512 BUREAU OF AMERICA!^ ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Mr. Sawyer and I independently recognized the likeness of these curious decora- 

 tions to the glaring eyes of the tarpons, sharks, and other sea monsters of the sur- 

 rounding waters; and as the buttons were associated with more or less warlike 

 paraphernalia, I hazarded the opinion that they were actually designed to repre- 

 sent the eyes of such monsters — to be worn as the fierce, destructive, searching 

 and terrorizing eyes, the "Seeing Ears," so to say, of the warriors. This was indi- 

 cated by the eye-like forms of many of the other ear buttons we found — some 

 having been overlaid in front with highly polished concave-convex white shell 

 discs, perforated at the centres as if to represent eye pupils . . . 



There were still other ear buttons, however, elaborately decorated with in- 

 voluted figures, or circles divided equally by sinusoid lines, designs that were 

 greatly favored by the ancient artists of these keys. The origin of these figures, 

 both painted, as on the buttons — in contrasting blue and white — and incised, as 

 on discs, stamps, or the ends of handles, became perfectly evident to me as derived 

 from the "navel marks," or central involutes on the worked ends of univalvular 

 shells ; but probably here, as in the Orient, they had already acquired the signifi- 

 cance of the human navel, and were thus mystic symbols of "the middle," to be 

 worn by priestly Commanders of the warriors. That the ear buttons proper were 

 badges, was indicated by the finding of larger numbers of common ear plugs ; 

 round, and slightly rounded also at either end, but grooved or rather hollowed 

 around the middles. Although beautifully fashioned, they had been finished with 

 shark-tooth surface-hatching, in order to facilitate coating them with brilliant 

 varnishes or pigments. The largest of them may have been used as stretchers for 

 ordinary wear ; but the smaller and shorter of them were probably for ordinary 

 use, or use by women, and had taken the place of like, but more primitive orna- 

 ments made from the vertebrae of sharks. Indeed a few of these earlier forms 

 made of vertebrae, were actually found. 



I could not quite determine what had been the use of certain highly ornate fiat 

 wooden discs. They were too thin to have been serviceable as ear plugs, or as 

 labrets. But from the fact that they were so exquisitely incised with rosettes, or 

 elaborately involuted, obliquely hatched designs, and other figures — the two faces 

 different in each case — and that they corresponded in size to the ear buttons and 

 plugs, I came to regard them as stamps used in impressing the gum-like pigments 

 with which so many of these ornaments had been quite thickly coated, as also, 

 perhaps, in the ornamentation or stamping of other articles and materials now 

 decomposed. Very long and beautifully finished, curved plates of shell had been 

 used probably as ear ornaments or spikes, also ; since they exactly resembled 

 those depicted as worn transversely thrust through the ears, in some of Le 

 Moyne's drawings, of which representations I had never previously understood 

 the nature; and many of the plummet-shaped pendants I have before referred 

 to, must have been used after the manner remarked on in some of the old 

 writers, as ear weights or stretchers, and some, being very long, not only 

 thuswise, but also as ear spikes for wear after the manner of using the plates 

 just described. While certain crude examples of these curious pendants had 

 been used apparently as wattling bobbets, still others, better shaped, had as 

 certainly served as dress or girdle pendants. (Gushing, 1896, pp. 174-175.) 



In the north-central part of the Gulf region we find a remarkable 

 ear ornament in vogue among males. Bartram, who has the Creeks pri- 

 marily, and the Cherokee secondarily in mind, describes it as follows : 



Their ears are lacerated, separating the border or cartilaginous limb, which 

 at first is bound round very close and tight with leather strings or thongs, 

 apd anointed with fresh bear's oil, until healed : a piece of lead being fastened 



