an specifically demonstrated; yet, as illustrating this and at the same time indicating the tiquity of metal-working in the South-west, some Zuni names of metal may appropriately be analyzed in this connection. He-we is the general term for metal. It is derived from he-sho, wax, pitch, or resinous gum (he signifying wax-like in the sense of being fusible or rendered fluid by heat), and a-we, stones "fusible-stones" or "fusible substance of stones." The Zuni name for the copper of commerce is,however, te-si-li-li he-we, "ringing vessel metal;" their names for native (unalloyed) copper is he-shi-lo-a-we, pitch, or fusible red stuff of stones. This indicates not only that copper was known to the Zuni ancestry before its introduction by the whites (in the shape of vessels, etc., so well made as to ring), but also that it was discovered, probably as have heretofore suggested, not in native masses but as a substance fused, at first accidentally from stones, and was hence named practically"the gum or pitch of stones;" and it also indicates that copper was conceived of as a kind of stone or stone material, yet as partaking in color as well as consistency (modifiability) of the qualities of pitch or waxen substances, such as the fire-cement for lacquer-like work, made of work, made of pitch and the gum of the greasewood (Larrea mexicana) and used for coating baskets, inlaid work, etc. As the words descriptive of raw or moistened skin, horn, etc., when in the state of softness induced by heat, also refer to this wax-like quality, it will be seen that the association extended still further. This, too, is shown by another term as applied to sheetmetal, which, when very thin, is alluded to as ke-pis-si-ne, or "skinthinned," precisely as a thin plate of horn or a hammered piece of parfleche or rawhide would be; and it will be seen presently that the processes of working skin to make it thin, yet stiff and flat, as well as for shaping and embossing it in this condition, were applied or might have been applied almost directly to the working of malleable and annealed or fire-softened metal in sheets. If, then, it may be reasonably inferred that the mound-builders were possessed of a knowledge of annealing, the significance of these facts and of my experiments as in part suggested by them, will be made more obvious. That the mound-builders must have been possessed of such knowledge may be inferentially assumed from the above, and is still more strongly evidenced in other ways. 1. In the working of shieldhide, parfleche, and horn, as well as in the straightening of arrowshafts or the bending of saplings, not only was heating (practically suggestive of annealing) constantly resorted to by almost all Indian tribes, but also by the use of perforated horn or bone plates and burnishers of horn or bone (themselves worked by fire-softening) in these simple arts, the essential properties of the drawplate and burnisher for metal were discovered long before metal itself was.* *Draw-plates made from the scapule of deer were formerly used by Zuni and other Indian metal-workers of the Southwest in forming silver and copper wire from slender hammered rods 2. In the seventeenth century tribes on the Ohio were found still using small rude rods of copper for piercing pearls, horny substances, wood, etc., by heating them to redness and thrusting them through the objects to be perforated. 3. Numerous mortuary altars have been found in the older mounds covered with articles of copper which, having been sacrificed in fire, were fused together in many instances, and in some cases were so thoroughly melted as to form almost homegeneous masses. 4. It is not a little surprising that those who have supposed these ancient copper-workers of the north were confined to cold hammering, have not reflected that fire was used in nearly all the Lake Superior mines or quarries, whence the copper was chiefly derived, in the same manner as at Flint Ridge and in western New York in the quarrying of flint from limestone, for the removal of copper from its rocky matrix. Fire also was occasionally employed to burn away or disintegrate small portions of rock wher found adhering to bowlder or drift copper, as shown by a specimen 1 have seen from Wisconsin. It seems to me improbable, indeed inconceivable, that a people using fire in connection with copper and the working of similar materials in so many ways as these, should not have become acquainted almost at the outset with its value for softening (as well as in at least partially reduc ing) metal, even had not the liable accidents of daily life in the use at first of cold-fashioned articles of the latter material made them acquainted with these properties. In copper-working, then, to reproduce with stone-age appliances the objects under discussion, and thus to ascertain whether they were prehistoric, and, if so, to relearn the actual methods by which they were made, I have not hesitated to freely use fire for softening my slugs and plates of metal; and in drawing out sheets by hammering with stone bowlders or mauls I have, for like reasons, simply employed the methods used by the Zuni and other Indians in hard-dressing skin, horn, and like modifiable materials. When these peoples thus dress a piece of rawhide they lay it upon a very smooth, flat, but rounded bowlder (of diorite usually) and "rub-hammer" or hammer it slantingly ("coaxingly," the Zunis would say) from the center outward, thence from the peripheries inward but always by oblique strokes tending outward. Now, I find that a piece of copper or other soft metal thus treated, of those metals. The holes in these draw-plates were very numerous and nicely graded from coarse to fine, and wax mixed with tallow was freely used to facilitate the passage of the rods . through them. The rods were not, however, unless very slender, drawn through merely, as in our corresponding operation with the steel draw-plate, but were passed through by a combination of pushing and pulling, accompanied by a twisting motion, just as arrow-shafts are rounded and straightened in a perforated horn plate. That these bone draw-plates were the direct descendants of the perforated horn arrow-straightener cannot be doubted. I am told that the Sierra Indian filagree-workers of northern Mexico also use such plates, made from the scapula of sheep, and with a like bone implement I have myself succeeded in making copper wire as fine as coarse linen thread. rapidly spreads, behaving somewhat as the rawhide does. When a maul with a slight, but very firm grain is used (a maul of compact granite or quartzite, for instance), the rough face aids the thinning and spreading of the metal (until very thin) by displacing the surface molecules at a multitude of minute points, thus pitting the face of the metal and keeping it from becoming harder and more brittle than the mass or medial portion; thereby also the metal is toughened (since the blows fall always in different places), is not so rapidly hardened throughout, and is actually not so liable to scale or crack as when treated with a smooth-faced hammer of iron or steel. As soon as, in my experiments, I have in this manner reduced a plate almost to the desired thinness, I have with a smoother stone (like the back or butt of a worn-out, well-polished diorite celt) supplied with a flexible handle, gone over both sides of it to reduce all the larger irregularities and to partially smooth the surface where pitted by the coarser maul. This may be done partly by hammering, partly by combined rubbing, pressure and rolling with a smooth, unmounted bowlder. I have then I have then proceeded precisely as an Indian would in dressing down the flesh side of his hammered sheet of parfleche. I have taken flat-faced pieces of fine sandstone and, laying the sheet of metal on a firm, level spot, with a buckskin underneath to act as a buffer and also to help hold the plate in place, have ground, then scoured, first one face, then the other, until uniformity of surface and of thickness have been secured. It happened that in some of these experiments places which had been accidentally grooved or indented in the sheet by the corner of my rubbing stone, or otherwise, when it was turned over and carelessly ground on the other side were worn or cut through. This taught me what I had before suspected, both from the study of skin-working and from very natural inference, that the sheet-metal, even when thicker than that of which the ancient FIG. 3. - Ancient sheet-copper eagle figure from an Illinois mound. specimens usually found in the mounds were fashioned, could be cut into any form or perforated in well-nigh limitless variety of pattern by pressure-grooving, repousse, or line-embossing from one side or surface, and by grinding across the resultantly raised lines of the other side or opposite surface; and in this further development of the experiments I as constantly resorted to methods in vogue among Indians to-day for embossing skin, etc. For instance, in one of my experimental efforts to reproduce the celebrated sheet-copper figure of an eagle (Fig. 3) found many years ago by Major Powell in a mound near Peoria, Illinois, I first prepared my plate of metal as above related and softened it by heating to redness for several minutes on a brisk ember-fire. When cooled I lightly traced the outline of the figure on one face of the metal plate, and placed the latter, with tracing uppermost, on a yielding mat of buckskin, folded. and laid on a level, hard spot of ground. Then I took a long, with it. Moderately deep and remarkably sharp smooth grooves were thus plowed or impressed in the ductile metal wherever the horn point had traversed it, except along upward curves and around sharp turns or where hard places happened to occur in the plate. In order to deepen the grooving at such points as these, I found that it was only necessary to use a rounded chisel made from the humerus of a deer, like an Indian skin-flesher of bone. This, firmly grasped and pressed by the hand alone, then rolled or rocked to and fro, served admirably to FIG. 4.Method of grooving copper plate with horn embossing tool preparatory to severing. pointed tool of buckhorn and, adjusting the butt of it against my chest and the point to the design, pressed downward with as much of my weight as was needful to make it sink slightly into the metal (Fig. 4), and, continuing the pressure evenly, went over all of the longer lines of the tracing deepen straight grooves to any extent desirable, or, if twirled while it was being pressed down and rocked, to impress or deepen curved lines (Fig. 5). When all the lines of the design had been completed by these combined processes of pressure-drawing with the horn tool and pres form as outlined by the embossing (Fig 7) was thus completely severed from the plate, leaving the portion from which it had been removed like the open space of a stencil. In subsequent experiments I discovered many additional processes, and developed improvements on the earlier ways of working. Perhaps the most significant of these latter was the employment of part-patterns (cut out of firm, yet slightly flexible rawhide by identical methods) as guides for figures of bisymmetrical outline, such as are so often found in the mounds. By firmly holding one of these half-patterns flat against the plate to be embossed for cutting out, then running the horn point around it to strike-in one side of the design, reversing the pattern and continuing the embossing operation for the other side, an outline at once intricate, and of course bilaterally symmetrical, could be almost as rapidly struck-in as could be the simplest device. Such outline could also be repeated any desired number of times. [To be concluded.] AN ACCOUNT OF THE SIOUX GHOST DANCE. ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN. In the month of July, 1889, I joined a party of Indians with whom I had long been acquainted, and set out with them upon a deerhunt in the sand-hills of Nebraska. My object was to establish an intimacy which would permit me to learn more of their peculiar customs and habits of thought, and to this trip, which covered a period of ten weeks, I owe much of my knowledge of the Sioux. We camped the second night on the banks of a wooded creek between the Lower Brule and Rosebud Agencies. Supper was over, the beds in the several tents arranged, the camp fires were burn |