THOMAS. } COPPER PLATES FROM ILLINOIS. 105 
to light one or two features which are anomalies in Mexican or Central 
American designs; as, for example, in Figs. 42 and 43, where the wings 
are represented as rising from the back of the shoulders, a fact alluded 
to by Mr. Holmes.!. Although we can find numerous figures of winged 
individuals in Mexican designs (they are unknown in Central Ameri- 
can), they always carry with them the idea that the individual is partly 
or completely clothed in the skin of the bird. This is partially carried 
out in our copper plate, as we see by the bird-bill over the head, the eye 
being that of the bird and not of the man. But when we come to the 
wings we at once see that the artist had in mind the angel Jigure, with 
wings arising from the back of the shoulders, an idea wholly foreign to 
Mexican art. It is further worthy of note in regard to these two plates 
that there is a combination of Central American and Mexican designs : 
the gracefu! limbs, and the ornaments of the arms, legs, waist, and top 
of the head are Central American, and the rest, with the exception 
possibly of what is carried in the right hand, are Mexican. 
That these plates are not the work of the Indians found inhabiting 
the southern sections of the United States, or of their direct ancestors, 
I freely concede. That they were not made by an aboriginal artisan of 
Central America or Mexico of ante-Columbian times, I think is evident, 
if not from the designs themselves, certainly from the indisputable evi- 
dence that the work was done with hard metallic tools. 
Second. Plates like those of this collection have only been found, so 
far as I can ascertain, in northern Georgia and northern and southern 
Illinois. The bird figure represented in Fig. 48 was obtained by Major 

Fic, 48.—Copper plate from Illinois mound, 
Powell, the director of the United States Geological Survey, from a 
mound near Peoria, Illinois. Another was obtained in Jackson County, 
Illinois, by Mr. Thing, from an ordinary stone grave. From another sim- 

' Science, April, 1884. 
