, f-Iron, The use of iron by the American 
aborigines and especially by the tribes n. 
of Mexico was very limited as compared 
with their use of copper. The compact 
oreswere sometimes used, and were flaked, 
pecked, or ground into shape, as were 
the harder varieties of stone. Imple- 
ments, ornaments, and symbolic objects 
of hematite ore are found in great num- 
bers in mounds and in burial places and 
on dwelling sites over a large part of the 
country. Since smelting was unknown to 
the natives, the only form of metallic iron 
available to them and sufficiently malle- 
able to be shaped by hammering is of 
meteoric origin, and numerous examples 
of implements shaped from it have been 
recovered from the mounds. A series of 
celts of ordinary form, along with partly 
shaped pieces and natural masses of the 
metal, were found by Moorehead in a 
mound of the Hopewell group near Cliilli- 
cothe, Ohio, and these are now in theField 
Museum of Natural History, Chicago. The 
Tinner mounds, in Hamilton co., Ohio, 
have perhaps yielded the most interest- 
ing relics of this class. Putnam describes 
these, in enumerating the various objects 
found on one of the earthen altars, as 
follows: “But by far the most important 
things found on this altar were the sev- 
eral masses of meteoric iron and the orna- 
ments made from this metal. One of 
them is half of a spool-shaped ear orna- 
ment, like those made of copper with 
which it was associated. Another ear 
ornament of copper is covered with a thin 
plating of iron, in the same manner as 
others were covered with silver. Three 
of the masses of iron have been more or 
less hammered into bars, as if for the pur- 
pose of making some ornament or imple- 
ment, and another is apparently in the 
natural shape in which it was found” 
(16th Rep. Peabody Museum, m, 171, 
1884; see also Putnam in Proc. Am. Antiq. 
Soc. , n, 349, 1883) . Ross records the fact 
that the Eskimo of Smith sd. used mete- 
oric iron. Small bits of this metal beaten 
out and set in a row in an ivory handle 
made effective knives. See Hematite, 
fyfatiiL work. 
Consult Kroeber in Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 
Hist., xn, 285, 1899; Ross, Voyage of 
Discovery, 1819; Thomas in 12th Rep. 
B. A. E., 319, 336, 1894. (w. h. h.) 
