36 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
the Indian races never mined for mica or copper, neither did 
they bury either of these articles with the remains of their 
distinguished dead.—Larkin, p. 19 
The circumstance of the Conewango and the Red House val- 
leys being on and near the different routes to the southern rivers 
may be the cause of the lavish distribution of copper in those 
sections.—Larkin, p. 20 
He gave an account of the demolition of a large tumulus in 
the town of Cold Spring about 1820, as told him by the old © 
Seneca chief, Gov. Blacksnake: 
Great quantities of relics, such as gorgets, flint axes, arrow- 
heads, and a great number of copper implements artistically 
wrought from masses of native copper which was brought from 
the mines of Lake Superior, were found with the bones. . . So 
rich was this mound with decaying skeletons and relics of curi- 
ous workmanship, that now, after more than 60 years have 
passed away, fragments of human bones, arrowheads and cop- 
per relics are found in large quantities at each successive plow- 
ing. In the spring of 1879, a few days after the ground had 
been plowed, in company with two boys we found 15 arrowheads, 
a curious piece of copper, and nearly a peck of fragments of 
human bones.—Larkin, p. 23 . 
In speaking of Oil creek he said: “ In the year 1861 I saw tools | 
found in different places on the creek which were composed of | 
native copper, one of which weighed several pounds. It was 
something like a drill, rather flat, pointed at one end and ap-- 
peared to have been hardened.”—Larkin, p. 81 | | 
Dr Larkin believed that the American elephant was tamed 1 
and used by prehistoric races. ‘ Finding the form of an ele- | 
phant engraved upon a copper relic some 6 inches long and 4 __ 
wide, in a mound on the Red House creek, in the year 1854 and — 
represented in harness with a sort of breast collar with tugs 
reaching past the hips, first led me to adopt that theory.”— | 
Larkin, pref. The first quotation might imply that he had not 
seen this; the other that he himself found it. Those acquainted 
with native copper will at once conclude that some ingenious | 
imposition was practised on him; one of those which every anti- | 
quarian sometimes encounters. | | 
Fig. 47 is not so well finished as some of this type and th 
socket is square at the base. It is in the Bigelow collectio 
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