PEARLS AND PEARL FISHERIES. 
383 
Many years ago, perforated pearls were found by Dr. Edwin H. Davis 1 on the 
hearths of five distinct groups of mounds in Ohio, and sometimes in such abundance 
that they could be gathered by the hundred. They were generally of irregular form, 
mostly pear-shaped, though perfectly round ones were also found among them. The 
smaller specimens measured about one fourth of an inch in diameter, but the largest 
had a diameter of three-fourths of an inch. 
According to this same authority, the pearl-bearing shells occurring in the rivers 
of the region whose antiquities are described are not in such abundance that they 
could have furnished the amount discovered in the tumuli; and the pearls of these 
fluviatile shells, moreover, are said to be far inferior in size to those recovered from 
the altars. It was erroneously thought that the latter were derived from the coast of 
the Atlantic and of the Gulf of Mexico. 
In this connection some curious facts are mentioned by the late Dr. E. G. Squier 2 
regarding the use of pearls by the Ohio Mound-builders for ornamenting articles of 
carved stone. He describes a number of objects, chiefly pipes, made in the form of 
heads of animals aud birds, carefully and accurately carved from what he terms por- 
phyry, with the eyes represented by small pearls, decomposed or calcined when found, 
but in some instances retaining their places. Another similar object was a small 
human head, the face apparently tattooed, also carved out of dark porphyry, with a 
row of 15 holes, close together, forming a fillet across the top of the forehead. When 
found, “these holes were filled with small calcined pearls, originally constituting a 
brilliant circlet, contrasting in a striking manner with the dark stone in which they 
were inserted.” He compares this little object with one described by Humboldt 
(Researches, vol. i, p. 43) under the title of “Statue of an Aztec Priestess,” which 
bears a similar line of sculptured beads or pearls across the forehead. 
Mr. Squier refers to the great abundance of pearls found upon the hearths of 
some of the Ohio mounds even at that early stage of exploration. He thinks that 
their number and size are too great to attribute them to the IJnios, and dwells upon 
the marine shells of the Gulf coast, that are found also in the mounds, and beads 
made therefrom, as likewise alligators’ teeth, tertiary fossils of the South, etc., as 
pointing to extensive traffic and intercourse with the shores of the Mexican Gulf. 
No doubt there was much of such intercourse, but most of the pearls found in Ohio 
are probably from the inland waters. 
Pearls have subsequently been found in great numbers in the tumuli of the Scioto 
and Miami valleys, in Ohio, by Prof. F. W. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., and Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, of Xenia, Ohio, who made extensive 
explorations in these mounds, some of the results of which were shown at the Colum- 
bian Exposition at Chicago. The former had investigated particularly the Turner 
group of mounds in the Little Miami Valley, the latter the Hopewell group in Ross 
County near Chillicothe, on the North Fork of Paint Creek. 
In the Anthropological Building at Chicago was shown the great “find” of pearls 
made by Mr. Moorehead in the Effigy mound of the Hopewell group. Here more 
than a gallon of pearls was obtained, with two skeletons. They ranged from the size 
of a small millet seed to a diameter of two-thirds of an inch, or even more. In shape 
they were usually irregular, though many were round or nearly so; but the absence 
'Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Squier & Davis, Washington, 1848, p. 252. 
2 Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Trans, of the Amer. Ethno- 
logical Society, New York, vol. II, 1847. 
