Elephant pipes and inscribed tablets in the Museum of the Academy of natural sciences, Daveport, Iowa / by Charles E. Putnam.

  • Charles Edwin Putnam
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elephant pipes and inscribed tablets in the Museum of the Academy of natural sciences, Daveport, Iowa / by Charles E. Putnam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/100 (page 46)
    — 46- problems suggested by the discovery of our remarkable relics. Thus, assuming the correctness of any one of them — take it as established, for instance, that the American aborigines were indigenous on this continent; let it be conceded that these aborigines were the ancestors of our Red Indians, and identical with the Mound-builders; consider them, even as Major Powell desires, hewers of wood, tillers of the soil, and skilled workmen in stone; and then let the archaeologist tell us what scientific possibility or probability would be violated should we claim this ideal Indian as the artist who carved our pipes and traced our tablets? In the last analysis it will be found there is nothing anomalous in these relics. They are in harmony with the results of recent research. They are links in the chain of evidence uniting the carving in the cave of La Madeleine with our own elephant pipes and inscribed tablets. They have been long foretold by our best investiga- tors, and their discovery only fulfills a prophesy of science.* We regret the occasion which has made necessary this defense of our Academy against a most unjust assault.f Many words of cheer came to our young society from the illustrious and lamented Henry, while he was in charge of the Smithsonian Institution; and we can now regard the Institution he has left behind him only with admiration, as the emanation of his broad intelligence. The great vacancy occa- sioned by his death has been well filled by Prof. Baird, and it is fortunate for the cause of science that so capable and scholarly a suc- cessor was found to take up and carry on the im])ortant work so auspiciously commenced. The Smithsonian Institution easily takes its * “We know that both these ^reat monsters — the elephant and the mastodon — continued to inhabit the interior of our continent long- after the g-laciers had retreated beyond the upper lakes, and when the minutest detail of surface topography were the same as now. This is proven by the fact that we not unfrequently find them imbedded in peat in marshes which are still marshes, where they have l)een mired and suffocated. It is even claimed that here, as on the European continent, man was a cotemporary of the mammoth, and that here, as there, he contributed largely to its final extinction. On this point, however, more and better evidence tlfan any yet obtained is necessary before we can consider the contemporaneity of man and the elei)hant in America as proven. The zvanting' proof may he obtained to-morrozv, hut to-day zve are zvith- out itP Hayden’s Geological Survey, 1871. “The Ancient I.akes of Western America,” by I’rof. J. S. Newberry, p. 338. t The attack made upon the Davenport Academy by the Bureau of Ethnology was wholly unexpected. The paper of Mr. llenshaw has been written for several years, and yet, until the recent distribution of the volum»6.containing it, the officers of the Academy had received no inti- mation that such an accusation was impending over it. We have been accused, convicted, and sentenced without opportunity of defense. This extraordinary proceeding occasions the greater surprise from the fact that our Academy is under great obligations to the Smithsonian Institu- tion, both under the former and j)resent administrations, for esj)ecial favors. Through it our foreign excluinges have been made, and we are indebted to it for large additions to our library. We therefore hike this occasion to distinguish between that Institution and its “destructive” Bureau of Ethnology.