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THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 571 
sometimes overlaid copper with it,* yet the evidence of its use is rela- 
tively so slight as scarcely to merit recognition. Upon these points all 
archeologists are agreed; and when therefore we are told, upon 
authority that has never been questioned, that implements of iron and 
silver were found with the charred bones of a person, over whose re- 
mains a most elaborate mound had been erected, it is proof positive of 
the recent origin of this particular mound, and inferentially of the 
group of works of which it formed a component part. There is no es 
caping this conclusion except upon the theory that the people who 
erected these works, supposing them to have belonged to a different 
race from the Indians, were acquainted with the use of iron and silver; 
and to admit this is virtually to re-write the archeology of the Missis- 
sippi Valley. 
Nor is this the only instance in which objects of European manufae- 
ture have been found under such circumstances as to indicate that they 
were used by the people who found shelter behind these earthen walls. 
In Tennessee, near Murfreesboro,t similar discoveries have been made, 
* “One of them had hanging about his neck a reund plate of red copper, well pol- 
ished, with a small one of silver hung in the middle of it; and on his ears a small 
plate of copper, with which they wipe the sweat away from their bodies:” Ribault 
(1562), in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, p. 178: New York, 1875. Both Ribault and 
Laudonnitre make repeated mention of silver and even gold, but the latter writer 
(Hakluyt, vol. 111,°p. 869) tells us that it is ‘‘ gotten out of the shippes that are lost 
upon the coast, as I have understood, by thesauages themselues.” Hariot (Hakluyt, 
vol. 111, p. 827: London, 1810), speaks of ‘‘two small pieces of siluer grosly beaten 
- - - hanging in the ears ofa Wiroans; - - - of whom, through inquiry, - - - 
I learned that it had come to his hands from the same place or neere, where I after 
understood the copper was made, and the white grainesof metall found. The afore- 
sayd copper we also found by tryall to holde siluer.” In this connection the copper 
“)osses overlaid with a thick plate of silver,” found by Dr. Hildreth in a mound 
at Marietta, Ohio, becomes of interest. Judge Force, to whom I have so often had 
occasion to refer, examined one of these specimens, and tells us (To what Race did 
the Mound-builders Belong, p. 49), that ‘it is native copper hammered into shape.” 
He also adds that ‘‘in the Lake Superior mines silver is found in connection with 
the copper, and the miners there now, taking advantage of good specimens, hammer 
them into rings, with the silver on the exterior surface, making copper rings, silver- 
plated by nature, precisely as the Mound-builder artisan did who made the boss at 
Marietta,” and we may add, as the Florida Indian did, who made the ornament 
spoken of by Ribault. In another mound at Marietta, half a mile east of the earth- 
works, was found a silver cup, evidently not of Indian workmanship, which School- 
craft (Lead Mines of Missouri, p. 274: New York, 1819) describes. It belonged to 
a Mr. Hill, of Cahokia, and, according to that gentleman, had been brought to light 
by the gra'lual washing away of the mound by a small stream which ran at its base. 
tDans langle nord-ouest du comté de Franklin, au confluent de deux branches les 
plus méridionales du Duck, on voit les ruines d’un vieux fort indien, nommé Slone- 
Fort, qui couvre une étendue de trente-deuxacres. - - - Ala distance d’un demi- 
mille environ au nort et au nord-ouest, l’on rencontre deux tertres, dont lun a cent 
pieds de longueur et vingt-cing de hauteur sur vingt de largeur, et l’autre soixante 
pieds de longueur et vingt de hauteur sur dix-huit de largeur. On voit croitre sur 
les murs, comme sur les tertres, des arbres aussi grands que ceux des foréts voisines. 
On a découvert récemment dans un de ces tertres un sabre de deux pieds de long, qui 
