122 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



multitudinous erections should in all cases be made apparent. If the most 

 prominent and remarkable have been classified, and their single or associated 

 purpose elucidated, it is quite as much as can reasonably be required of an explorer. 



The labors of these gentlemen were specially rewarded by the number and 

 quality of the works of art obtained by them from the sacrificial and sepulchral 

 tumuli; and, what is of great importance, they established the principle of dis- 

 crimination between articles of European origin, or modern manufacture, which 

 have by some means been buried in and about the ancient works, and the true 

 relics of their builders. Many of the hypotheses that have confused in so remark- 

 able a degree the archrcology of the United States are due entirely to the careless- 

 ness and ignorance which in this particular have heretofore prevailed. 



The true relics of the mounds were found to be articles of pottery of delicate 

 material and graceful form, in the shape of vases, pipes, and moulded figures ; im- 

 plements and ornaments of copper, hammered without melting from the native 

 metal ; arrow-heads and spear-heads and various ornaments and implements of 

 stone, precisely similar to those of modern use ; strings of pearls, and beads of shells, 

 bone, ivory, and the claws of animals ; plates of mica, pieces of galena, and small 

 portions of silver, hammered thin and made to cover some of the smaller 

 ornaments ; and, with these, sculptured figures of animals and the human head, in 

 the form of pipes, wrought with great delicacy and spirit from some of the hardest 

 stones. The last-named are relics that imply a very considerable degree of art, and, 

 if believed to be the work of the people with whose remains they are found, would 

 tend greatly to increase the wonder that the art of sculpture among them was not 

 manifested in other objects and places. The fact that nearly all the finer specimens 

 of workmanship represent birds, or land and marine animals, belonging to a different 

 latitude, while the pearls, the knives of obsidian, the marine shells, and the copper, 

 equally testify to a distant though not extra-continental origin, may, however, 

 exclude these from being received as proofs of local industry and skill. Whether 

 they can be considered as evidences of commercial relations with remote places 

 and people, as suggested by Messrs. Squier and Davis, or as having been casually 

 obtained through intermediate agencies, must depend upon other circumstances 

 than their mere presence where they are found. 



The silver crosses, the glass beads, the plated and gilded ornaments, the iron 

 instruments, that have figured in so many speculations, are shown to be modern 

 deposits whose origin it is not difficult to trace; and the stone medal from the 

 Grave Creek mound, fancied to contain either Libyan or Runic characters, which 

 has excited so much discussion, is pronounced to be wholly unworthy of confidence 

 as a genuine relic. 



The account, in this volume, of the pictorial or emblematic earthworks of that 

 district which is chiefly included in the State of Wisconsin, was derived from papers 

 of Messrs. Richard C. and S. Taylor, published in the American Journal of Science 

 and Arts, and from a notice by Prof. John Locke, in his Report on the Mineral Lands 

 of the United Stales, presented to Congress in 1840. 



The account of the monuments of the Southern States is also compiled from the 



