904 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



finger in length, ten or twelve together on a string, which they wear about 

 their necks. Their collars they wear about their bodies like bandoleers, 

 a handful broad, all hollow pieces like the other, but somewhat shorter, 

 four hundred pieces in a collar, very fine and evenly set together. Be- 

 sides these they have large drinking-cups made like skulls, and other 

 thin plates of copper much like our boar spear blades, all which they 

 so little esteem, as they offered their fairest collars or chains for a knife 

 or such like trifle, but we seemed little to regard it. Yet I was desirous 

 to understand where they had such store of this metal, and made signs 

 to one of them with whom I was very familiar, who, taking a piece of 

 copper in his hand, made a hole with his finger in the ground and withal 

 pointed to the main from whence they came." 



With a knowledge of this custom of the Indians, that is, of stringing 

 tubes of copper or brass in the form of wide belts and wearing them 

 about the waist, the discovery of such a belt on the skeleton at Fall 

 River buried in other respects like any Indian (with the exception of the 

 breast plate) need not seem so strange, especially when we find that, 

 brass and copper were quite abundant among them at an early date, and 

 one other Indian at least had come into possession of a brass breast- 

 plate. 



Before the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod it is certain that the Indians 

 there had killed three Englishmen, and killed or retained as slaves the 

 whole ship's crew of a French vessel which landed there in distress. 

 This they did for the sake of plunder, and very probably some copper 

 or brass came into their possession at these times. Granting, then, that 

 the Indian whose skeleton was found at Centreville did not engage in 

 successful war with the colonists, or get the brass breast-plate from them 

 by trade, it is still possible for him to have obtained it, or the material 

 for it, at a still earlier date from these unlucky explorers. 



An account of the burial customs of the Indians on Cape Cod would 

 be imperfect without reference at least being made to the description of 

 an Indian burying ground discovered by the Pilgrims while exploring 

 on Cape Cod before the settlement at Plymouth. This account may be 

 found under the history of Gov. John Carver, in a book compiled by J. 

 B. Moore, entitled " Governors of Kew Plymouth and Massachusetts 

 Bay." 



The place where Governor Carver and " nine of his principal men, 

 well armed," landed after leaving the Mayflower and rounding the point 

 off Wellfleet Harbor, was probably on Indian Keck, where, it will be 

 seen by consulting the map, many Indian shell heaps may now be found. 

 On the shore Carver and his men saw ten or twelve Indians engaged 

 in cutting up a large fish, but found it difficult to go directly to the 

 shore where the fish lay, on account of the shoal water. The Indians 

 ran off, taking with them all the fish they could carry. The shores of 

 the shallow bay or cove in which they landed were almost lined with 

 the remains of large fishes like that which the Indians had cut up. The 



