674 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



were found overlying it, and saw tbe effect of time upon them I became 

 more than ever dubious of the high antiquity claimed for this matting. 

 I submitted it to Professor Mason, who has made a special study of the 

 basket-makers of antiquity.* He pronounced it at ouce to be a speci- 

 men of the common basket work of the Southern Indian, probably 

 Cherokee. As to its actual antiquity he could give no opinion. Those 

 Indians had made such plaited work ever since otir earliest knowledge 

 of them, and still continue it. He said one could purchase at the 

 present day in the market at New Orleans modern Indian baskets of 

 the same work and in every way similar. 



An examination of the record of the Smithsonian Institution devel- 

 oped the following facts bearing upon the subject of the antiquity of 

 this specimen : 



In the summer of 1866, not long after the receipt of this specimen of 

 matting from Mr. Oleu, Professor Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, directed, or requested, Prof. E, H. Hilgard to undertake a 

 geologic examination of the Louisiana salt region, the particular out- 

 cropping of which had been discovered in May, 1862, on this island of 

 Petit Anse. Professor Hilgard availed himself of all former publica- 

 tions, interested numerous scientific gentlemen with him, and made an 

 extensive geologic investigation, commencing at Yicksburg and extend- 

 ing down the Mississippi to its mouth, thence west up the Gulf coast 

 to Vermilion Bay, and finishing with the five islands located therein, 

 one of which was Petit Anse. The results of his investigations are pub- 

 lished in the Smithsonian "Contributions to Knowledge," Vol. XXIII, 

 and is No. 248 of the regular series. Of his conclusions as to th*^ geologic 

 formation of this country, or of this island, it is unnecessary to speak. 

 He does not mention or refer in any manner to the discovery of this 

 piece of basketry, which had been presented to the Museum only in the 

 May previous to his detail, and which one may suppose contributed 

 somewhat to the necessity for his investigation. The following para- 

 graph from his report, however, bears upon the subject (page 14). He 

 says : 



Up to the time of Dr. Goesstuann'.s visit (in November, 1866) all the borings and 

 p'ts which had reached the salt had been sunk in detrital material washed down 

 from the surrounding hills, and freqn ntly inclosing the v stiges of both animal and 

 human visits to the spot. Mastodon buffalo, deer, and other bones; Indian hatchets, 

 arrow-heads, and rush baskets, but above all an incredible quantity of pottery frag- 

 ments which have been extracted from the pits. The pottery fragments form at 

 some points veritable strata 3 to 6 inches thick; this is especially the case where Mr. 

 Dudley M. Avery found what appeared to have been a furnace for baking the ware 

 (a process very imperfectly performed), and near it three pots of successive sizes, 

 inside of each other. The pots must be presumed to have subserved the purpose of 

 salt-boiling; for although human handiwork has been found so close to the surface 

 of the salt as to render it probable that its existence in mass was once known, yet the 

 boiling process alone has been resorted to within even traditional times until the 

 discovery, at the bottom of a salt well, of the solid rock-salt. 



Smithsonian Eeport, 1884, pp. 5J91-306. 



