[72] From Meen, a berry; and ace, a diminutive; hence minas or minace,
a bead, or an ornament for the neck.
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.