FISH-HOOKS. 125 



Fig. 185. A bone fish-hook preserved in the collection of the Davenport 

 Academy of Natural Sciences. Mr. W. H. Pratt, Corresponding Secretary 

 and Curator of that association, had the kindness to send it to me for examina- 

 tion. The specimen is polished on both sides ; that not seen in the illustration 

 exhibits a portion of the marrow-cavity of the bone. The point is not very sharp, 

 and, owing to the curvature of the bone, not in the same plane with the shank, the 

 upper part of which shows some slight indentations for the attachment of the 

 line. I am informed by Mr. Pratt that this specimen was taken, together with 

 a bone awl, from a small clay mound on the Craighead farm, Mississippi County, 

 Arkansas, opposite the mouth of the Big Hatchie River. The mound was about 

 two feet high, and three feet below its surface the skeleton of a boy, about twelve 

 years old, the bone hook and awl, some shell beads, and a quantity of fish-bones 

 and turtle-shells were found. Mr. Pratt learned these details from Captain W. 

 P. Hall, a resident of Davenport, who presented the fish-hook to the Academy. 



Fig. 186 (on page 126). The original was found by Mr. F. H. Gushing, of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology. It is made of deer-bone, and beautifully polished, 

 especially at the point. The shank expands a little at the upper end where 

 there are some slight grooves. Viewed horizontally from the lower end, this 

 hook shows in a slight degree the cavity of the bone. It was discovered 

 in an accumulation of debris, eighteen inches below the surface, near the centre of 

 an old circular earthwork in the township of Shelby, Orleans County, New York. 

 With it, Mr. Gushing informs me, occurred various other remains, such as broken 

 bones of animals, rudely-ornamented pot-sherds, flint implements, awls, spatulae, 

 portions of weapons and ornaments of bone and deer-horn, shell and stone 

 beads, etc. 



Fig. 187 (on page 126) . A hook of larger size, remarkable for its straight base. 

 It shows the marrow-cavity of the bone on the side not exposed to view in the figure. 

 A slight contraction below the end of the shank allowed the line to be firmly tied 

 on. This apparently old specimen, of a yellowish-brown color, belongs to Dr. 

 John Sloan, Secretary of the Society of Natural History at New Albany, Indiana, 



short notice from a letter by Mr. Cox : 



"The cemetery is located in a dense wood of perhaps seventy-five or a hundred acres, which has been left 

 intact since white men took possession of the Miami country. The trees are very thick, from three to five feet in 

 diameter. So far as we have sounded, there are fifteen acres covered by these graves. We have exhumed about 

 seven hundred skeletons, and apparently the whole fifteen acres are covered with the same average number of 

 graves as the space we have opened. Thus the interments would reach the number of ten thousand. The graves 

 are about two and a half feet deep, and under them, running down through hard clay, are circular ash-pits, as we 

 call them, three feet in diameter, and from two to six feet in depth. These holes are filled with ashes and earth, 

 inclosing different kinds of stone and bone articles : pipes, axes, arrow-heads, deer and elk-horns, worked and 

 unworked, bone awls and needles, and fish-hooks and harpoon-heads of the same material. We have opened over 

 four hundred of these in the cemetery. From ordinary calculation of the growth of trees on the graves, we esti- 

 mate the trees to be from two to three hundred years old. How old the graves are, or the ash-pits, or for what 

 purpose the latter were made, we have no conjecture." 



