AMERICAN MUSEUMS 



51 



The supposed tropical animals carved by the mound 

 builders, such as the manatee and the parrot, are errors of 

 identification. There is, however, a curious carving repre- 



Fig. 23. 



senting some form of llama or camel found on the site of 

 a mound in Ohio.^ (Fig. 23, a.) Many carvings of animals, 



' The history of this remarkable piece of sculpture is as follows. 

 Mr. J. F. Snyder, M.D., purchased it along with a few other pre- 

 historic relics, flint arrow points, stone axes, &c. , of a typical back- 

 woodsman, who was migrating from Marion Co., Ohio, to the west, 

 with his family and household goods. The man was rough and un- 

 educated, and profoundly ignorant of archeology, but attached some 

 value to the specimens, partly because others did, but chiefly because 

 he had himself found them. He stated that he had ploughed up the 

 llama, together with many Indian bones, and two of the stone axes, 

 and some of the flints, from a low flat mound in his field, while pre- 

 paring the ground for corn-planting. He sold the specimens because 

 he needed money to prosecute his journey. These facts were com- 

 municated in a letter to myself from Dr. Snyder, in answer to an 

 inquiry as to the history of the "llama." There can, I think, be no 

 reasonable doubt of the genuineness of the find. A number of similar 

 objects have been found in Peru, and several of them are figured in 

 The U.S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere during the Years 1845-52, but none of these exactly correspond 

 with the Ohio specimen. It has been suggested that this relic was 

 brought to Florida by one of De Loto's men, who had obtained it in 

 Peru while engaged there under Pizarro, and that it reached Ohio 

 from Florida by Indian con({uest or by trade and barter. This purely 

 hypothetical explanation seems highly improbable and quite unneces- 

 sary. There are many proofs of widespread intercommunication among 

 most savages, and there can be no doubt that it existed among such 

 ancient and comparatively advanced peoples as the inhabitants of Peru 

 and Mexico and the mound builders. In an interesting paper published 

 in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, in 1886, 

 Mr. F. W. Putnam shows that jade ornaments have been found in a 

 mound in Michigan, and also in burial mounds in many localities in 

 Central America, which have evidently been formed by cutting up jade 

 celts ; and further, that the same material is nowhere found in situ in 

 America, while it exactly corresponds with Asiatic jade, some of the 

 specimens exactly matching the material of the jade celts of New 



E 2 



