FIFTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I908 



65 



tion " Wrong not the whose joy thou art," the blank for the 



word heart being supposed to be supplied by the form of the 

 brooch itself. 



There are no sets of tools, dies or punches for making brooches, 

 in the museum. I never saw or heard of any such. 



Yours very truly 



[Signed] Joseph Anderson 



These letters and documents speak for themselves and leave us 

 to infer either one of two things : First, The Indians furnished 

 the idea for the brooches which were adopted by Europeans, the 

 Scotch in particular, and the brooches were made in quantities 

 in Scotland afterward and sent to America to be traded to the 

 Indians ; or, second, the Scotch, or other Europeans, carried them 

 to America where they caught the fancy of the Indians who re- 

 ceived them as gifts or in trade, and later manufactured them 

 themselves. The second hypothesis seems more probable in the 

 light of the evidence. There are few brooch patterns in the pos- 

 session of collectors or museums. In every case within the writer's 

 knowledge the majority of the patterns were lost or not accessible. 

 An examination of some of the patterns indicates their manufacture 

 by die cutting, the dies being true edged and geometrically perfect. 

 The patterns Which we are describing were not made with chisels 

 used singly in cutting out the parts of the design, or if so the 

 tools were of a character which might be expected to be found 

 in the possession of a skilled jeweler. Through information given 

 by the Director of this museum, the Archeologist has found that a 

 set of die stamps had been in the possession of an Albany jeweler 

 whose forebears also were jewelers and who sold many sets of pat- 

 terns to the Indians in times past. A fuller description of these dies 

 with a study of the Iroquois silversmithing art found in a paper 

 by the Archeologist, Silverwork of the Iroquois. 1 



Seneca burden strap in process. During the autumn of 1903 

 when the Archeologist was engaged in archeological field work on 

 the Cattaraugus Reservation, an old Indian informed him that 

 he had a relic of interest which he had found in an old chest 

 and which hi wished to sell. The "relic" turned out to be a 

 burden strap, gus'-ha, in an incomplete condition. The hemp 

 card, the elm bark warp fiber and bundles of moose hair of 

 various colors, were packed in the box with the " strap " and the 

 entire process and materials of the weaving were made apparent. 

 The peculiar part of the process is the fact that the belt is com- 



1 Manuscript prepared for publication in a museum bulletin on Iroquois 

 Ethnology. 



