion were 

 distinguished from the others by difterence in length or in material or 

 in surface treatment. In one lot of between forty and tiftv tortoise-bone 



