1879. | Were they Mound-Builders ? 643 
been made of thin sheets of copper rolled into tubes. That they 
had been worn around the head or neck was evident, for one side 
of the skull and the lower jaw-bone were stained a dark copper 
color. Many of the shell beads were also stained by the copper; 
those so colored retaining their original polish, being hard and 
glassy, like ivory, while those not so stained were brittle, many 
of them falling into a white laminated powder. The shell beads 
were fifty-nine in number, ‘besides those that were too badly 
decayed to handle, and were from half an inch to one and three- 
quarter inches in length, and averaged about half an inch in 
diameter. They were of that kind so fully described by the 
early writers, made from the columellz of large sea shells and 
rubbed and ground smooth with great labor, and afterwards drilled 
through their longest diameter with greater labor still. They 
were known by the names of “roancke,” “ peak” and “wampum,” 
and were worn by the southern Indians as nose and ear jewels, 
necklaces, etc. The drilling of these hard shells when iron tools 
were unknown, must have required patience and industry, and we 
may well look at them with wonder, and as evidences of the pos- 
session of these virtues by their unknown makers. The drilling 
had been done in most cases from each end, the holes meeting in 
the center. In some of the shorter ones, however, the perfora- 
tions were made from one end, being of uniform size throughout. 
The spiral grooves where the whorls of the shell wound round 
the hard central column, can be seen in all of them. In addition 
to the beads and probably forming a central pendant to the neck- 
lace, there was found an elk’s tooth. It is stained a beautiful 
copper color and highly polished. ! 
On the same level as the last grave, and about six feet to the 
west of it, I came to another, similar in all respects, lined with 
flat stones. The body was apparently extended, with the head 
toward the south; the bones were nearly all decomposed. The 
relics found were the remains of a necklace of shell beads, little 
copper tubes and small sea shells about half an inch long, with a 
hole drilled in the large end. The only way that these latter can 
be strung is with a “waxed end” tipped with a bristle, such as 
shoemakers use. This follows the whorls of the shell, and it is 
the only way, apparently, in which they can be utilized as beads. 
Their makers may have had some other way, but I have not been 
able to discover it. 
