482 CERTAIN MOUNDS OF ARKANSAS AND OF MISSISSIPPI. 
told, “large baked earthen plates, which they use for different purposes. The men 
go naked and wear their hair short. They pierce their noses and ears, and wear 
rings of glass ! beads in them.” 
At nearly every site investigated by us were found beads of glass and objects 
of brass—sure signs, as the reader is aware, of contact between the aborigines and 
white men. 
Human remains found by us along the Arkansas river were usually so badly 
decayed as to be worthless for scientific investigation. 
А number of skulls, however, were preserved and were sent by us to the 
United States National Museum at Washington, D. C. 
Dr. Ales Hrdlička has kindly sent us an interesting and complete report on 
these skulls, which follows this portion (Part I) of our description of the season's 
work. 
At one place, Greer, certain evidence? was found by us of the presence of a 
specific disease which affects the bones, this evidence being strongly marked in the 
case of a single skeleton, many of whose principal bones were seriously involved. 
We attach but little importance to this discovery of diseased bones, however, 
inasmuch as Greer cannot, with reasonable certainty, be classed as a pre-Columbian 
site. It is true that no European artifacts, such as glass, brass, iron or lead, were 
found there by us; and that the copper beads (present with one burial only) have 
been shown by the analysis of Dr. H. F. Keller to be pure native copper with only 
а trace of iron, hence far purer than any product from the smelted sulphide ores 
of Europe could have been in early times, or indeed could be at the present time. 
Still, as almost nothing except pottery (which does not determine their period) 
had been placed with the burials at Greer; and as the native copper beads, found 
in but a single instance, cannot be regarded as more than an indication; and as all 
other sites of importance investigated by us on the Arkansas river were, as we 
have said, distinctly post-Columbian, the question of contact between Europeans 
and the makers of the cemetery at Greer must be considered an open one. 
In the way of artifacts, but little save earthenware lay with the dead in the 
graves along the lower Arkansas, the aboriginal mourners, seemingly, having 
considered their duty fully performed by depositing pottery alone. 
Vessels were not always present with the dead, though in the great majority 
of cases they were so found, sometimes singly, often in pairs (usually a bottle and a 
bowl); oceasionally in greater number, ten in one instance having been found with 
a single burial. The smallest vessels usually accompanied the remains of children. 
1 In another translation of Marquette's narrative the word “ glass" is omitted, the statement being 
that the natives wear beads hanging from their noses and ears (Hist. Coll. of La., Part IV, page 48). 
In the original French the word rassade is used. This word is defined as * beads of glass or of enamel” 
by Littré; and praetieally the same definition is given by the Dictionary of the French Academy. 
Nouveau Larousse Illustré gives rassade as meaning glassware for trading purposes. Nevertheless it is 
just possible that Marquette, though lately from Canada where glass beads on Indians must have been 
a familiar sight, may have used the word rassade in describing beads of shell or the pierced pearls often 
worn by aborigines. The Arkansas and the White rivers are today famous for their yield of pearls. 
* As attested by the United States Army Medical Museum where the bones now are. 
