576 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



stages of finish, from the rough angular sections two or more inches 

 square, to the round polished complete disc two or three lines in thick- 

 ness and from half an inch to an inch in diameter — which a short time 

 ago was turned out of a low mound by the plow, with the skull and cer- 

 vical vertebrae of a female skeleton. In another low mound on the bluffs 

 the plow threw out, with a mass of chalky bones, a pint of small sea- 

 shells {Marginella aplcina), each pierced at the shoulder for the recep- 

 tion of a string to suspend them about the neck or hair. These beauti- 

 ful little shells are often found in our mounds, and must have been in 

 general use for personal adornment, or as a medium of exchange in the 

 primitive system of commerce and trade. The valves of several species 

 of fresh-water mollusks, especially of the JJnios and Anodontas, were 

 utilized as spoons and knives, and used for digging in sandy soil. Earely 

 we meet with ornaments cut from them. The hypothesis that our river 

 mollusks constituted a part of the food-supply of the Illinois Indians is 

 not sustained by the presence on our streams of shell heaps of any ex. 

 tent. Fish and game were abundant enough for subsistence at all times, 

 and muscles were in this latitude evidently not considered a luxury. 



The long bones of the deer, turkey, &c., were here as elsewhere fash- 

 ioned into awls, needles, fish-hooks, and punches, and made to do service 

 as handles for stone-tools and domestic utensils. The only ornament of 

 bone (if it was an ornament) the county has yet produced is a broad, 

 flat rib from the carapace of a very large snapping turtle, perforated 

 at each end and ground smooth and polished all over. 



Of objects carved in stone but few, besides the specimens I have specif- 

 ically mentioned, have come to light in this county. Of pipes, a small 

 " mound " pipe from Beardstown and the frog (of serpertine) are the only 

 fine specimens known. In our collection are the fox-head pipe and sev- 

 eral coarse, heavy affairs, without beauty or symmetry, which were un- 

 doubtedly used for smoking tobacco; and jiipes made of clay and burnt 

 are not uncommon. These latter objects were perhaps manufactured 

 after the arts of the whites had been learned, as they are fashioned in 

 the exact shape of common English clay pipes ; at any rate, their resem- 

 blance to the imported article is so striking as to place their claim to 

 high antiquity in serious doubt. As a rule, the objects carved in stone 

 by the stone-age denizens of this region, exhibit such flagrant deficiency 

 of taste or talent in design, and such low order of skill in execution, 

 that we must conclude the few elaborate and finely-finished specimens 

 now and then discovered here are importations from a distance, secured 

 either by barter or reprisals in war, and were made by a people of higher 

 intelligence and advancements in the arts. Of these exotic relics the 

 porphyry "pestles," the "mound," and serpentine pipes, the perforated 

 weapon of ribbon slate, a discoidal stone of milky quartz, and one of 

 those beautiful perforated " ceremonial "stones of rosy, variegated, trans- 

 lucent quartz now in our collection, constitute all of that class known 

 within the limits of the county. Agricultural flint implements, com- 



