Class Fifth — Minace72
Articles of this kind hold the relative character of modern beads or necklace ornaments. They are made of shells, bones, fissile minerals, sometimes pieces of calcareous or fissile crystal. The substitutes of the European period are glass and pastes.
Minace Alleghanic. Fig. 6, Plate I. This article was first disclosed on opening the Grave Creek mound, in the Ohio valley, in 1839, and received the false designation of “ivory.” It is figured and described in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, published at New-York in 1845, where its character is determined. It has often the appearance of having been formed of solid masses of horn. It is believed to be, however, in any case, a product of massy sea-shell. Decomposition gives its surface a dead white aspect and limy feel. The powder scraped from the surface effervesces in acids. It is generally, not uniformly, an exact circle, and resembles extremely a very thick horn buttonmould. It is characteristic of the orifice, that it appears to have been perforated with an instrument giving a spiral or circular line. This ancient ornament was also disclosed in my visit to the Beverly bone deposits of Canada in 1843. Its occurrence, in Onondaga, denotes the universality of the art, during the ante-European period.
Notes
72 From Meen, a berry; and ace, a diminutive; hence minas or minace, a bead, or an ornament for the neck.