PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 713 



similar to those used by savage races everj'where. The fiDcling of 

 copper axes (Fig. 10), too, indicates no great advancement toward civ- 

 ilization, for there are more instances on record of articles of this metal 

 found in the hands of the Indians than in the mounds. The fact is, 

 but little copper has ever been found in the mounds, and it is absurd to 

 contend that the few specimens met with show that the builders of the 

 mounds habitually used copper implements and were the authors of all 

 the prehistoric mining upon Lake Superior. A writer recently remarked 

 ia the Virginia Gazette, that " the mounds and old grave-yards and camp 

 ing grounds of the prehistoric races of our country have been pretty 

 well ransacked, and so far aU the copper relics found in the United 

 States put together would not weigh half a ton." Dr. Charles Rau, the 

 best authority iu matters relating to American archaeology, in an admira- 

 ble paper upon Atieient Aboriginal Trade in Worth America,* says: "The 

 use of copper was comparatively limited, and cannot have exerted any 

 mai'ked influence on the material development of the natives." Neither 

 does the fact that some textile fabric was manufactured by these people, 

 as shown by the sj)ecimen adhering to the copper ax found in mound 

 ISo. 2, indicate any advance beyond the aborigines of the New World 

 at the date of the discovery. In a paper on The Textile Fabrics of the 

 Ancient Inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley, read before the American 

 Association at Boston last year, the author showed conclusively from 

 historical sources that textile fabrics of some character were manufact- 

 ured by the aborigines from the lakes to the Gulf at the period of first 

 contact with civilized man, and that many of these fabrics (Fig. 10, c), 

 ©specially those made by the village Indians of the Lower Mississippi, 

 suipassed in quality any specimens yet taken from the mounds. 



Fragmentii of bone, teeth, and horn from the mounds, the faithful 

 representation of animals left us in the pipes of the mound-builders, and 

 the immense animal mounds have enabled us partially to reconstruct 

 the fauna of the period of the builders of the mounds. A careful exami- 

 nation of recorded facts enables us to present the following list : 



Mastodon,{^) — Shown in sculptured pipes from Davenport mounds, 

 and upon a tablet from a mound in same vicinity.^ Represented in 

 immense bas-relief ui)on prairies of Wisconsin. A tooth was found in 

 stratum overlapping a mound in Missouri.^ 



Bnffalo. — Profess or -Shaler^ says that the buffalo was not here in the 

 time of the mound-builders, but the spinous processes of this animal 

 have been found in a mound in Dakota.* It is represented in the 

 animal mounds of Wisconsin,^ and the teeth of the buffalo have been 



* Smit1iH07iian Eeport, 1872, p. 350. 



' Proceedings Davenport Academy of Science, Vol. XI, Plate II. 

 *Eighfh Annual Eeport Peabody Museum, p. 45. 

 ^Amer. Naturalist, vol. 4, p. 159. 



* Smithsonian Eeport, 1871, p. 394. 



^Lajjliaiu's Antiquities of Wisconsin, p. 69, and Plate XLV, No. 1. 



