METALLIC ORNAMENTS OF NEW YORK INDIANS 13. 



Gosnold met with it on the Massachusetts coast in 1602, and one 

 of his associates has left us quite an account. Brereton said that 

 the Indians " have also great store of copper, some very red, and 

 some of a pale color: none of them but have chains, earrings or 

 collars of this metal; they head some of their arrows herewith, 

 much like our broad arrowheads, very workmanly done. Their 

 chains are many hollow pieces connected together, each piece of 

 the bigness of one of our reeds, a finger in length, ten or twelve 

 of them together on a string, which they wear about their necks; 

 their collars they wear about their bodies like bandeliers a handful 

 broad, all hollow pieces like the other, but somewhat shorter, four 

 hundred pieces in a collar, very fine and even set together. Besides 

 these they have large drinking cups made like skulls, and other thin 

 blades of copper very much like our boar spear blades." Brereton, 

 ser. 3, 8:91 



Another in the same company tells of " tobacco pipes steeled with 

 copper," and of a savage who had " hanging about his neck a plate 

 of rich copper, in length a foot, in breadth half a foot for a breast- 

 plate, the ears of all the rest had pendants of copper." 



It can hardly be doubted that this was European metal, the pale 

 copper approaching brass or bronze, though Brereton understood 

 from the signs of an Indian that they dug it on the mainland. 

 The same kind of arrowhead is yet found on recent Iroquois sites^ 

 The hollow cylinders of metal had reached the Mohawk valley cer- 

 tainly as early as 1600. The belts with their short tubes still occur 

 in recent Iroquois graves, " very fine and evenly set together." All 

 these will be illustrated from various collections, and their identity 

 can be shown by comparison with the famous relics at Fall River. 



The " tobacco pipes steeled with copper " present the same diffi- 

 culty that is met with in those described by Hudson in New York 

 bay. If both descriptions are allowed, they must also have had the 

 same origin as the arrowheads and tubes. In this connection it 

 may be suggested, as is probably true, that Roger Williams's famous- 

 statement that the Narragansetts " have an excellent Art to cast 

 our Pewter and Brasse into very neate and artificiall Pipes," had 

 some slight early ground. Brass and pewter pipes occur on Indian 



