APPENDIX : ELEPHANT PIPES AND INSCRIBED TABLETS. 263 



introduced into its valuable museum. During his long and disinter- 

 ested connection with our Academy, Mr. Pratt has been extensively 

 engaged in archa;ological research, and is thus well qualified to pass 

 judgment on the authenticity of these relics. In a valedictory address 

 as its President, delivered before the Academy at its annual meeting in 

 1881, Mr. Pratt thus refers to these questions: 



"Some doubts, of course, have been expressed regarding the genuineness of the 

 tablets, though not to any extent by competent and candid archjeologists, and we 

 feel no uneasiness on that account. The tablets have been sent to the Smithsonian 

 Institution for e.xamination, and were retained there and subjected to the most 

 thorough scrutiny for two months, during which time the National Academy held 

 its meeting there, and the heliotype plates of them were obtained under the direc- 

 tion of Prof. Baird himself. They were also exhibited throughout the sessions of 

 the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, last 

 August. Any author or other person who cared to inform himself of the facts 

 has always had ample opportunity to do so, and would at once see that the circum- 

 stances of the finding were such as utterly to preclude all possibility of fraud or 

 imposition. The evidence that they are coeval with the other relics — that is, that 

 they were inhumed with them, and before the mound was built — is ample and con- 

 clusive, and will be so considered by any unbiased man. No jirehistoric relic ever 

 found has better evidence to establish its genuineness than these, and not one sus- 

 picious circumstance in connection with them has been pointed out, nor can there 

 be. We shall confidently hope for and gladly welcome further discoveries, by 

 whomsoever made, tending to throw more light upon this still obscure and intensely 

 interesting problem of our earliest predecessors on this continent." * 



The late Joseph Duncan Putnam, who gave his young Hfe a martyr 

 to science, was at the date of this discovery Corresponding Secretary 

 of the Academy,- and in answer to a letter of incjuiry from Prof. 

 Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, addressed 

 to that gentleman a communication which is important as a very com- 

 plete contemporary account written by an officer of the Academy a 

 few days after the finding of the second elephant pipe, and hence is 

 given entire : 



"Office of J. D. Putnam, Corresponding Secretary \ 



Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, '- 



Davenport, Iowa, March 28th, 1880. ) 

 "Prof. S. F. Baird — 



'■'■Dear Sir: "Your favor of the 17th inst. duly received during my absence from 

 the city. It will give us pleasure to send you casts of the pipes referred to in my 

 previous letters as soon as we have them made; also of the elephant pipe found last 

 year. There is no doubt in our minds that these two pipes are intended to repre- 

 sent the elephant — at least it seems to require a good deal of imagination to make 

 them look like anything else. In the finding of this last pipe there were three wit- 



* Proceeding-s of Davenport Academy of Xatiinil Sciences, Vol. Til., p. 155. 



