156 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



have belonged to any savage chief of any savage tribe that the first European 

 invaders encountered. 



Mr. Schoolcraft has recorded his matured opinion that the antiquities of the 

 United States preserve a general parallelism with the condition of manners, customs, 

 and arts of the later tribes, and seldom or never rise above it (Hist, and Prosp., V. 

 p. 115); and, so far at least as minor works of art are concerned, his conclusion 

 appears to be well sustained. The stone axes, hatchets, gouges, chisels, arrow- 

 heads, and other implements from the mounds, cannot be distinguished from the 

 same articles that everywhere through the country have proved to be almost 

 identical in kind and in form. In pipes there is more variety, yet without much 

 departure from a few established patterns. It was upon these that the aborigines 

 expended their greatest ingenuity. From an Indian burial-place in Canada (where 

 there are no earthworks), have been taken shell-beads, pipes, and copper bracelets, 

 precisely like those from the Grave Creek mound, in connection with articles of Euro- 

 pean manufacture. (Schoolcraft, Hist, and Prosp., I. pp. 103-5. f From whatever 

 source or sources derived, copper seems to have been in use throughout all America. 

 On the Atlantic coasts it was noticed by all the early navigators from Nova Scotia 

 to Patagonia. (McCulloh's Researches, p. 85.) In New France, copper ornaments, 

 pipes, sea-shells, mica, and flint-stones, were objects of traffic. (Schoolcraft, Hist, 

 and Prosp., V. p. 108.) The excellence of the vases and terra-cottas of the Iro- 

 quois is attested to by Mr. Squier in his work on the antiquities of New York, even 

 as compared with the best antique specimens. The Natchez are known to have 

 made fine earthenware of various composition and much elegance of shape, which 

 is described by the Portuguese historian of De Soto's expedition, as differing little 

 from that of Portugal. 2 Indeed, the art of pottery, with unequal degrees of ex- 

 cellence, was practised by almost every tribe. Very large vessels were made by 

 the Natchez Indians for the collection of salt by evaporation from saline springs. 

 (McCulloh, p. 153.) There is nearly, if not quite, as much of spirit and power of 

 imitation to be seen in the carvings and mouldings in clay of recent native workman- 

 ship as in the specimens collected from the sacrificial mounds of the Scioto Valley; 

 and the origin of those ancient deposits is satisfactorily illustrated by modern 

 examples. 



Thus the Chippewas were accustomed, after the shedding of blood, to perform a 

 sacrifice of expiation, by throwing all their ornaments, pipes, &c, into a fire kindled 

 at some distance from their huts. (Hearne's Journey, pp. 201-6.) Winslow, in his 

 " Good News from New England," says, " The Nanohiggansets have a great spacious 

 house wherein only some few (that are, as we may term them, priests) come; thither 

 at certain known times, resort all their people, and offer almost all the riches they 

 have to their gods, as kettles, skins, hatchets, beads, knives, &c, all which are cast 

 by the priests into a great fire that they make in the midst of the house." They 



1 Some of the copper implements delineated by Messrs. Squier and Davis were from Canada. Smith. 

 Cont, I. p. 201. 



2 Conquest of Florida, Paris ed. 1685, p. 242. 



