PAPERS RELATING TO AKTHROPOLOGY. 713 



similar to those used by savage races everywhere. The fiucling 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 

 mouncis habitually used copper implements and were the authors of all 

 the prehistoric mining upon Lake Superior. A writer recently remarked 

 in 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 all the copper relics found in the United 

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

 best authority in matters relating to American archieology, in an admira- 

 ble paper upon Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America,* says : "The 

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

 marked influence on tbe material development of the natives." ISTeither 

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

 as shown by the specimen adhering to the copper ax found in mound 

 No. 2, indicate any advance beyond the aborigines of tbe New World 

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

 Ancient Inhabitants of the 3Iississip2n 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 civihzed man, and that many of these fabrics (Fig. 10, c), 

 especially those made by the village Indians of the Lower Mississippi, 

 surpassed in quality any specimens yet taken from the mounds. 



Fragments 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 u])on prairies of Wisconsin. A tooth was found in 

 stratum overlapping a mound in Missouri.^ 



Buffalo. — Professor Sbaler^ says that the buffalo was not here in the 

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

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

 animal mounds of Wiscousin,^ and the teeth of the buflalo have been 



* Smitlvioman Report, 1872, p. 350. 



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

 ^Eighth Annual Report reahodi/ Museum, p. 45. 

 " Jmer. Naturalist, vol. 4, p. 159. 



* Smithsonian Report, 1871, p. 394. 



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



