I 26 
Upon Tablet i^b,c, d, and e, are specimens of this shell found 
in the Ohio mounds. These were probably obtained by barter 
from the tribes on the north-west coast, and indeed may have 
passed from tribe to tribe at an enhanced value in proportion 
to the distance they were carried from their original habitat. 
These shells are still highly valued by the Indian tribes on both 
sides of the Rocky Mountains. In Case D 6, upon Tablet 11, 
is part of a necklace of Dentalia, which was taken from the 
body of Shaw-hdn-taen, or Dull Knife, the great medicine 
man of the Cheyenne Indians, who was killed at Forsyth's 
fight, on the dry fork of the Republican river, between Fort 
Sedgwick and Fort Hayes, Kansas, 17th to 28th September, 
1868. 
A 49. 
No. I is a tube of whetslate, found in a mound close to Chil- 
licothe, the interment in which had been by cremation. The 
tube is thirteen inches in length, by one and one-tenth in 
diameter ; one end swells slightly, and the other terminates in 
a broad, flattened, triangular mouth-piece." It is drilled 
throughout ; the bore is seven-tenths of an inch in diameter 
at the cylindrical end of the tube, and retains that size until 
it reaches the point of union with the mouth-piece, when it 
contracts gradually to one-tenth of an inch at the end. The 
inner surface of the tube is perfectly smooth, till within a 
short distance of the point of contraction. For the remaining 
distance the circular striae, formed by the drill in boring, are 
distinctly marked. One end of the tube is slightly discoloured 
from the heat to which it had been exposed. 
Nos. 2 to 3 are parts of lime-stone tubes. No. 2 was found 
in a burial-mound, near Chillicothe. No. 4 is part of a tube 
of whetslate. Several stone tubes similar to No. i were found 
in some tumuli, near the celebrated Grave Creek Mound. A 
quarry of whetslate occurs on the banks of Grave Creek, about 
four or five miles above the great mound. 
It is difficult to assign a purpose to these stone tubes. 
Vanegas says that the "medicine men" of the Californian 
Indians use tubes of stone in the cure of diseases. *'They 
applied to the suff"ering part of the patient's body the chacuaco, a 
tube formed out of very hard black stone, and through this they 
sometimes sucked, and at other times blew, but both as hard as 
