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.

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    83- the chief, the article is destined to produce mischief and arouse preju- dice against the Bureau. Mr. Henshaw evidently owes an apology to the Daven])ort society.”—Rev. Stephen I). Peet, July, iSSy. Pacific Science Monthly. “From Charles E. Putnam, President of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, we have received a pamphlet of forty pages relating to ele- ])hant pipes found in that vicinity. The Bureau of Ethnology, Wash- ington, made an attack upon these finds, calling in question their gen- uineness, to which Mr. Putnam replies in an incisive way that will doubtless cause the Washington relic sharps to look a ‘leedle out.’ The first of these pipes is said to have been plowed up in a corn-field in Louisa County, Iowa, in 1873, t>y Peter Mare, a German farmer. The other was discovered in March, 1880, in a mound, in the same county, by Rev. A. Blumer, a I.utheran clergyman. Rev. J. Gass, a Mr. Hass, and several workmen were present. These gentlemen are said to be irreproachable in character, and Mr. Gass is a member of the Academy. The men who made these discoveries, and the circumstances connected therewith, warrant the conclusion that they are genuine finds, and that no dece])tion whatever has been practiced in the matter. Mr. Putnam has certainly made out his case, and it seems to us that he removes every reasonable doubt as to their being genuine. Antiquarians gen- erally seem to overlook the fact that the mastodon existed upon this continent in comparatively recent times. A skeleton was found in ex- cavating the bed of a canal a few miles north of Covington, Fountain County, Indiana, bedded in wet peat, the larger bones containing the marrow, which was used by the workmen to ‘grease’ their boots. Chunks of adipocere, 2;^X3 inches, occupied the place of the kidney fat of the monster. But five years ago the remains of a mastodon were found in Iroquois County, Illinois, between the ribs of which was found a mass of herbs and grasses similar to those which still grow in that vicinity. In the same bed of clay was found land and fresh-water shells such as still exist in that locality to the present time. Evidences of this kind can be furnished from many places; hence it is not improb- able that man and the mastodon have existed together upon this con- tinent within the past five thousand years. We are aware that these views will be pooh-poohed and waved aside by some who, in their self- sufficiency, believe that archaeological wisdom will be a thing of the past when they die; nevertheless, our position is tenable and fully sus- ceptible of proof, we think. The savants of Washington have doubt- less been hasty in their condemnation of the finds we have been con- sidering.”— Stephen Bowers, Ph.D., May, 188y. The Voting Mineralogist and Antiquarian. “We believe an article in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to be open to severe criticism. The Bureau, under the management of M-ajor J.'W. Powell, has recently taken the decided^ ])osition that the Mound-builders were nothing more nor less than the