REPRESENTATIONS OF FISHES, AQUATIC MAMMALS, ETC. 



211 



Many carvings of ivory, bone, and stone, in the shape of fishes, whales, 

 seals, etc., derived from Indians and Innuits of the Northwest Coast, are exhib- 

 ited in the National Museum. Some of these specimens probably represent 



FIG. 354. Stone-carving representing a cetacean. San Nicolas Island. (20426). 



charms, while others, perhaps, have a totemic or mythological significance ; not a 

 few may be nothing but trinkets. I have not at present sufficient data for a 

 proper characterization. 



FIG. 355. Stone-carving in the shape of a seal. San Nicolas Island. (20428). 



Clay Vessels. There are in the National Museum a few of the fish-shaped 

 vessels to which allusion was made. The most characteristic among these 

 objects, which were obtained from mounds and burial-grounds in the Mississippi 

 Valley, is represented in Fig. 356 on the following page. 



It was presented by General J. H. Devereux, with several other specimens 

 of pottery, which had been exhumed from a burial-site adjacent to the Missis- 

 sippi, nearly nineteen miles (measured with the stream) below Helena, in 

 Phillips County, Arkansas.* The object seen from above, as in the illustration, 



* For the following communication relative to the discovery of this burial-place and its character, I am 

 indebted to General Devereux : 



" The specimens were procured during the year 1859, and under the following circumstances, as related to me 

 by Mr. Jerome B. Pillow, a brother of General Gideon J. Pillow. Mr. Pillow's plantation was to be protected 

 by a levee, and he had undertaken to build it. 



" In constructing the levee across the two lakes, called Long Lake and Old Town Lake, a large quantity of 



