CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS, BLACK WARRIOR RIVER. 147 
native carbonate; therefore we cannot determine chemically whether or not the 
paint on the dise is European white-lead. | 
It is out of the question to suppose that aborigines manufactured white-lead 
from the sulphide ore, the process being too complicated, necessitating, as it does, 
the reduction of the sulphide ore to metallic lead and the production of the carbo- 
nate paint from the metal. Therefore, as to the provenance of this paint we have 
three hypotheses : 
1. That the paint was made by Europeans. 
2. That the paint is carbonate of lead scraped by the aborigines from masses 
of galena. 
3. That the paint, originally of silver color, was ground from masses of galena 
and that this finely-ground lead sulphide, during long lapse of time in the mounds, 
became the carbonate. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that in very 
many cases we have found masses of galena in the mounds presenting facets pro- 
duced by rubbing, and in some cases hollows probably made in the same way. 
Doctor Keller, however, is of opinion that paint made in this way would show, at 
the present time, glittering particles of galena that had not undergone change. 
As the result of our investigations, we believe the foregoing to be the only 
ways of accounting for the presence of white-lead in the mounds. In view of the 
fact that no object surely of European provenance was found in the mounds or 
cemeteries of Moundville, and the knowledge that the aborigines had the material 
at hand to manufacture a lead paint with the aid of bear's grease, it seems conclu- 
sive to us that the paint on the dises and slabs is purely of aboriginal origin. 
The universal presence of paint upon these dises and slabs seems to offer a 
clue to the purpose for which they were used, and, until a better suggestion is 
offered, we shall consider them palettes for the mixing of paint. 
Beneath this disc in Mound € were three vessels, two badly crushed (Vessels 
Nos. 5 and 4), the third (Vessel No. 5), with a handle broken and missing; having 
an ineised scroll decoration of a pattern to be figured several times in other parts 
of this report 
Vessel No. 3, when pieced together, proved to be a broad-mouthed water-bottle 
decorated with a kind of incised meander in a cross-hatched field (Fig. 20). 
Vessel No. 4, repaired and partly restored (Fig. 21), has around the body eight 
incised open hands alternately pointing upward and downward. On each hand is 
an open eye. Part of this design is shown in diagram in Fig. 22. 
Thirty inches from the surface were friable fragments of sheet-copper corroded 
through and through. 
Many shell beads and bits of sheet-copper lay with a fragment of a tibia, about 
3 feet from the surface. 
A skeleton at full length, about 3 feet down, had on one side of the skull a 
copper ear-plug of the usual type, and on the chest the crumbling remains of what 
must have been a sheet-copper ornament of considerable size. 
A trifle more than 3 feet from the surface was a skeleton at full length on the 
