224 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE NW. FLORIDA COAST. 



lay an ornauieiit of sheet copper, 10 inches long and 1.7 inches broad, bent around 

 and overlapping on itself, making a flat tube about .8 of an inch in diameter. The 

 metal, almost entirelj^ transformed into carbonate, fell into bits upon removal. At 

 the neck of the sl<;eleton were found perforated pearls and fragments of others. 



Burial No. 81, a skeleton flexed to the right, on the base, 8 feet below the sur- 

 face, had, at either shoulder a disc of sheet copper so badly carbonated and corroded 

 that the original size could not be determined. 



At the center of each of the sheet copper discs, on one surface, is a laj-er of sil- 

 ver. This la\er is not fixirly thick, and regular as to its margin as would be the 

 case if a coin or sheet silver had been shaped and fastened on, but is very thin and 

 radiates marginally as though a small nugget, placed on the copper and hammered 

 out, had remained through force of the blows. 



We are indebted to Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, whose great discovery of copper 

 objects of aboriginal make in the Hopewell mounds, Ohio, is so well known, for the 

 information that several ornaments of sheet copper were found in the Hopewell 

 altars, which were covered with a thin layer of silver. These may be seen in the 

 Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. 



While the existence of sheet copper ornaments of purely aboriginal provenance 

 is now admitted by all who possess a schoolboy's knowledge of chemistry,^ the pres- 

 ence of silver in a mound, as a rule, shows " white contact " on the part of the 

 aborigines who built the mound, but such is not alwajs the case. Silver is some- 

 times visibly present in " Lake " copper which is native and Lake Superior is known 

 to have been the main source of aboriginal supply of copper. To cut this free silver 

 from the native copper would be easy, though the supply would be small. Mr. 

 Moorehead informs us that he found in the effigy mound of the Hopewell group a bit 

 of native silver, hammered flat, which is now in the Field Columbian Museum. 

 No indication of contact with Europeans was present in the Hopewell mounds. 



While Mr. Moorehead was conducting investigations in 1897 for the Ohio State 

 Archa3ological and Historical Society, in Pickaway County, Ohio, in a small stone 

 box were found five nuggets of sih-er, weighing six and one-quarter ounces, in the 

 aggregate. This unique discovery shows the aborigines to have been possessed of 

 silver nuggets in all probability before the coming of the whites, since no artifact of 

 European make was met with during the work. 



The method of fastening the silver on the sheet copper ornaments found by us, 

 and the irregular outline and thinness of the hammered silver would, in our opinion, 

 argue aboriginal workmanship and a supply more scanty than would have been the 

 case had silver bullion and coins been forthcoming from the whites through barter or 

 through shipwreck. When to these facts we add that no object surely of white 

 provenance came from the mound in which these ornaments were, there are good 

 grounds to consider these copper and silver ear-plugs to be of purely aboriginal 

 make. They are the first of the kind to be found in Florida, we believe. 



' "As to Copper from the Mounds of the St. Jolins." "Certain Sand Mounds of the St. Johns 

 River, Florida," Part II. By Clarence B. Moore. 



