REPORT OF DIRECTOR AND STATE GEOLOGIST 1900 r233 



brooches from the French invasion. The earlier ones were ham- 

 mered from coins, larger ones, possibly, devised from medals; in 

 fact, the French and English arms are frequently seen on the 

 back of many of the larger varieties. On many of the smaller 

 brooches we find the trademark of the manufacturer of the spoon, 

 fork or whatever it may have been that had come into the posses- 

 sion of the brooch-maker. In his hammering, these trademarks 

 were preserved by the brooch-maker as ornamentation and 

 thus, ignorant of the alphabet, he has unconsciously perpetuated 

 the name or initials of some foreign artisan in his story of 

 silver. 



Designs 



1 fail to find in illustrations of jewelry ornamentation of either 

 the French. English or Dutch, designs that have been actually 

 followed in the hammered coin brooch of the Iroquois. In fact, 

 I credit him with entire originality, very curious, in some cases; 

 and again there are suggestions of the white man's work 

 ingeniously interwrought with his own conception of art, not so 

 rude or savage that it has not developed genius and invention. 

 Totemic devices have conspicuously figured in the creation of 

 these brooches. There are also stories of mythology depicted by 

 the various tokens of nature; the moon, sun, stars, birds, beasts, 

 and the secret symbols known to* the medicine lodge have been 

 wrought into these silent emblems. The white man also made 

 these silver ornaments and^sold to the Indian; but the eye of the 

 expert can easily detect the work of the Indian, which is crude 

 and uneven, done by hand, having no stamp work or sign of 

 machinery blocking. The complete outfit of an Iroquois brooch- 

 maker, who had retired from work because of old age, was dis- 

 covered during the last year. His limited store of patterns were 

 constructed from zinc taken from the back of an old washboard. 

 He never made jewelry from American coin. He had a moral 

 scruple against^ doing so. But his later work was more finely 

 finished because of his opportunity for obtaining the white man's 

 tools. He said he preferred silver to gold because it was the 

 color of the clouds. 



