ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. 3G1 



contained fourteen skeletoUvS in a high state of decomposition, -which 

 were covered with a regular layer of mica plates. The latter were from 

 eight to ten inches in length, four or live inches wide, and from lialf an 

 inch to an inch in thickness. The quantity of mica thrown up from this 

 mound amounted to fifteen or twenty bushels.* 



During their arch geological investigations, Messrs. Squier and Davis 

 frequently found mica in the mounds, and they have given precise ac- 

 counts of their discoveries. In one of the sacrificial mounds near Chilli- 

 cothe, Ohio, they came upon a layer of round plates of silvery mica, 

 measuring from ten to twelve inches in diameter, which overlapped each 

 other like the tiles or slates on a roof, and were deposited in the shape 

 of a half-moon. The excavation laid bare more than one-half of this 

 crescent, which could not have measured less than twenty feet from 

 horn to horn. The greatest width (in the middle) was five feet. It has 

 been thought that the shape of this curious deposit of mica might be 

 suggestive of the religious views of the builders of the mound, and 

 imply a tendency to moon-worship. t Another mound not far from the 

 preceding one — both belonged to a group of twenty-three within an in- 

 closure — likewise contained mica.| The circular cavity of the altar in 

 this mound was filled with fine ashes intermixed with fragments of clay 

 vessels and some small convex copper discs. Over these contents of 

 the basin a layer of mica sheets, overlapping each other, was spread 

 like a cover, which, again, served as the basis for a heap of burned 

 human bones, probably belonging to a single person. § 



The authors of the ''Ancient Monuments'' also found occasionally in 

 the mounds ornaments made of thin sheets of mica, cut out very nently 

 and with great regularity in the shapes of scrolls, oval plates, and discs, 

 and pierced with small holes for suspension or attachment. They 

 doubtless were intended to embellish the dress of persons of distinction. |j 

 Dr. Davis has some of these ornaments which, fastened on black vel- 

 vet, almost might be taken for silver objects, the nsica of which they 

 are made being of the i^erfectly opaque kind. Ornamental plates of 

 mica, further, were met in the large Grave-Creek Mound, situated 

 twelve miles below Wheeling, in Western Virginia. This burial- 

 mound, which is one of the highest in the United States — it is seventy 

 feet high — was opened in 1S3S. Near one of the skeletons, one hun- 

 dred and fifty rather irregularly-shaped thin sheets of mica, from one 

 inch and a half to two inches in size, were collected. They were all 

 provided with two or more holes for stringing them together, and had 

 evidently formed a scarf or some other article of i)ersonal adornment.^ 



* Ancient Monuments, p. 72. 

 + Ancient Monuments, p. 154. 



t This earthwork, called " Mound City " by Squier and Davis, will be described in a sub- 

 sequent section. 



§ Ancient Monuments, p. 145. 



II Ancient Monuments, p. 155; representations on p. 240. 



U Schoolcraft, in: Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. I, p. 399. 



