162 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 192 



Northwest Coast Indians that finger rmgs "were formerly made of 

 copper, bone, shell, or black slate and were ornamented with totemic 

 designs. Now silver has so generally displaced other materials that 

 the primitive types are rarely seen." 



Copper pendants in the form of flat crescents and rings have been 

 found archeologically in the territory of the southern Kwakiutl and 

 Coast Salish (Drucker, 1943, pp. 59, 122), and Borden (personal 

 communication) reports copper ornaments at Beach Grove and Marpole 

 (Eburne). 



The Tlingit also wore rings of copper and silver as ear ornaments. 



ORNAMENTAL BODKINS OR PINS 



There are two nicely made bone pins or bodkins. One from Old 

 Town I (fig. 19,/) is a slightly curved rod with blunt ends, 7.1 cm. 

 long and 0.4 cm. in diameter. Near one end is a tiny projection like 

 a blade. A small groove runs across this and around the shaft, as if 

 for the attachment of something, perhaps a feather. 



The second specimen (fig. 19, e), from Old Town II, is a pointed 

 bone pin, 13.9 cm. long, 0.8 by 0.6 cm. in diameter. The blunt end 

 is bound around with a copper band. Between this and a shallow 

 encircling groove in the middle, is a scalloped ridge pierced by seven 

 tiny holes, to which perhaps feathers had been attached. On the 

 side not visible in the illustration there is also a row of finely incised 

 chevrons. 



The ornamental bodkins may have been worn in the hair, or as ear 

 or nose pins, although we must admit that their function is unknown. 



Bone pins with an enlargement at one end and attached pendants 

 were among the ornaments worn in the nasal septmn by the Aleut 

 (Jochelson, 1925, fig. 95), the Chugach, and the Eskimo of the Alaska 

 Peninsula, but what were probably nose pins from Kachemak Bay 

 were short pegs with a groove about the middle. Both styles are 

 represented on Kodiak (de Laguna, 1934, p. 207; 1956, pp. 207-210; 

 Heizer, 1956, pi. 69, d-n). A broken bone pin with a T-shaped head 

 from Daxatkanada near Angoon may also have been a nose ornament 

 (de Laguna, 1960, pi. 10, k, p. 122). The Indians of the northern 

 Northwest Coast formerly wore "a bone or ivory stick or cylinder" 

 in the nose, and the Tlingit and Haida sometimes thrust a bone or 

 ivory peg with enlarged head through a hole in the ear. The ear pin 

 illustrated by Niblack (1890, fig. 12, a, p. 261) has a perforation 

 through the head as if something had once been suspended from it. 

 Bone pins as ear ornaments are reported sporadically from all the 

 major groups on the northern and central Northwest Coast except 

 the Haida, and bone pins for the nose are also widely distributed, 

 except that among the Tlingit and Haida they were worn only by 



