192 
XXVIII. ACCOUNT 
OF A STONE BUST, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN AN INDIAN GOD. 
Written A. D. 1790. 
By EZRA STILES, pv. pv. tu.p. 
President of Yale college. 
et 33 
THIS bust was found in East Hartford (Connecticut) where it tas 
been immemorially known ; and was deposited in the museum of Yale 
College in 1788. The annexed drawing, Fig. 14, is a good resemblance 
of the original. It is thirty one inches and a half high, and seventeen 
inches wide. Itis a hard, coarse grained stone, or white granite, not 
white indeed, like marble, but with a dark or greyish intermixture, 
leaving a whitish aspect predominant. The summitis the cap ofa 
Powaw, used to this day by the Powaw priests of the Six Nations: 
The excavations are rough, and the whole a huge piece of sculpture} 
but it is a real work of art, and undoubtedly Indian. What was its 
use, and especially whether it be an Idol, is problematical. This must 
be left to every one’s judgment or conjecture. I shall however men 
tion a circumstance, which inclines me to believe it to have been an In- 
dian god. 
The site or position was six miles east of Hartford ferry, at the bot 
tom of a declivity between two hills, and remained covered with for- 
est trees till about the year 1740; when, upon clearing up the land, 
the stone image was removed one hundred rods, and cast out into the 
road. The constant tradition has been, that it was anciently worship- 
ped by the Indians, who powawed before it. Powaws were still in 
full use in New England the beginning of the present century ; they 
