The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1898-12-17
Full BUSHELS OF PEARLS
THE PRECIOUS GEMS BURIED IN
PREHISTORIC EARTHWORkS.
The Mississippi Valley Mounds Yield
From the Sea Nowadays.

Immense quantities of prehistoric
pearls have been discovered during
the last few years, says the Boston
transcript, in the ancient mounds
erected by forgotten race in the
Mississippi valley, especially at GER
tain points in OHIO, and the evidence
thus obtained proves that some of the
chiefs whose people formerly inhab-
! tied that region did actually possess
treasures in this form which far eX-
ceeded in value those owned by the
richest crowned heads of today. In
fact, there are no collections of pearls
i'm existence at the present time that
would compare at all with those gath
cred by the aboriginal connoisseurs
referred to. In some of the mounds
pearls have been found, not by the
hundreds or thousands, but by BUSH
els-large numbers of them approach
ing or even exceeding in size a hazel
nut.
How such enormous stores of them
were gathered is "A problem not easily
solved. The pearls were certainly OBJ
| tanned from a species of muSSel call
ed the "unio," which is still found in
! great abundance in many of the
streams of the country; but in those
days the shellfish in question must
have been far more plentiful than they
are now No more beautiful pearls eN-
list in nature than those yielded by
the unio, and the collections described
must have been magnificent indeed in
the period of their glory. Unfortu-
nately all of them have been ruined by
decay due to long burial, though an
occasional specimen reveals something
of its pristine beauty when its outer
layers are peeled off.
In the famous Etfigy mound. near
| Chillicothe, Ohio. was found more
than gallon of pearls with two skel-
etons. All had been drilled with
holes. made with heated copper wire.
This drilling was undoubtedly for
the purpose of attaching them to
clothing or belts, as illustrated by the
fact that 400 or 500 had been sewed
originally upon a skirt worn by one
OF the skeletons. In other places i'm
the same region more than forty bear
teeth with pearls set in them were
discovered. From a mound in the
Little Miami valley Professor f. w.
Putnam obtained over 10000 pearls.
nearly two bushels, drilled and un-
drilled. Two other deposits yielded
upward of 100000 pearls.
Plenty of evidence as to possession
of great stores of pearls by the early
aborigines of the country is afforded
by the writer's of the first explorers
of the new worlds. The attention of
Columbus and other Spanish discov-
erers was attracted to the matter. and
"A story having a bearing on the same
subject is told of the followers of DE
Soto, who came upon an Indian towr
near what is now Tampa Bay. At one
end of the town was temple. on the
top Of which was perched wooden
fowl with gilded eyes. In these ewes
were pearls of hugh size. When the
Indian queen, whose name was Ucita,
welcomed the strangers. she drew
from over her head long string OF
pearls and threw it around the neck
of the leader of the expedition. The
Spaniards returned this courtesy bv
robbing the tombs in the neighbor-
hood. obtaining from them about $50
! DOun1S ,1f I,poIlS