1894.] Shell Heaps of Florida. 25 
related how graceful weapons lay near the base—weapons 
entirely at variance withthe pattern of-those of presumably 
older mounds. The men who dropped the first unios on the 
low marsh where Mulberry Mound now stands, probably came 
long after the aborigines abandoned Mt. Taylor. One can 
readily realize, then, that the shell-heaps are by no means 
contemporary, and that the beginning of the earliest must 
date from a- period comparatively remote, not, so far as any 
proofs exist, from a time approaching that of the great mam- 
mals, but one far antedating the coming of the whites. 
Since the appearance of the first paper of this series, the 
writer has (1893) carefully gone over many shell-heaps 
included in his first paper, and has added to the list a con- 
siderable number from seven localities. With a force of eight 
men to handle the spades, the writer has in addition carefully 
examined nearly all the shell-heaps described by Wyman, and 
in none has he found any indication of intercourse with 
Europeans, in this result coinciding with the researches of 
Professor Wyman. 
Numerous objects found by those having shell-heaps under 
cultivation have been described to or inspected by the writer, 
but in no case has there been any evidence of the discovery 
of anything suggesting other than the product of unaided 
aboriginal industry. 
History is singularly rich in accounts of the manners and 
customs of the natives of Florida, beginning at a period not 
long subsequent to the landing of Columbus. In all these 
accounts, written with scrupulous regard for detail, there is 
nothing to indicate the existence of native races so low in the 
scale of humanity as must have been those who piled up the 
greater portion of the shell-heaps. We are told by the Knight 
of Elvas? of the superior quality of the pottery of the South- 
ern Indians. We look in vain in the shell-heaps for evidence 
upon which such an assertion could have been based. In the 
face of such a mass of negative evidence, unless proof to the 
contrary be adduced, the shell-heaps must be considered as 
abandoned in pre-Columbian times. 
A point brought forward in the initial paper of this series 
®Cited by C. C. Jones “ Antiquities of the Southern Indians,” page 445. 
