broken pottery, ashes, charcoal, and fragments of shells, bones, and antlers of deer and elk. Only a few of the Indian Creek mounds have been critically examined, but there is no reason for believing that they differ in any essential characteristic with those of the Sangamon bluffs.
The remains of Indian art found in this country differ but little from similar objects found in all parts of the Mississippi Valley. The race inhabiting this locality before us left no specimen of their work indicating any expression of genius, or any marked degree of skill or proficiency in the common arts of life. The pot-sherds seen in profusion about their old camps and mounds are composed in the main of clay and lime (calcined muscle-shells), but a large proportion were molded from clay alone, and apparently formed parts of small rude ill-shaped and poorly burned vases and cups. The best specimens are ornamented with impressions of coarsely woven fabrics and bark of trees, curved lines, nobs, and indentations, and the marks of finger-nails. In no instance has there been noticed the slightest attempt to produce upon any piece of pottery the representation of the human face or figure, or of any bird or animal. But few of their earthen vessels have survived to the present time; besides the two pots found unbroken, which I have before described, not half a dozen have been secured entire in the whole county.
I have not yet heard of an implement or ornament of copper having been found among the mound remains of the county, and of hematite only the small celt before mentioned; two or three so-called "plummets" several "paint rocks" (or burnt pieces), and some rough blocks of the ore, constitute all of the relics of this material so far known. Occasionally with the bones of the dead are noticed small cubes of galena; and in our collection is a ball of this ore, taken from a mound, weighing a pound and two ounces, which probably did service, enveloped in raw hide, as some form of weapon. No lead, however, has here ever been discovered with any of the aboriginal remains. It is passing strange that the Illinois Indians, so well acquainted with lead ore as we know them to have been, should have never gained the knowledge of its fusibility and ready reduction to metal. Plates of mica are of comparatively common occurrence in our mounds, and in many instances are found to have been deposited upon the breast of the corpse. In one of the small ridge mounds of the Sangamon bluffs a skeleton was uncovered having upon the decayed sternum ten plates of mica uniformly cut to the dimensions of 9 inches in length and 4 wide, with the corners neatly rounded. This mineral is not found in situ in Illinois, and of course must have been imported from a considerably remote distance.
Of marine shells no entire specimen of the conch, or Cassis, or Lycotypus, has been seen in the old graves of our country; but small ornaments and beads made of the columellas and broken pieces of large sea-shells are quite frequently found. In our collection is a necklace comprising 178 pieces of conch shell—each perforated in the center and presenting all
