246 ANCIENT M N U M K N T S . 



well exhibited, and the forehead finely moulded. The eyes are prominent and 

 open, and the lips full and rounded. Whether the head is encased in a sort of 

 hood, or whether the hair is platted across the forehead and down the sides of the 

 face, it is not easy to say. The knots observable at the top of the forehead, and 

 just back of the ears, may be designed to represent the manner in which the hair 

 was gathered or wound. The workmanship of this head is unsurpassed by any 

 specimen of ancient American art which has fallen under the notice of the authors, 

 not excepting the best productions of Mexico and Peru. The whole is smooth 

 and well polished. 



These heads are valuable as being the only ones taken Irom the mounds, the 

 ancient date of which is clearly established. In the same mounds in which they 

 were found, it has already been observed, were also found upwards of a hundred 

 miniature sculptures of animals, most of which are indigenous. The fidelity to 

 nature observed in the latter fully warrant us in believing that the sculptures of the 

 human heads discovered with them are also faithful copies from nature, and truly 

 display not only the characteristic features of the ancient race, but also their 

 method of wearing the hair, the style of their head-dresses, and the character and 

 mode of adjustment of a portion of their ornaments. This conclusion will appear the 

 more reasonable, when we come to observe the exactness displayed in the effigies 

 of animals. 



It is impossible to overlook the coincidence between the fillet of real pearls 

 displayed upon the forehead of the bead first described, and the similar range of 

 sculptured pearls upon the brow of the small statue described by Humboldt, and 

 denominated by him the " statue of an Aztec priestess."* The manner of its 

 adjustment is in both instances substantially the same, and indicates a common mode 

 of wearing those ornaments among both the mound-builders and the Mexicans. 

 The markings upon the faces of two of these sculptures may be taken as repre- 

 senting paint lines or some description of tattooing. We know that, among the 

 North American tribes, the custom of painting the face with every variety of color, 

 and ornamenting it with fantastic figures, was wide-spread and common. The 

 singular head-dresses observed in these figures bear little resemblance to those of 

 the Indians, so far as we know anything of them. The North Americans usually 

 allowed but a single tuft of hair to grow, which depended from the centre of the 

 scalp ; the hair of the women was allowed to fall loosely upon the shoulders, or 

 was simply clubbed behind. Plumes of feathers, or the dried skins of the heads 

 of certain animals, constituted about their only style of head-dress. That the 

 practice of wearing rings and pendants in the ears existed among the race of the 

 mounds may be inferred no less from these relics than from the character of some 

 of the ornaments which have been occasionally discovered. The practice was 

 almost universal among the hunter tribes and the Central American nations. 



In respect to the physiological characteristics exhibited by these relics, it need 

 only be observed that they do not ditier essentially from those of the great Ameri- 



* Rescaiihes, vol. i. p. 43. 



