230 ART IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. 



These circlets may be numerals. The design may be significant of 

 some rank, the badge of a secret order, or the totem of a clan. The 

 general arrangement of the figures upon the face of these disks sug- 

 gests an incipient calendar. 



These beads are doubtless American in origin, as nothing of a similar 

 form, so far as I can learn, occurs in European countries. The fact that 

 they are found in widely separated localities indicates that they were 

 probably used in trade since the advent of the whites. This is possibly 

 some form of bead held in high esteem by tribes of the Atlantic coast 

 when first encountered by the whites who have taken up its manufacture 

 for ijurnoses of trade. 



BEADS AS ORNAMENTS. 



I have already spoken casually of the use of beads for personal orna- 

 ment, but it will probably be better to enlarge a little upon the subject 

 at this point. 



Beads are generally found in the graves of ancient peoples in a loose 

 or disconnected state, the strings on which they were secured hav- 

 ing long since decayed. We cannot, therefore, with certainty, restore 

 the ancient necklaces and other composite ornaments ; but we can form 

 some idea of their character by a study of the objects of which they 

 were made and the positions held by these objects at the period of ex- 

 humation. Much can also be learned by a study of the ornaments of 

 modern peoples in similar stages of culture. 



As a rule, the combinations in the pendant ornaments of the ancient 

 American seem to have been quite simple. Being without glass, and 

 practically without metals, they had few of the resources of the modern 

 savage. Their tastes were simple and congruous, not having been dis- 

 turbed by the debasing influence of foreign innovation, which is the 

 cause of so much that is tawdry and incongruous in the art of modem 

 barbarians. 



A curious example of a modern necklace is given by Professor Halde- 

 man,' who had in his possession an Abyssinian necklace "composed of 

 European beads, cowries {Gyprea shell), a triangular plate of glass, two 

 small copper coins, small spheric brass buttons, cornelian, date-seeds, 

 numerous cloves pierced through the sides, a fragment of wood, a bit 

 of cane, and an Arab phylactery." 



Something can be learned of the practices of the ancient Americans 

 in the use of beads and pendant ornaments generally, by a study of the 

 remains of their paintings and sculptures — such, for instance, as may 

 be found in the Goldsborough manuscripts or the superb lithographs 

 of Waldeck, examples of which are given in Plate XLV. 



In a number of cases necklaces of the mound-builders have been 

 found upon the necks of skeletons, just as they were placed at the time 

 of burial. 



' Haldeman, in Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, Vol. VII, p. 263. 



