Ɛpsilon

WCP6031

Author’s draft (WCP6031.6980)

[1]1

[No address]

[No date]

The Keeper of Ethnography, B[ritish]. M[useum]2

Dear Sir,

I have posted a package containing the N[orth]. American implements to which I referred. The numbered arrow heads all come from the Smithsonian Institution3 and the only information I have about them is given on the list which accompanies is enclosed them. The bone implements & some two of the other arrow heads. Madisonville Cemetery4 & Turner Mound5 are near Cincinnati Ohio 6. When my father visited these sites in 1887 he was given some relics found there. Some of them are marked & I conclude that the unmarked specimens also come from these al sites as he refers to no others in his journal. I have added four crude scrapers picked up by myself in Eastern Idaho in the Idaho Falls7 region. Further information about the Madisonville Cemetery & Turner Mounds could, I expect, be [2] obtained from the Cincinnati Museum8 where my father records that he saw objects from these sites.

Please keep anything that is of use. If you select any from the Smithsonian collection I shall be glad if you will tick them off on the list.

I may add that I found specimens of the limpet-like form of scraper, chipped on all surfaces in the Rocky Mountain states9.

similar to those which my father obtained in Ohio (?) Unfortunately I did not mark them at the time & do not remember their exact provencance10

1
The page is numbered [WP16/2/9] in pencil in the top RH corner. The letter (possibly a draft) is unsigned but from the reference to his father, appears to be from William Greenell Wallace (1871-1951) Electrical engineer, second son and third child of ARW.
2
Braunholz, Herman Justus (1888-1963) First Keeper of Ethnographical Department, at the British Museum, which separated from the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography in 1946.
3
A group of museums and research centers funded by the estate of British scientist James Smithson (d. 1829). Established in 1846, they house an eclectic range of 138 million items.
4
A prehistoric archaeological site near Mariemont, Ohio, United States. It is the type site for the Madisonville phase of pottery of the Fort Ancient people, part of a Native American culture that flourished from 1000-1750 A.D. along the Ohio River in sedentary villages with ceremonial platform mounds. The Madisonville site is located on a bluff above the Little Miami River, about 8 km upstream from the Ohio River.
5
A complex culture of mound-builders flourished in what is now part of southern Ohio from about 800 B.C. to A.D. 400. The extensive Turner Mound group of earthworks, some more than 15 m high, are the legacy of the Hopewell and Adena people. Mica and copper ornaments, ostentatious burials, and the remains of large wooden structures, figurines modelled in clay and worked human bone objects are often found at their mound sites.
6
The third-largest city in the U. S. state of Ohio, located on the north side of the confluence of the Licking with the Ohio River, which forms the border between the states of Ohio and Kentucky.
7
The largest city in Eastern Idaho, United States.
8
The Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science houses relics of Fort Ancient Madisonville Horizon communities among its collection.
9
The eight Rocky Mountain states of the western United States are Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
10
An arrow is drawn from this afterthought to the previous paragraph, to indicate insertion after "surfaces".

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Author’s draft (WCP6031.6980)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP6031,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6031