A Pre-Columbian Dinner 161 



the most expert of aboriginal coppersmiths 

 lived. Of course, the many small beads of 

 this metal occasionally found in Indian graves 

 in the Delaware Valley might have been made 

 of copper found near by, but large masses are 

 very seldom met with. 



Speaking of copper beads recalls the faft 

 that a necklace comprising more than one 

 hundred was recently found on the site of 

 an old Dutch trader's house, on an island in 

 the Delaware. They were of Indian manu- 

 facture, and had been in the fur trader's pos- 

 session, if we may judge from the facl: that 

 they were found with hundreds of other 

 relics that betokened not merely European, 

 but Dutch occupation of the spot. This 

 trader got into trouble and doubtless de- 

 served his summary taking off. 



It is not " a most absurd untruth," as was 

 stated not long ago in the Critic in a review 

 of a New York history, that the Indians were 

 " a people of taste and industry, and in morals 

 quite the peers of their Dutch neighbors." 

 They had just as keen a sense of right and 

 wrong. There never was a handful of colo- 

 nists in North America whose whole history 

 their descendants would care to have known. 

 / 14* 



