1896.] ^OO [Gushing. 



illustration was so decorated with incised lines as to generally resemble 

 the comparatively gigantic wooden object of the same general kind 

 shown above it. The very slight tenon-like projection at the lower end 

 of it was, however, grooved, as if for attachment by a cord. Plaiulj% 

 therefore, it was designed for suspension, and no doubt constituted an 

 amulet representative of the larger kind of object. The moderatelj^ 

 small, highly finished wooden figures of this kind, seemed also to have 

 been used more as portable paraphernalia — as batons or badges in dramatic 

 or dance ceremonials perhaps — than for jiermanent setting up or attach- 

 ment. That this may have been the case was indicated by the finding 

 of a "head-tablet" of the kind. It was fifteen inches in length by about 

 eight inches in width, although wider at the somewhat rounded top than 

 at the bottom. On the flatter, or what I have called the under side of the 

 lower portion or end, this tablet was hollowed to exactly fit the forehead, or 

 back of the head, while on the more convex side, it was figured by means 

 of painted lines, almost precisely as were the upper surftices of the small 

 wooden batons or minature carved tablets. My conclusion relative to its 

 character as a "head-tablet " was based, not only upon the fact that it was 

 thus hollowed as though to fit the head, but also upon the comparison of 

 its general outlines and those represented on its painted surface, with the 

 outlines and delineations on certain objects represented on the head- 

 dresses of human figures etched on shell gorgets found in the ancient 

 mounds of the Mississippi Valley. 



I admit that the significance of not only the smaller, but also of the 

 larger of these remarkable tablets must remain more or less enigmat- 

 ical ; yet, judged by their general resemblance to the gable-ornaments 

 upon the sacred houses and the houses of the dead of various Poly- 

 nesian peoples, and to corresponding sheet-copper objects of the 

 northwest coast, as well as to their obvious connection with the 

 tablets found by us, on which conventional representations of thigh 

 bones occurred, I was led to believe that at least all of the larger of 

 them were ancestral emblems ; that the smaller and more liighly finished 

 of them were, therefore, for ceremonial use, perhaps, in dramatic dances 

 of the ancestry, in which also such head-tablets as the one I have described 

 were used ; and that such amulets as the little one of stone here fig- 

 ured, were likewise similarly representative. It may be, however, that 

 while there is no question as to the symbolic and ceremonial nature of all 

 these things — as is indicated by the like conventional devices upon them 

 all, — nevertheless, the larger of them may have been used in other ways ; 

 as, for example, on the prows of canoes, or at the ends of small mortu- 

 ary structures — chests or the like — or they may have been set up to form 

 portions of altars. But in any one of these uses they might well have 

 served quite such a symbolic purpose as I have suggested ; for they were 

 obviously more or less animistic and totemic, and it is for this reason that 

 I have provisionally named the larger of them "Ancestral Tablets," 

 and look upon the smaller of them as having been used either as amu^ 



