HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



I never have had the pleasure of seeing the collection of pipes 

 taken from Mound No. 8 and now in the Blackmore Museum at 

 Salisbury, England. However, from the illustrations and descriptions 

 of the broken specimens in Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi 

 Valley and in the catalogue of Blackmore Museum, I am satisfied 

 that the breaking was not due to fire, but that they were broken 

 intentionally when placed in the cache, exactly as were the pipes in 

 the Tremper mound. Stone broken by heat has a different appear- 

 ance from stone broken by a blow from a heavy instrument; as to the 

 copper being melted, I am satisfied that Squier and Davis confused 

 the adhesion of copper pieces, due to oxidation, with what they 

 mistook for fusion by fire, which they state was "sufficiently strong 

 to melt copper." This condition of copper pieces firmly adhering 

 through corrosion, was found in the Tremper mound, associated with 

 the pipes. The same condition was noticeable in the Harness and Seip 

 mounds, and is found in practically all mounds where a number of 

 copper pieces are placed together. In the Harness mound numbers of 

 ear-ornaments were united through corrosion, suggesting their fusion 

 by fire; but on the contrary, the charred remains of the cremated 

 dead placed over them, had protected the ear-ornaments from con- 

 tact with fire kindled at the final ceremony. The Seip mound gave 

 many more examples of the fusing of copper pieces by corrosion. In 

 one instance large copper plates were so united that they could not 

 be separated; in another a copper plate could not be detached from 

 a crescent of copper partly covering it. And yet none of these speci- 

 mens had been subjected to the action of fire. 



BUILT BY THE SAME PEOPLE 



The data offered by Squier and Davis as a result of their explor- 

 ations of the Mound City group are not sufficient to make available 

 for comparison the manner in which the objects were deposited in 

 the cache, but the similarity of the sculptured pipes from two mounds, 

 and the stone from which they were carved, seems to be proof con- 

 clusive that they were made by peoples having the same mortuary 

 customs and were placed in the cache in the same way. For instance, 

 the heron eating a fish, found by Squier and Davis, is almost an 

 exact duplicate of one from the Tremper mound, as is also the otter 

 with a fish in its mouth, although this specimen was mistaken by 

 Squier and Davis for the manatee, a water animal of Florida. In 

 fact all the animal sculptures from the Mound City group, with the 

 exception of the elk, were duplicated in the Tremper mound, and in 



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