Read Ebook: Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society Volume 01 (of 14) 1898 by Mississippi Historical Society Riley Franklin L Franklin Lafayette Editor Rowland Dunbar Editor

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The great stream of human affairs is a tide of many currents. He who would pilot by his pen the reading multitude must note the crossings and the blendings, the counter-runnings and the parallelings. He cannot take an arbitrary stand and say that this tide of affairs began in this place and ended in that; or that this course of events began in such a year and ended in such another. Back of every motion is an impelling power. Back of every individual action lies the basic principles of human conduct. Back of every manifestation of corporate activity may be found a pulsive social force. Neither individual nor social movement can be studied understandingly alone. Each forms a link in a chain whose beginning and end may not be clearly seen, but whose continuity may be inferred from upholding and depending contiguous links.

This continuity when once perceived enables us to bring into relation widely associated ideas. For instance, the history of Oregon, through the first English explorer of its shores, leads us to the point where the intense vitality of the English nation was first directed to securing the naval supremacy of the world. The history of any one of our north-central States introduces us to the follies, fashions, and ambitions of the French Court under several Louises; to a long series of moves in one of the most complicated games ever played upon the chess-board of European politics; and to the most critical period in American affairs when Virginia by generously renouncing an empire appeased discordant and jealous elements and made possible the formation of the Federal Union. Patrick Henry's passionate plea for liberty was but the echo of the clarion call which rang over Runnymede centuries before, and this call was but the voicing of an idea which dominated the most primitive of Teutonic peoples in the remotest past. And so I might make innumerable citations to show that the present is but the heir to the past; and that what is, stands in close relation to what has been.

If time relations may be demonstrated by the association of remotely associated ideas, or by tracing modern institutional fruitage to their root points buried in the soil of the past, then may other correlations be as easily established.

The idea of place as a background to historic treatment has, to a certain extent, undergone change. The former conception has been that of a region with artificial bounds established by accident, treaty, or legislative enactment. The more modern conception is that of a physiographic area whose limits nature herself has fixed and within whose confines fundamental ethnic ideas crystalized into institutional, social, political, and religious forms have reached or are reaching complete or incomplete expression.

Every great civilization that has ever arisen is or has been a composite civilization. Isolate an individual, a community, a people, or a race and no matter how favorable may be the circumstances and environment, the advance made will only be so far and no further, the final point of which advance is characterized by rigidity of thought, fixity of forms, and slavish repetition of actions. The greater Chinese Wall of non-intercourse encircling the Mongolian nation for centuries cast the civilization of the Flowery Kingdom into molds of monotony whose stiffness has yielded only to the breaking of Occidental hammers upon Chinese commercial portals.

The autocthonous civilization of Peru and Mexico hardly attained the dignity of semi-barbarism. What might the Inca or Aztec have become had the influx of European culture-impulses reached his mind before its plasticity was lost, or had the gifts of acquired experience and knowledge been brought to him by hands guiltless of his scourging and innocent of his blood?

On the other hand, let an individual mingle with his fellows; a race or community enters into political or commercial relation with its neighbors, the divine sparks struck off by the attrition of mind with mind kindle the fires which illumine the spiritual in man and sets in motion the machinery of human progress. What student of history fails to recognize the influence of Phoenician letters and Egyptian thought upon Greek civilization; of Greek literature and ideals upon Roman character and development; of Roman genius for organization and talent for legal forms upon modern enlightened nations; of whatever was best in the past upon whatever is best in the life and thought and aspirations of the present.

Egypt began to advance when caravans first made their way to her over heated outlying deserts, for these brought to her something more than myrrh and incense, and precious fabrics. Greece developed with phenomenal rapidity as soon as her galleys sprinkled the blue waters of the Mediterranean, for with every incoming freight came a whisper of rudimentary art or culture which she forthwith clothed in beautiful form and language. England was provincial and primitive until her commercial supremacy made her the bearer of civilization to every corner of the globe. She has received more than she has given. Look where we will, we see unmistakably the effects of action and reaction in the intercourse of nations and communities.

In taking up the history of any one state of the Union, then, we find it impossible to confine our observation to accidental or unrelated happenings, however these happenings may find careful chroniclings at the hands of local scribes and unphilosophic writers. We see the States as a part of a physiographic area having in common with other parts the determinative elements of soil and climate which by prescribing industries, affect desires, ambitions, thought, and other forms of human activity. We study community forces and estimate their quality and intensity as they find expression in characteristic social and political institutions. We consider the people in their racial attitude, anticipate similar results from similar motives as conforming to the spirit and experience of the ethnic type to which the majority of the people stand related. We regard the State as an organic whole, a corporate being related to other similarly constituted beings. Take what position we will, there come into our line of vision ideas, origins, effects, reactions, and relations which show us that a State's history extends indefinitely into the past and in the present ramifies to every part of the larger, body-politic of which it is a constituent member.

Apart from general principles there is a singular correlation between the history of this your State and the history of the one I so inadequately represent upon this occasion . Both States were originally a part of that great continental heart of North America, that wilderness of empire-like extent, contended for by mighty nations in epoch-making struggles. Both owe their initial territorial organization to the commercial needs of the American people of a hundred years ago. Up to a certain point the history of the one is but the history of the other. The first settlement, paradoxical as it may seem, in Louisiana was made in Mississippi. De Soto crossed your State and died in ours. The same people who founded our city of New Orleans established your city of Natchez. The narratives of Bienville and Iberville are as closely associated with your history as they are with ours. The two principal Indian wars waged by the Louisiana colony were fought upon Mississippi soil. The first appointed governor of the Mississippi Territory was the first appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory. When under Spanish rule that portion of our domain known as the Florida parishes revolted, it was Reuben Kemper from your territory that rallied to the support of the revolutionists and struck such terror in the Spaniard's breast that Governor Folch of Mobile piteously appealed to the United States Government for protection. When the West Florida revolution was crowned with success and an addition of new territory to the United States resulted, Mississippi received her portion as well as Louisiana. When in the days of the American Revolution the notorious Willing came down from Philadelphia, ostensibly to protect but really to rob, our district of Baton Rouge felt his vulture clutch as keenly as did your district of Natchez. In later times, when our Zachary Taylor found himself upon the border lands of Mexico, an overwhelming foe in his front and war hardly yet declared, your riflemen under Jefferson Davis joined our Louisianian in rushing to his assistance, long before the general government moved to protect its own. We followed you out of the Union. Disaster to you was calamity to us. The cause of the Confederacy we shared in common. Our dead are sleeping together upon the old battlefields in every part of our Southland. We are common sharers of the heritage of brave deeds and undying memories. Your peerless citizen, the first and only president of the Confederate States, died in our arms and we gave him such sepulture that the continent trembled under the all-powerful force of sentiment. We have faced your dangers, felt your needs as only a people can whose interests are one with yours. The spirit that framed your present constitution is pulsing in our veins. And so, did the time limits of this paper permit, might I continue to enumerate indefinitely the instances in which History wipes out the boundary line by which maps unblushingly infer that we are two peoples, having separate interests and lines of thoughts. True history is broadening; never narrowing. It is because so much of Louisiana history is Mississippi history, and so much of Mississippi history is in the chronicles of Louisiana that the narrative of either State calls for so broad and liberal and inspiring a treatment at the hands of the historian.

THE STUDY AND TEACHING OF HISTORY.

BY HERBERT B. ADAMS, PH.D. Professor of History in the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Among all the subjects of college study and college teaching, among all the means of liberal education fitting young men for civic life and public duty not one stands higher than the study and teaching of History.

In my senior year at Amherst College, President Julius H. Seelye gave my class a single lecture on the Philosophy of History. Among other good things he said: "History is the grandest study in the world." That remark made the profoundest impression upon my student imagination. I said to myself, "If History is the grandest study in the world, that is exactly the study I want." The good President proved his statement to my satisfaction by showing the relation of Greek and Roman civilizations to the spread of Christianity and the education of Europe.

In Germany I first learned the true method, and at the same time, the most practicable ways and means of studying and teaching history. Amid a pleasant variety of academic courses by brilliant lecturers like Kuno Fischer, Zeller, Ernst Curtius, Grimm, Treitschke, Droysen, Du Bois Raymond, Lepsius, and others, I somehow felt a lack of educational unity and system. There was need of some backbone to unite the skeleton of human deeds and historic experiences. This I found at last in the teachings of my old master, Dr. J. C. Bluntschli, at Heidelberg. In his lecture courses on the State, on the Constitutional Law, on Politics and on the International Law of Modern Civilized States, I first began to realize that government and law are the real forces which bind society and the world together. I began to see that the true unity of the world's life is to be found in the succession of States, Empires, Federations, and in the International Relations, which are slowly leading to such great aggregations as the United States of America and the United States of Europe. In Germany I learned from a reading of Bluntschli's various writing, including many noble articles in his Staatsworterbuch, that there is such a thing as the World-State now in process of evolution. From the published records of the Institute of International Law, of which Dr. Bluntschli was the president, and from a study of the subjects of Arbitration and International Tribunals, I thought I could dimly discern the beginnings of that Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, of which the Poet Tennyson sings in his Locksley Hall.

When I came to Baltimore three ideas of study and teaching were uppermost in my mind: the study of the origins of municipal life, in order to find out whether it was Roman or Germanic; the study of the relations of Church and State, from their beginning down to the present, for I had learned to believe in Germany that the separation of civil from religious society is America's greatest contribution to the world's progress; the continued study of art history for its own sake and as illustrating the history of civilization.

Out of the first of these ideas, developed by a reading of the works of Sir Henry Maine, has grown my Historical Seminary and a long series of University Studies in Historical and Political Science . Out of the second idea evolved successive courses of lectures on Church and State, or Religion and Government in the Ancient and Graeco-Roman World, together with my whole system of graduate instruction upon the Early History of Society, Greek and Roman Polities, Jewish and Church History, and certain modern States like Prussia and France. The third idea never had a good chance for development until recent years when I have fairly begun to realize my original conception of illustrating in concrete, artistic ways the progress of civilization.

Goldwin Smith, in his Lecture on History, says there can be no philosophy of history until we realize the unity of the human race and that history must be studied as a whole. Twenty years ago, at the Johns Hopkins University, I began to teach Local History, as representative of Universal History. I began with New England Village Communities, with Plymouth Plantations, Salem and the Massachusetts Bay Towns, those little republics which seemed to me the very protoplasm of State life. The survival, continuity or revival of old Germanic forms of village settlement, with common fields and town commons, impressed my imagination and interested my students. They carried this kind of study into this State of Maryland and original papers by Maryland boys were published upon such subjects as Parishes, Manors, and other local institutions. These lines of inquiry were extended down the Atlantic seaboard to Virginia and the Carolinas. Gradually the field of interest has been widened from towns, plantations, parishes, and counties until now the constitutional, economic and educational history of entire States is in review or contemplation.

While I still believe in Local History and in limited subjects of student research, I now recognize more fully than I used to do, the importance of General History, especially for college students and college graduates in the early part of their course. After all, the great fact in History, as well as in Geography, is that the world is round. You must recognize all human experience on this globe as parts of one great whole, just as you recognize that the continents and outlying islands are but related parts of one vast geographical system. In every properly arranged course of school and college instruction in the domain of History, this doctrine of unity ought to be taken for granted. It is like the doctrine of divine unity in theology or in nature, like the sun in our heavens. It gives light and rationality to any and every course of study.

I used to think that it was the first duty of a boy to know the history of his own State and country; but I am now persuaded that he should know the history of mankind and of the world. Nobody would study geography or geology from a purely local point of view. You must have a consciousness of the whole in order to appreciate the parts of any subject. It is a mistake to imagine that a boy or girl cares most for what is nearest and most familiar. Children are always gifted with imagination. They rejoice in the thought of lands that are far off, of men who lived in olden times. They take the greatest pleasure in heroic tales of Cyrus and of Hannibal, of Horatius and of the great twin brethren, Castor and Pollux. Mythology, minstrelsy, Bible stories, and lives of great wariors, explorers, discoverers, inventors, these are of supreme interest to boys and girls. American History should be taught to American youth, but chiefly the heroic, the romantic, the biographical, in short the more human sides of our colonel and national life.

History begins and ends with Man. Biographical approaches to the world's life are the oldest, and best beaten paths for youth to follow. Carlyle and Froude are among the champions of the biographical method of studying and teaching History. When Froude succeeded Freeman at Oxford the biographical idea was at once brought to the front. Froude quoted Carlyle as saying: "The history of mankind is the history of its great men; to find out these, clean the dirt from them, and place them on their proper pedestals, is the true function of the historian." And Froude, the new professor, entered at once upon those splendid and inspiring courses of lectures, in which the personal and biographical elements entered so strongly.

Every American student should read Froude's lectures on "English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century," that brilliant account of Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and the great captains of England who gained a new world for Elizabeth and defeated the Spanish Armada. You should also read Froude's Lectures on the "Life and Letters of Erasmus" if you would understand the relation of the great religious reform to the new learning, which Erasmus represented.

But let no student or teacher believe for one moment that historical biography is the full equivalent of History. Not all the biographies that have ever been written could possibly contain the world's great life. As the poet Tennyson truly says: "The individual withers, but the world is more and more." There must be great men in Church and State, to lead society forward, but there must be unnumbered thousands, yea millions, of good men and true, and of faithful, devoted women, in order to support good leadership and carry humanity forward from generation to generation. It is often the biography of some plain man or self-sacrificing woman that affords the greatest encouragement and incentive to ordinary humanity. But we must remember that no man, no woman is worthy of biographical or historical record, unless in some way he or she has contributed to the welfare of society and the progress of the world. Only those deeds which affect our fellow men in some noteworthy manner are fit for commemoration. What you do as a private individual, what you ate for breakfast, what you do in the seclusion of your own room, is not necessarily historic; but whether Napoleon was able to eat his breakfast on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, or whether an army has been properly fed, may have the greatest historic significance.

Not man alone, but man in organized society, is the subject of History. Man in his relation to his fellows, man as a military, political, social, intellectual, and religious being may become historic. Dr. Thomas Arnold sometimes defined History as the biography of nations. This is a large and noble conception, although not the largest, and it may be profitably emphasized, like human biography in the study and teaching of History. It is the duty of every school and college to lay great stress upon the history of England and of the United States in addition to General History. We all need to know the lives of our own people as well as the lives of great Englishmen like Pitt and Gladstone, and great Americans like Washington and Lincoln. We should teach and study the histories of those nations which are nearest our mother country--Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. As Germany is now the great seat of culture and of university life for American students who go abroad, so was Italy for wandering English students in the days of the Renaissance. English literature from that time onward is pervaded with Italian elements, with the influences of "all Etruscan three," Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and also with the ideas of Machiavelli and the Italian historians. We cannot understand the literature of England or America without going back to its French and Italian sources. It would be wise for college professors of history to devote special attention to the Italian Renaissance or Revival of Learning, without which an understanding of the German Reformation and modern education is an impossibility.

In reading the biography of men or the biography of nations, teachers and students should note carefully the most interesting and memorial points. If you own the book which you are reading, use for note-taking the fly leaves at the end. Otherwise, use reference cards, like those employed in a library for a card catalogue, or else sheets of note paper. When you have found a fact or illustration which you think will prove useful at some future time, in connection with your work as a teacher or a student, note it briefly on paper with the proper reference to the book and page. Remember Captain Cuttle's advice: "When found, make a note of!" Recall the saying of Lord Bacon: "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory."

In the multitude of modern books and amid all the variety of our modern reading, it is impossible to remember exact quotations and historical details. We must have a good system of note-taking and index-making. Every student and teacher can invent his own system. Mine is the use of fly leaves in books and cards topically and alphabetically arranged for miscellaneous data. I always carry a few of these reference cards in my pocket and make all my notes under appropriate catch words, for example, "Chautauqua" or "Johns Hopkins University," with the name of the writer on this subject and the exact reference or quotation.

"History is the grandest study in the world." My College President, Dr. Julius H. Seelye, was right. There is no art or science comparable to it, for it embraces the whole experience of man in organized society. History takes hold of all the past and points the way to all the future. The French historian, Guizot, in his "History of My Time" says: "Religion opens the future and places us in the presence of eternity. History brings back the past and adds to our own existence the lives of our fathers." Pliny said of History: "Quanta potestas, quanta dignitas, quanta majestes, quantum denique numen sit historiae." Perhaps the highest conception of History comes from the Greek. The etymology of the ward is an inspiration for both student and teacher. History, from the Greek word historia, is a knowing or learning by inquiry. To study History is to understand by means of research, for History is a science; its very essence consists in knowledge. Historical science is perhaps the most comprehensive and the noblest of all sciences, for it is the self-knowledge of Humanity. The subject of History is Humanity itself; it is the self-conscious development of the human race. History, therefore, does not consist in dead facts, but is itself a living fact; it is the self-knowledge of the present with regard to its evolution from the past. Clio is a living muse, not a dead, cold form. She stands upon that very threshold of the future and glances backwards over the long vista Humanity has traversed. In the plastic art of the Greeks you will notice that the muse of History is represented in the attitude of reflection; the pen is uplifted, but the word unwritten.

We sometimes speak of written history and of its standard works as though the essence of that science consisted in books and not in knowledge. "There are no standards of history," said Droysen, a German professor to an American student who had asked his advice respecting the choice of standard works for an historical library. In this caustic saying there lies a profound truth. History is a living, self-developed science, not a collection of fossils. Books like facts, are sometimes dead to history, and historical standards, like historical facts, are grander in their spiritual influence than in their material form. In the onward march of historical science, historians are perhaps the standard bearers of fact and their works may be called the battle-flags of history which kindle the zeal of the ever-advancing present in men and awaken a sense of unity with the great past, which has gone on before us. But written history often becomes shot-riddled by criticism and is set away, at last, like battle-flags, after many honorable campaigns, in some museums of relics or some temple of fame. Unless such trophies continue to awaken in the living present a sort of enthusiasm and a sense of unity with the past experience of our race, then are our historic standards but antiquarian rubbish, indeed, as useless and unmeaning as the banners and symbols of heraldry.

The subject of History is the self-conscious development of the human race, the Ego of Humanity. The realization of this Ego does not lie in any fictitious personality, but in the universal consciousness that man is one in all ages and that the individual human mind may mirror to itself and to others the thought and experience of the race. As the heavens are reflected in a single drop of dew, so in the thoughts of the individual human mind we may sometimes behold a reflection of the self-knowledge of Humanity. For the individual is sometimes the very best expression of the whole with which it stands in connection. The onward march of world-history seems to have concentrated itself in the development of individual peoples like the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and the Germanic peoples. As these nations best typify historic progress and certain world-historic ideas, so the historic thought of manhood may be most fully realized by individual minds. For example, a single historian, like Thucydides, may reflect the self-consciousness of his age, and a single mind, in our own day, may realize, in some measure, at least through the works of history, the self-knowledge, the Ego of Humanity. It should be the aim of every student of History thus to realize in his own consciousness the historic thought of mankind. "The life of each individual," says Dr. W. T. Harris, the American Hegel, "presupposes the life of the race before him, and the individual cannot comprehend himself without comprehending first the evolution of his day and generation historically from the past."

"History is a divine drama, designed to educate man into self-knowledge and the knowledge of God," Tennyson recognized the divine element in human history in that prophetic verse:

"And I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

The "Miscellaneous Papers" as collected by Col. J. F. H. Claiborne constitute a rich mine for the future historian. They also indicate what can be done by others by well-direct inquiry, in the way of gathering information from "old settlers" and by going to other sources that may be accessible. The importance of this work can be scarcely overstated, and the sooner it is begun the better. A volume could be written composed of adventures and daring exploits that would be as thrilling as highly wrought fiction and make us proud of our ancestors. As an illustration of the large number of well known characters introduced, within a limited space, and of most interesting and instructive incidents I shall quote from a letter of

DR. A. R. KILPATRICK

to Col. Claiborne, written at Navasota, Grimes county, Texas, May 2, 1877:

He says; "Before I wrote those accounts of Concordia Parish, I wrote some Sketches of the early Baptist in Mississippi and Louisiana which were printed in a Baptist newspaper of New Orleans under the management of a Minister named Duncan: I think he was Rev. W. Duncan, D. D. Get copies of those papers and make use of the historical facts, because your work will be incomplete if you leave out the churches. These papers were published about 1849-51.

"My Grandfather , Robert Turner, was an early settler in Miss., and a pioneer of the Baptist Church, though not a minister. He moved a colony of nearly one hundred, white and black from Beaufort District, S. C., starting in 1804. He went up near Nickajack on the Tennessee River, built boats, put on his horses, cows, hogs, furniture and floated down to Natchez, reaching there early in 1805, he found there no settlement to suit, went down to Fort Adams, landed, and settled four miles S. W., of where Woodville now stands. There they built old Bethel Church with whipsawed lumber and wrought iron nails, each one furnishing his part of materials, or work. The Chaplain or preacher of the colony was Rev. Moses Hadley. At that time, 1805, there were only a few houses, temporary shanties, where Woodville is. Ole Uncle Bob Lecky, who kept hotel so many years in Alexandria, La., and old John S. Lewis of Woodville, were the first to put up houses. My Grandfather, R. Turner was a Surveyor and was employed to measure and lay off the streets, squares, etc., of the town in 1808. He was also summoned and served in the arrest of Aaron Burr above Natchez about 1807; he said it was so cold in February that in handling oars of the skiff the blood poured from the tips of his fingers. He represented Aaron Burr as remarkably polite, genteel, urbane, good looking, though small, and as having eyes whose glance was most penetrating and fascinating.

"There was another party of pioneers from Georgia, preceding Grandfathers; in this party were the Ogdens and Nolands."

"Captain John Ogden, near Woodville, served as Captain at the battle of New Orleans, 1814. Robert Tanner and several of his colonists moved to Rapides Parish, La. There the old gentleman died September, 1839, of yellow fever, aged 71 years. Wilkinson county furnished one Governor to Louisiana and four, I think, to Mississippi.

"The old original editor of the Woodville Republican, W. Chisholm, had all the volumes of that paper bound for over twenty years--from about 1820 to 1845. In it will be found much of Poindexter's history; also much of Moses Waddell, of Abbeville, S. C., brother-in-law of John C. Calhoun."

Rev. Wm. Winans, D. D., lived and died at Mount Pleasant, about sixteen miles east southeast of Woodville. Major Butler, of Kentucky, lived there; also General Van Dorn's father. Major Butler served in General Wilkinson's command. The general was very strict in regard, not only to his own dress, but also the dress, etc., of the officers and men under him. It was the fashion then to wear the hair long and plait it into a queue, or pig-tail behind. General Wilkinson had the misfortune to lose his pig-tail and issued an order for all to cut off their pig-tails.

Major Butler refused; Wilkinson threatened court martial; Butler resigned and retired to the farm of his sister, Mrs. Cook. In a few months he died; before dying he left special injunctions with Mr. and Mrs. Cook to have an auger-hole bored in his coffin, to have his hair neatly dressed and the pig-tail tied with a blue ribbon and run through that auger-hole, so that Wilkinson and his officers might see that he was pluck to the last and distained his authority.

Dr. Franklin L. Riley, in a lecture, gives another version of this incident, which is very amusing. Dr. Kilpatrick narrates many incidents concerning Governor Poindexter, Mr. Percy, Audubon, Jeff Davis and others.

It is said that while Aububon was at or near Woodville, his money gave out; he refused to accept gifts; but taught a dancing school, in order to get funds sufficient to enable him to proceed with his researches in Natural History. The people patronized him generously.

"I got on the Sultana at Fort Adams when S. S. Prentiss was aboard on his bridal trip--married that morning at Natchez, and the whole bridal troupe went down to New Orleans. It was my first sight and acquaintance with Prentiss. I was charmed with his manners and appearance. He had the most handsome head, and it sat better on his neck and shoulders than any person I know. That was in 1843, when his fame was world wide; yet, sir, he was as bashful, timid and quiet as a boy of 16 in the presence of those ladies."

"At table he had nothing to say, but ate his meals quietly, almost stealthily. But as soon as he came down in the social hall, he was lively and chatted enough."

I could give other extracts of value and interest from this same letter, but I will not worry you. I hope it will not be long before this letter and other important historical manuscripts will be printed.

PRE-HISTORIC JASPER ORNAMENTS IN MISSISSIPPI

R. B. FULTON, M. A., LL. D.

In the annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute for 1877, Dr. Chas. Rau, under the title of "The Stock-in-Trade of an Aboriginal Lapidary," emphasizes his conjecture "that among the aborigines certain individuals who were by inclination or practice particularly qualified for a distinct kind of manual labor, devoted themselves principally or entirely to that labor." He referred to several instances where, in certain localities, finds of a large number of similarly wrought specimens of work in stone seemed to indicate that each set of specimens came from the hands of a special lapidary.

One of the most remarkable of these deposits was found in Lawrence County, Mississippi, in 1875, and was carefully described by Dr. Rau. It consisted of 469 imperfectly finished objects made by chipping, cutting and grinding out of reddish or orange-colored or brown jasper pebbles, and was found accidentally about two and one-half feet below the surface of the ground in the northern part of Lawrence County, The objects were evidently intended for ornaments, and when finished all would have been polished and probably perforated. The majority were cylindrical in shape, and varied from one-fourth to one inch in diameter and from one-fourth to three inches in length. Others were roughly fashioned into ornamental shapes. Several showed an attempt at perforation, and one, not received at the National Museum, was said to be completely perforated.

When the hardness of the material used--jasper--is considered, the patience and skill needed to give their form and polish to these objects command admiration. From the fact that only one specimen was perforated completely, one might readily suppose that the workman found the difficulties of this part of his undertaking too great, and buried his unfinished work in despair.

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