220 CERTAIN SAND MOUNDS OF 



ware, and ornaments of shell, but never with articles indicating a knowledge of 

 Europeans as exemplified by implements of iron, beads of glass, brass, pewter, and 

 glazed pottery. It is, indeed, a hypothesis not to be entertained that later Indians 

 in possession of these products of the Whites, through gift, barter, or plunder, in 

 these mounds interred European copper alone, and sedulously refrained from placing 

 with the dead, iron axes, glass beads, or the paint of commerce, and many kindred 

 articles, all of which they so highly prized, and all of which are found on the St. 

 John's with the superficial burials. 



As we have pointed out in our note on the probable comparative age of the 

 river mounds, archaeologists are agreed that when in a class of mounds no article 

 of European manufacture is met with other than superficially, these mounds may 

 be classed as of a period antedating the coming of the Whites, and Professor Put- 

 nam has so clearly expressed this view that we quote here a portion of a personal 

 letter from him. 



" Just after I wrote my little paper on copper in the Museum as the beginning 

 of a series of papers on the use of metals, copper began to come in from our Ohio 

 explorations in a wonderful manner, until we now have copper in such abundance 

 that a paper on the subject would be a volume. We have it hammered and cut into 

 all manner of shapes — implements and ornaments — and with it have come several 

 lots of ornaments made of meteoric iron — implements and ornaments — and also 

 considerable silver (ornaments) and a little of gold. All these metals are ham- 

 mered and cut, and we have the copper in all stages from the rough nuggets, through 

 those partly hammered to the sheets and the objects cut from them. To consider 

 this the work of Europeans is an absurd perversion of the facts before us ; and yet 

 just because the facts do not agree with the theories of some who would. have all 

 facts drop into their theories, or else throw them out of consideration, these objects 

 are spoken of as unquestionably of European origin, traded to our old mound 

 building people of the Ohio valley by Whites since the settlement of the country. 



" I am confident that you are right in your conclusion, when, after the careful 

 examination you made at Mt. Royal, you did not find anything derived from the 

 white man, such as glass beads, brass, etc., that all the work was native, the copper 

 plates included. 



" I have explored several sites (villages and burial) which were known histori- 

 cally, and I have always found glass beads, brass kettles, pewter mugs and plates, 

 brass buttons and iron knives and axes, etc., etc., in the graves or in the refuse piles 

 and hearths of the wigwams, mixed with native objects, and when, after a thorotigk 

 and extensive exploration of any place such objects of European origin are not found, 

 we have no right to doubt as native what we do find, no matter what peculiar things 

 may occur." 



THE COPPER FROM A CHEMICAL STANDPOINT. 



We are, however, not compelled to base our conclusions as to the origin of the 

 copper solely upon the testimony we have adduced. In the investigation of copper 



