138 ANIMAL CARVINGS. 



The identification of this sculpture as a toucan was doubtless due 

 less to any resemblance it bears to that bird than to another circum- 

 stance connected with it of a rather fanciful nature. As in the case of 

 several others, the bird is represented in the act of feeding, upon what 

 it would be diflicult to say. Certainly the four etchings across the base 

 of the pipe bear little resemblance to the human hand. Had they been 

 intended for fingers they would hardly have been made to extend over 

 the side of the pipe, an impossible position unless the back of the hand 

 be uppermost. Yet it was probably just this fancied resemblance to a 

 hand, out of which the bird is supposed to be feeding, that led to the 

 suggestion of the toucan. For, say Squier and Davis, p. 266 : 



In those districts (». e., Guitina aud Brazil) tbe toucan was almost tlie only bird the 

 aborigines attempted to domesticate. The fact that it is represented receiving its 

 food from a human hand would, under these circumstances, favor the conclusion that 

 the sculpture was designed to represent the toucan. 



Rather a slender thread one would think upon which to hang a theory 

 so far-reaching in its consequences. 



Nor was it necessary to go as far as Guiana and Brazil to find in- 

 stances of the domestication of wild fowl by aborigines. Among our 

 North American Indians it was a by no means uncommon practice to 

 capture and tame birds. Roger Williams, for instance, speaks of the 

 New England Indians keeping tame hawks about their dwellings " to 

 keep the little birds from their corn." (Williams's Key into the Lan- 

 guage of America, 1643, p. 220.) The Zunis and other Pueblo Indians 

 keep, and have kept from time immemorial, great uumbers of eagles and 

 hawks of every obtainable species, as also turkies, for the sake of the 

 feathers. The Dakotas and other western tribes keep eagles for the same 

 purpose. They also tame crows, which are fed from the hand, as well as 

 hawks and magpies. A case nearer in point is a reference in Lawson to 

 the Congarees of North Carolina. He says, "they are kind and affable, 

 and tame the cranes and storks of their savannas." (Lawson's History 

 of Carolina, j). 51.) And again (p. 53) ''these Congarees have an 

 abundance of storks and cranes in their savannas. They take them 

 before they can fly, and breed them as tame and familiar as a dung-hill 

 fowl. They had a tame crane at one of these cabins that was scarcely 

 less than six feet in height." 



So that even if the bird, as has been assumed by many writers, be 

 feeding from a human hand, of which fact there is no .sufficient evidence, 

 we are by no means on this account driven to the conclusion, as appears 

 to have been believed, that the sculpture could be no other than a toucan. 



As in the cas3 of the manatee, it has been thought well to introduce 

 a correct drawing of a toucan in order to afibrd opportunity for com- 

 parison of this very striking bird with its supposed representations 

 from the mounds. For this purpose the most northern representative 

 of tlie family has been selected as the one nearest the home of the 

 Moun d - Build ers. 



