Gushing.] 442 [Nov. 6, 



have written for the press, I cannot be held responsible for "head- 

 ings" or " editorial leaders, " — much less for comments thereon in the 

 press at large. 



But I would repeat that I think a close study of many objects in our 

 collection reveals decided trace of survival in art-types of a kind which 

 cannot be accounted for as well otherwise, as by supposing it to have 

 been derived, inherited remotely, I should say, from farther southern 

 regions — from South America, in all probability'. In my spoken address 

 I did little more than touch upon this important point, in order merely 

 to bring it before you in the proper connection, and I may not have 

 stated clearly enough that I did not think the key dwellers themselves, 

 or as a people, were wholly South American. I think, however, that 

 they may have been such in the very beginning ; that a South American 

 people, or that an intermediate sea-dwelling people derived thence, and 

 coming at last on the currents of the Caribbean Sea, to the region of these 

 keys — as indicated by my map — initiated, in this region, the practice of 

 the key building of which I found so many evidences. I have already 

 referred to the pointed paddle we found, which is both South, and 

 Central American, in type ; to the absence of bows, and the presence 

 of atlatls, which are likewise at home in those remoter regions, 

 more so than in these : and to the type of war club which prevails 

 down there, and of which, in particular, I would, even at the risk 

 of repetition, say a little more in this special connection. Let me 

 exhibit to you the actual specimen we found. It is, as I was at consid- 

 erable pains to show you, Maskokian in tj'pe, of the southern mounds ; 

 or, as Dr. Brintou has assured you, Choctaw, which is practically the 

 same thing. But the specimen I hold in mj- hand is an actual weapon, 

 not merely ceremonial, as were those of the Southern Indians, and it is 

 distinctively South American in type. It is not, save in semblance, 

 such as its parents were. It is wholly of wood, yet it does not represent 

 survival from a club of wood alone. It represents, if I am not mis- 

 taken, survival from a form of weapon like the double-bladed battle axe, 

 peculiar, originally, to South America — a form derived from a type of 

 stone-bladed implement nowhere represented in North America. I 

 here refer to the sliort, broad, and round-bitted, flat-backed celt- 

 blade, sharply notched at the sides near the butt, — not grooved as are 

 the axe blades of the United States, — which anciently prevailed all 

 through the Bolivian Highlands, in Peru, Ecuador and along the upper 

 reaches of the Amazon, and thence spread, no doubt, not only north- 

 wardly into the Isthmus, but also northeastwardly down the Amazon 

 and the Orinoco. These blades were set oppositeh', not into, but 

 a^(7t«8nhe sides of their club-like handles, and were attached thereto 

 by means of criss-cross bindings alternately passing through the right 

 notch of one blade, obliquelj' across the handle, and tlirough the left 

 notch of the other blade, then through the right notch of the second 

 blade, again across the ojiiiosite side of the liandlc, and tiirough the left 



