308 



MOUND EXPLORATIONS. 



That tlinse plates are not wholly the work of the ludiau.s fouml iu- 

 habitiiig the soiitheru sections of the United States, or of their direct 

 ancestors, is admitted. That they were not made liy an aboriginal 

 artisan of Central America or Mexico of aute-Columhian times, I think 

 is probable if not from the designs themselves, from the apparent evi- 

 dence that the work was done in part with hard metallic tools. 



(2) Plates like those of this collection have been fonnd, so far as 1 can 

 ascertain, only in northern Georgia and northern and southern Illinois. 

 The bird figure represented in Fig. 192, obtained by Maj. Powell, 

 Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, from a mound near Peoria, 

 Illinois, is introduced here for comparison with the bird figures found 

 in the Etowah mound. 



Fig. 191.— r.ust from Etowah iuoiind.s 



Another was obtained from an ordinary stone grave in Union 

 county, Illinois, by Mr. Thing, while engaged by the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology. From a similar grave at the same place he also obtained the 

 plate represented in Fig. So. Fragments of another similar plate were 

 taken by Mr. Earlefrom a stone grave in a mound in Alexander county, 

 Illinois. All these specimens were received by the Bureau of Ethnol- 

 ogy, and are now in the National Museum. 



I can not enter at present into a discussion of the questions raised by 

 the discovery of these engi-aved shells, nor is it necessary that I should 

 do so, as Mr. W. H. Holmes has discussed somewhat fully these de- 

 signs in the Second Annual Beport of the Bureau of Ethnology and 

 I have ventured in "The Story of a Mound of the Shawnees in pre- 



