248 PICTOGRAPHS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 



in consequence of the finding of stones bearing markings somewhat resembling He- 

 brew letters, in 1he hope of finding other specimens of a like character. The. explo- 

 ration was supposed to have been entirely unproductive of such objects until Dr. 

 Bradner had fouud the engra\ ed stone, now exhibited, in a skull which had been given 

 to him. 



This was supplemented by au editorial note in No. 62 of the same 

 publication, page 467, as follows : 



A correspondent from Newark, Ohio, warns us that any inscribed stones said to 

 originate from that locality may be looked upon as spurious. Years ago certain par- 

 ties in that place made a business of manufacturing aud burying inscribed stones 

 and other objects in the autumn, and exhuming them the following spring in the 

 presence of innocent witnesses. Some of the parties to these frauds afterwards con- 

 fessed to them; and no such objects, except such as were spurious, have ever been 

 known from that region. 



The correspondent of Science probably remembered the operations of 

 David Wyrick, of Newark, who, to prove his theory that the Hebrews 

 were the mound-builders, discovered in 1860 a tablet bearing on one 

 side a truculent " likeness" of Moses with his name in Hebrew, and on 

 the other a Hebrew abridgment of the ten commandments. A Hebrew 

 bible afterwards found in Mr. Wyrick's private room threw some light 

 on the inscribed characters. 



As the business of making and selling archaeological frauds has be- 

 come so extensive in Egypt and Palestine, it can be no matter of sur- 

 prise that it has been attempted by the enterprising people of the 

 United States. The Bureau of Ethnology has discovered several centers 

 of that fraudulent industry. 



Without further pursuing the subject of mercenary frauds, an ex- 

 ample may be mentioned which was brought forth during the researches 

 of the present writer and his assistant, Dr. Hoffman, which is probably 

 as good a case of a modern antique in this line as can be presented. 

 Figure 208 is a copy of a drawing taken from an Ojibwa pipe-stem, ob- 

 tained by Dr. Hoffman from au officer of the United States Army, who had 

 procured it from an Indian in Saint Paul, Minnesota. On a later and 

 more minute examination, it appeared that the pipe-stem had been pur- 

 chased at a store in Saint Paul, which had furnished a large number of 

 similar objects, so large as to awaken suspicion that they were in the 

 course of daily manufacture. The figures aud characters on the pipe- 

 stem were drawn in colors. In the present figure, which is without 

 colors, the horizontal lines represent blue and the vertical red, accord- 

 ing to the heraldic scheme several times used in this paper. The out- 

 lines were drawn in a dark neutral tint, in some lines approaching black; 

 the triangular characters, representing lodges, beiug also in a neutral 

 tint, or an ashen hue, and approaching black in several instances. The 

 explanation of the figures, made before there was any suspicion of their 

 real character, is as follows: 



The first figure is that of a bear, representing the individual to whom 

 the record pertains. The three hearts above the line, according to au 



