But that great command o’ersways the order,She should in ground unsanctified have lodgedTill the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
But that great command o’ersways the order,She should in ground unsanctified have lodgedTill the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
But that great command o’ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
The flints and potsherds, Canon Green well remarks, “occur at times in very large quantities, the flints generally in the shape of mere chippings and waste pieces, but often as manufactured articles, such as arrow points, knives, saws, drills and scrapers, etc.” He further notes that they are found distributed throughout the sepulchral mound, “in some instances in such quantities as to suggest the idea that the persons who were engaged in throwing up the barrow, scattered them from time to time during the process.” Assuredly whatever motive actuated those who contributed such objects while the sepulchral mound was in progress of erection, they were not designed as any slight to the manes of the dead. In districts remote from those where the flint abounds, flakes and chips of the prized material must have been in constant demand to replenish the sheaf of arrows, and replace the lost or broken lance, knife, and scraper. The trader would barter the raw material for furs and other equivalents, or the industrious miner would carry off an adequate supply for his own future use. Such small objects, possessing a universally appreciable value, would be as available for current change as the African cowrie, the Ioqua shells of the Pacific coast, or the wampum-beads of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. If this assumption be correct, the scattering of flint flakes, while the mound was being piled over the grave, was a form oflargess not less significant than any later tribute of reverence to the dead.
The sources whence such supplies of raw material of the old flint-worker were derived, have been sufficiently explored to furnish confirmatory evidence of some, at least, of the deductions suggested by other indications thus far noted. The archæologists of Europe are now familiar with many localities which have been the quarries and workshops, as well as the settled abodes, of palæolithic and neolithic man; nor are such unknown in America, though research has to be greatly extended before definite conclusions can be accepted relative to the earliest presence of man on the western continent. Flint and stone implements of every variety of form, and nearly every degree of rudeness, abound in the soil of the New World. But in estimating the true significance of such evidence, it has to be borne in remembrance that its indigenous population has not even now abandoned the arts of their Stone period. Implements have already been referred to still in use among the Shoshone, Texas, and other living tribes, ruder than any yet recovered from the river-drift of France or England; whilst others, more nearly resembling the palæolithic types of Europe, have been met with, some of them imbedded in the rolled gravels, or glacial drift, and associated with bones of the mastodon and other fossil mammals. But the evidence as to palæolithic origin has been, at best, doubtful. An imperfect flint knife, now in the Museum of the University of Toronto, was recovered from a depth of upwards of fourteen feet, among rolled gravel and gold-bearing quartz of the Grinnel Leads in Kansas Territory. Flint implements from the auriferous gravel of California were produced at the Paris Exposition of 1855. According to the Geological Survey of Illinois for 1866, stone axes and flint spear heads were obtained from a bed of local drift near Alton, underlying the loess, and at the same depth as bones of the mastodon. Similar discoveries have been repeatedly noted in Southern States. The river Chattahoochee, in Georgia, in its course down the Nacoochee valley, flows through a rich auriferous region. Explorers in search for gold have made extensive cuttings through the underlying drift-gravel, down to the slate rock upon which it rests; and during one of these excavations, at a depth of nine feet, intermingled with thegravel and boulders of the drift, three large implements were found, nearly resembling the rude flint hatchets of the drift type. Examples of this class, however, though repeatedly noted, have been too isolated to admit of their use for any such comprehensive inductions as the disclosures of the glacial drift of north-western Europe have justified. The evidence hitherto adduced, when implements of this class have been of flint, has failed to establish their palæolithic age, notwithstanding their recovery from ancient gravels. Implements of flint occur in great abundance throughout vast areas of the American continent. With the fact before us that even now the Stone period of its aborigines has not wholly passed away, careful observation is required in determining the probable age of stray specimens buried even at considerable depths.
But disclosures of an actual American implement-bearing drift appear at length to have been met with in the valley of the Delaware. These show the primitive tool-maker resorting to a granular argillite, the cleavage of which adapted itself to the requirements of his rude art. Professor Shaler, in a report on the age of the Delaware gravel beds, describes this formation as occurring from Virginia northward to Labrador, though it is only in New Jersey and Delaware that the accompanying evidences of human art have been thus far recovered. The New Jersey drift is made up of transported material, including boulders and smaller fragments of granitic, hypogene, sandstone, and limestone rocks, along with water-worn pebbles of the same granular argillite as the characteristic stone implements recovered from it, to which, from their peculiar shape, the name of “turtle-back celts” has been given. There is little true clay in the deposit to give coherence to the mass. The type of pebble is subovate, or discoidal, suggesting its form to be due to the action of running water; and it seems probable that the stone was not quarried out of the living rock, but that the pebbles thus reduced to a convenient form were turned to account by the tool-maker. The researches of Dr. Abbott have been rewarded by the discovery in the drift-gravel of numerous examples of this peculiar type of implement, for which the one material appears to have been used, notwithstanding the varied contents of the drift-gravel in which they occur. As in the case of the French and English river-drift,the fractured material is found in every stage of disintegration. Professor Shaler says: “Along with the perfect-looking implements figured by Dr. Abbott, which are apparently as clearly artificial as the well-known remains of the valley of the Somme, there are all grades of imperfect fragments, down to the pebbles that are without a trace of chipping.” But more recent discoveries in the Delaware valley point to remains of a still earlier age than those described by Dr. Abbott. These naturally attracted attention to the region; for there, for the first time, the American archæologist saw a promise of disclosures corresponding in character to those of the European drift-gravels. A systematic and prolonged series of investigations accordingly carried out by Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson, under the direction of the Peabody Museum, have resulted in fresh disclosures of early American man. The Naaman’s Creek rock-shelter, carefully explored by him, is situated in the State of Delaware, immediately to the south of Mason and Dixon’s line. There in underlying deposits, claimed to be of Post-Glacial age, rudely chipped points and other implements, all of argillite, were found; and at a higher level, others of argillite, but intermingled with bone implements, and fragments of rude pottery, and alongside of these, implements fashioned of quartzite and jasper. The antiquity assigned to the Delaware implements, as determined by the age of the tool-bearing gravel, is much greater than that of the Trenton gravels previously referred to; but though remains of fifteen different species of animals, including fragments of a human skull, were recovered from the cave or rock-shelter, they include none but existing fauna. But the evidence of antiquity is based most confidently on the discovery of palæolithsin situin the true Philadelphia red gravel. Professor G. F. Wright remarks, in discussing the relative ages of the Trenton and Philadelphia red gravel, that both he and Professor Lewis came to the same conclusion: assigning the deposition of the red gravel to a period when the ice had its greatest extension, and when there was considerable local depression of the land. “During this period of greatest ice-extension and depression, the Philadelphia Red Gravel and Brick Clay were deposited by the ice-laden floods which annually poured down the valley in the summer season. As the ice retreated towards the headwaters of the valley, theperiod was marked also by a re-elevation of the land to about its present height, when the later deposits of gravel at Trenton took place. Dr. Abbott’s discoveries at Trenton prove the presence of man on the continent at that stage of the Glacial epoch. Mr. Cresson’s discoveries prove the presence of man at a far earlier stage. How much earlier will depend upon our interpretation of the general facts bearing on the question of the duality of the Glacial epoch,”[25]—a branch of the inquiry which it is not necessary to discuss here. It is sufficient to note that this argillite—an altogether inferior material to the flint, or hornstone of later tool-makers,—appears, thus far, to be a characteristic feature of American palæolithic art. The locality of the native rock is still undetermined; but implements fashioned of it have been found in great numbers along the escarpments facing the river Delaware. Professor Shaler describes the material as a curious granular argillite, the like of which, he says, “I do not know in place.” Should the native rock be hereafter identified, with traces of the manufactured celts in its vicinity, it may help to throw light on the age and history of the primitive American implement-makers.
The flint of the cretaceous deposits does not occur in America. True chalk is all but unknown among the cretaceous strata of the continent, although it has been found in the form of a somewhat extensive bed in Western Kansas. In Texas, the cretaceous limestones contain in places hornstone nodules distributed through them, like the flint nodules in the upper chalk beds of Europe. But though, so far, differing in origin, the hornstone and flint are practically identical; and the chert, or hornstone, which abounds in the chert-layers of the corniferous formation, of common occurrence in Canada, is simply a variety of flint, consisting essentially, like the substance to which that name is specifically applied, of amorphous silica, and with a similar cleavage. This Devonian formation is made up chiefly of limestone strata, parted in many places by layers of chert which vary in thickness from half an inch to three or four inches. The limestones are more or less bituminous, and frequently contain chert nodules. Most of their fossils are silicified. The formation underlies a considerable portion of South-western Ontario. Out-crops occur at Port Dover, PortColborne, Kincardine, Woodstock, St. Mary’s, and other localities. At a point which I have explored more than once near Port Dover, implements occur in considerable numbers, along with fractured or imperfect specimens, mingled with flakes and chippings, evidently indicative of a spot where their manufacture was carried on. At this, and some others of the localities here named, Canadian flint pits may be looked for. Among other objects illustrative of primitive native arts in the Museum of the University of Toronto, is a block of flint or brown chert, from which flakes have been struck off for the use of the native arrow-maker. This flint core was found in a field on Paisley Block, in Guelph Township, along with a large flake, a scraper, and fourteen arrow heads of various sizes, all made from the same material. Alongside of them lay a flint hammer-stone bearing marks of long use. All of those objects are now in the University Museum, and appear to indicate the site of an aboriginal workshop, with one of the tools of the ancient arrow-maker, who there fashioned his implements and weapons, and traded with them to supply the need of the old Huron or Petun Indians of Western Canada. The Spider Islands in Lake Winnipeg, near its outlet, have been noted by Dr. Robert Bell, as a favourite resort of the old workers in flint, where they could trade the products of their industry with parties of Indians passing in their canoes. “I have found,” he says, “a considerable number of new flint implements, all of one pattern, in a grave near one of those sites of an old factory”; the body of a man—presumably the old arrow-maker,—had been buried there in a sitting posture, surrounded with the latest products of his industrious skill.
In 1875 I devoted several weeks to a careful study of some of the principal groups of ancient earthworks in the Ohio valley, and visited Flint Ridge to examine a group of native flint pits in the old Shawnee territory. The Shawnees were formerly a numerous and powerful tribe of Indians; but they took part, in 1763, in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and were nearly exterminated in a battle fought in the vicinity of their old quarries. From these it is probable that the older race of Mound-Builders of the Ohio valley procured the material from which they manufactured many of their implements, including some of those used in the construction of their great earthworks.
Flint Ridge, as the locality is called, a siliceous deposit of the Carboniferous age, extends through the State of Ohio, from Newark to New Lexington. It has been worked at various points in search of the prized material; and the ancient pits can still be recognised over an extensive area by the funnel-shaped hollows, or slighter depressions where the accumulated vegetable mould of many winters has nearly effaced the traces of the old miners. The chert, or hornstone, of this locality accords with that from which the implements recovered from the mounds appear to have been chiefly made. One fact which such disclosures place beyond doubt, namely, that the so-called Mound-Builders had not advanced beyond the stage of flint or stone implements, is of great significance. Their numbers are proved by the extent of their earthworks in many localities in the Ohio valley; and the consequent supply of implements needed by them as builders must have involved a constant demand for the flint-miners and tool-makers. The great earthworks at Newark are among the most extensive structures of this class, covering an area of several miles, and characterised by the perplexing element of elaborate geometrical figures, executed on a gigantic scale by a people still in the primitive stage of stone implements, and yet giving proof of skill fully equalling, in the execution of their geometrical designs, that of the scientific land-surveyor. On this special aspect of the question, it may be well to revert to notes written immediately after a careful survey of the Newark earthworks, so as to suggest more clearly their extent and the consequent number of workmen and of tools in demand for their execution. The sacred enclosures have to be classed apart from the military works of the Mound-Builders. Their elaborate fortifications occupy isolated heights specially adapted for defence, whereas the broad river-terraces have been selected for their religious works. There, on the great unbroken levels, they form groups of symmetrical enclosures, square, circular, elliptical, and octagonal, connected by long parallel avenues, suggesting analogies with the British Avebury, the Breton Carnac, or even with the temples and sphinx-avenues of the Egyptian Karnak and Luxor; but all wrought of earth, with the simple tools made from quartzite, chert, or hornstone, derived from quarries and flint pits, such as those of Flint Ridge, the localities of which have been identified.
For a time the tendency among American archæologists was to exaggerate the antiquity of those works, and to overestimate the artistic skill of their builders. But it now appears that some vague memories of the race have been perpetuated. The traditions of the Delawares preserved the remembrance of the Talligew or Tallegewi, a powerful nation whose western borders extended to the Mississippi, over whom they, in conjunction with the fierce warrior race of Wyandots or Iroquois, triumphed. The old name of the Mound-Builders is believed to survive, in modified form, in that of the Alleghany Mountains and River; and the Chatta-Muskogee tribes, including the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and other southern Indians of the same stock, are supposed to represent the ancient race. The broad fertile region stretching southward from the Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico must have attracted settlers from earliest times. It was latterly occupied by various tribes of this Chatta-Muskogee stock; but intermingled with others speaking essentially different languages, and supposed to be the descendants of the older occupants of the region on whom the Tallegewi intruded when driven out of the Ohio valley. The Cherokees preserved a tradition of having come from the upper Ohio. They have been classed by the Washington ethnologists as a distant branch of the Iroquois stock; but Mr. Hale, finding their grammar mainly Huron-Iroquois, while their vocabulary is largely derived from another source, ingeniously infers that one portion of the despairing Talligewi may have cast in their lot with the conquering race, as the Tlascalans did with the Spaniards in their war against the Aztecs. Driven down the Mississippi till they reached the country of the Choctaws, they, mingling with friendly tribes, became the founders of the Cherokee nation. Among the older native tribes were the Catawbas and the Natchez. They were sun-worshippers, maintained a perpetual fire, and regarded the great luminary as a goddess, and the mother of their race. It is probable that in their religious rites some memory survived of the more elaborate worship of the old occupants of the Ohio valley; for the Natchez claimed that in their prosperity they numbered five hundred towns, and their northern borders extended to the Ohio.
De Soto traversed the Chatta-Muskogee region, when, in1540, he discovered the Mississippi. He found there a numerous population lodged in well-constructed dwellings, and with their council-houses surmounting lofty mounds. De Soto and later travellers noted their extensive fields of maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, and their well-finished flint implements. They were Mound-Builders; and though no longer manifesting in extended geometrical earthworks the special characteristic of the old race, it is assumed that in them we recover traces of the vanished people of the Ohio valley.
With this assignment of the Mound-Builders to an affinity with Indian nations still represented by existing tribes, the vague idea of some strange prehistoric American race of remote antiquity vanishes; and the latter tendency has been rather to underestimate their distinctive peculiarities. Some of these seem to separate them from any Indian tribe of which definite accounts have been preserved; and foremost among them is the evidence of comprehensive design, and of scientific skill in the construction of their sacred enclosures. The predominant impression suggested by the great military earthworks of the Mound-Builders is that of a people co-operating under the guidance of approved leaders, with a view to the defence of large communities. Elaborate fortifications are erected on well-chosen hills or bluffs, and strengthened by ditches, mounds, and complicated approaches; but the lines of earthwork are everywhere adapted to the natural features of the site. The sacred enclosures are, on the contrary, constructed on the level river-terraces with elaborate artificiality of design, but on a scale of magnitude not less imposing than that of the largest hill-forts. On first entering the great circle at Newark, and looking across its broad trench at the lofty embankment overshadowed with tall forest trees, my thoughts reverted to the Antonine vallum, which by like evidence still records the presence of the Roman masters of the world in North Britain 1700 years ago. But after driving over a circuit of several miles, embracing the remarkable earthworks of which that is only a single feature, and satisfying myself by personal observation of the existence of parallel avenues which have been traced for nearly two miles and of the grand oval, circles, and octagon, the smallest of which measures upwards of half a mile in circumference,all idea of mere combined labour is lost in the higher conviction of manifest skill, and even science. The octagon indeed is not a perfect figure. Its angles are not coincident, but the sides are very nearly equal; and the enclosure approaches so closely to an accurate figure that its error is only demonstrated by actual survey. Connected with it by parallel embankments 350 feet long, is a true circle, measuring 2880 feet in circumference; and distant nearly a mile from this, but connected with it by an elaborate series of earthworks, is the great circular structure previously referred to. Its actual form is an ellipse; the different diameters of which are 1250 feet and 1150 feet respectively; and it encloses an area of upwards of 30 acres. At the entrance the enclosing embankment curves outward on either side for a distance of 100 feet, leaving a level way between the ditches, 80 feet wide, and at this point it measures about 30 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the summit. The area of the enclosure is almost perfectly level, so that during rain-floods the water stands at a uniform height nearly to the edge of the ditch.
The skulls of the Mound-Builders have been appealed to for indications of the intellectual capacity of the ancient race; but mounds and earthworks were habitually resorted to at long subsequent dates as favourite places of interment; so that skulls derived from modern graves are ascribed to the ancient race; and much difficulty has been found in agreeing on a typical mound skull. Even after making allowance for modifications due to artificial malformation, and eliminating those derived from superficial interments, a very noticeable diversity is found in the comparatively few undoubtedly genuine mound skulls, which may lend some countenance to the idea of the presence of two essentially distinct races among the ancient settlers in the Ohio valley.[26]It seems to accord with the unmistakable traces of intellectual progress of a kind foreign to the attainments of any known race of the North American continent, thus found in association with arts and methods of work not greatly in advance of those of the Indian savage. The only satisfactory solution of the problem seems to present itself in the assumption of the existence among them of a theocratic order, like the priests of ancient Egypt, the Brahmins of India,or the Incas of Peru, under whom the vanished race of the Ohio valley—Tallegewi, Muskogees, Natchez, Alleghans, or other American aborigines,—executed their vast geometrical earthworks with such mathematical accuracy.
The contents of the earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys show that the copper, found in a pure metallic condition at various points around Lake Superior, was not unknown to their constructors. But in this they had little advantage over the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, in whose grave mounds copper axes and spear heads occasionally occur. It is even possible that working parties were despatched from time to time to the ancient copper mines on the Kewenaw peninsula, on Lake Superior, to bring back supplies of the prized malleable rock, which could be bent and hammered into shape in a way that no other stone was susceptible of. But the labours of the native miners were inadequate to provide supplies that could in any degree suffice to displace the flint or quartzite of the implement-maker. One use, however, has been suggested for the copper, in relation to the labours of the flint-workers. Mr. George Ercol Sellers, whose researches among the workshops of the ancient tool-makers have thrown much light on their processes, was led, from careful observation of some of their unfinished work, to the opinion that copper was in special request in the operations of the flint-flaker. After referring to the well-known use of horn or bone-flakers, he thus proceeds: “From the narrowness of the cuts in some of the specimens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I have inclined to the belief that, at the period they were made, the aborigines had something stronger than bone to operate with, as I have never been able to imitate some of their deep heavy cuts with it; but I have succeeded by using a copper point, which possesses all the properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping, and has the strength for direct thrust required.”[27]No copper tool, however, was recovered by Mr. Sellers among the vast accumulations of implements and waste chips, hereafter described, on the sites of the ancient workers’ industrious operations, though some of those found elsewhere may have been used for such a purpose.
The evidence that the ancient dwellers in the Ohio valley were still in their Stone age is indisputable. But to a people apparently under the guidance of an order or cast far in advance of themselves in some important branches of knowledge, and by whom the utility of the metals was beginning to be discerned—though they had not yet mastered the first step in metallurgy by the use of fire,—their speedy advance beyond the neolithic stage was inevitable. But an open valley, accessible on all sides, was peculiarly unfavourable for the first transitional stage of a people just emerging from barbarism. Their numbers, it is obvious, were considerable; and agriculture must have been carried out on a large scale to furnish the means of subsistence for a settled community. They had entered on a course which, if unimpeded, must have inevitably tended to develop the higher elements of social life and political organisation. But their duration as a settled community appears to have been brief. Some faint tradition of the irruption of the northern barbarians of the New World survives. The Iroquois, that indomitable race of savage warriors, swept through the valley with desolating fury; the dawn of civilisation on the northern continent of America was abruptly arrested; and the present name of the great river along the banks and on the tributaries of which the memorials of the Tallegewi abound, is one conferred on it by their supplanters, who were equally successful in thwarting the aims of France to introduce the higher forms of European civilisation there.
Some singularly interesting information relative to the traces of the ancient flint-workers in the Ohio valley, is furnished by Mr. Sellers. His observations were made when that region still remained, to a large extent, undisturbed by civilised intruders on the deserted Indian settlements. He notes many places along the banks of the Ohio and its tributaries, at an elevation above the spring floods except at rare intervals of violent freshets, where the flaking process of the old flint-workers had been extensively carried on, and where cores and waste chips abound. “At one of those places, on the Kentucky side of the river,” he says, “I found a number of chert blocks, as when first brought from the quarry, from which no regular flakes had been split; somehad a single corner broken off as a starting-point. On the sharp right-angled edge of several I found the indentations left by small flakes having been knocked off, evidently by blows, as a preparation for seating the flaking tool. Most of the localities referred to are now under cultivation. Before being cleared of the timber and subjected to the plough, no surface relics were found, but on the caving and wearing away of the river banks, many spear and arrow heads and other stone relics were left on the shore. After the land had been cleared, and the plough had loosened the soil, one of the great floods that occur at intervals of some fifteen or twenty years, would wash away the loose soil, leaving the great flint workshops exposed.” There, accordingly, he notes among the materials thus brought to light, the cores or nuclei thrown aside, caches stored with finished and unfinished implements and flakes, the tools and wastage, vast accumulations of splinters, etc., all serving to illustrate the processes of the ancient flint-workers.
The depth at which some accumulations occur, overlaid by the growth of the so-called primeval forest, points to them as contemporary with, if not in some cases older than, the earthworks of the Mound-Builders. The extent, indeed, to which some are overlaid by subsequent accumulations suggests a remote era. In 1853 Mr. Sellers first visited the site of one of those ancient work-yards, on the northern bank of the Saline river, about three miles above its junction with the Ohio. The region was then covered with dense forest, with the exception of a narrow strip along the bank of the river, which had been cleared in connection with recently opened coal works. But at a later date, in sinking a cistern, about 200 yards from the river bank, the excavation was made through a mass of flint chips. Subsequently heavy rains, after ploughing, exposed some spears and arrow points. “But it was not until the great flood of the winter of 1862 and 1863 that overflowed this ridge three or four feet with a rapid current, that the portion under cultivation on the river bank was denuded, exposing over six acres of what at first appeared to be a mass of chips or stone rubbish, but amongst it were found many hammer-stones, celts, grooved axes, cores, flakes, almost innumerable scrapers and other implements, and many tynes from the buck or stag, all of which bore evidence ofhaving been scraped to a point. On exposure to the air they fell to pieces.” The actual site of the quarry appears to have been subsequently identified. “The greater number of cores, scattered flakes, finished and unfinished implements, are of the chert from a depression in a ridge three miles to the south-east, where there are abundant indications of large quantities having been quarried.” But the same great work-yard of the ancient Mound-Builders furnished evidence of other sources of supply. Mr. Sellers noted the finding “a few cores of the white chert from Missouri, and the red and yellow jasper of Kentucky and Tennessee,” but he adds, “the flakes of these have mostly been found in nests or small caches, many of which have been exposed; and in every case the flakes they contained were more or less worked on their edges; whereas the flakes from the neighbouring chert preserved their sharp edges as when split from the mass. These cache specimens with their worked serrated edges would, if found singly, be classed as saws or cutting implements. But here where found in mass, evidently brought from a distance, to a place where harder chert of a much better character for cutting implements abounds, they tell a different story.” The material was better adapted for the manufacture of certain classes of small implements much in demand, and the serrated edge is simply the natural result of the mode of working of this species of chert and of the jasper.
The fine-grained quartzite was also in request, especially for the manufacture of the largest class of implements, including hoes and spades, equally needed by the primitive agriculturist, and by the navvies to whose industrious toil the vast earthworks of the Ohio valley are due. The site of the old quartzite quarry appears to be about eight miles from the banks of Saline river; but there are many other localities scattered over the region extending from southern Illinois to the Mississippi, where the same substitute for chert or hornstone occurs. Some of the quartzite hoes or spades measure sixteen inches in length, with a breadth of from six to seven inches, and evince remarkable dexterity and skill in their manufacture. Here, accordingly, it becomes apparent that there was a time in the history of this continent, before its existence was revealed to the race that now peoples the Ohio valley, whenthat region was the scene of busy native industry; and its manufacturers quarried and wrought the chert, jasper, and quartzite, and traded the products of their skill over an extensive region. But the germs of an incipient native civilisation were trodden out by the inroads of savage warriors from the north; and the towns and villages of the industrious community were replaced by what appeared to La Salle, the discoverer and first explorer of Ohio river, as the primeval forest.
It throws an interesting light on the industrial processes of the ancient flint-workers to learn that, even in a region where the useful chert abounded, they went far afield in search of other materials specially adapted for some classes of implements. They were unquestionably a settled community, in a higher stage than any of the tribes found in occupation of that or any neighbouring region when first visited by Europeans. But many tribes, both of the Northern and Southern States, habitually travelled far distances to the sea coast, where still the ancient shell mounds attest their presence. The routes thus annually pursued by the Indians of the interior of Pennsylvania, for example, were familiar to the early surveyors, and some of their trails undoubtedly marked the footprints of many generations. In traversing those routes, as well as in their autumnal encampments on the coast, opportunities were afforded of selecting suitable materials for their implements from localities remote from their homes. The lines of those old trails have accordingly yielded numerous examples of the wayfarers’ weapons and tools, as well as of unfinished implements. We are apt to think of a people in their Stone period as merely turning to account materials lying as accessible to all as the loose stones employed as missiles by the vagrant schoolboy. But such an idea is manifestly inapplicable, not only to the arts of communities like those by whom the earthworks of the Ohio valley were constructed, but to many far older workers in flint or stone. The Indian arrow-maker and the pipe-maker, it is manifest, often travelled great distances for the material best suited to their manufactures; and the use of flint or hornstone for slingstones, lance and arrow heads, as well as for knives, scrapers, axes, and other domestic and agricultural tools, musthave involved a constant demand for fresh supplies. It might be assumed, therefore, apart from all direct evidence, that a regular system of quarrying for the raw material both of the pipe and the implement-maker was pursued; and that by trade or barter the pipestone of divers qualities, and the chert or hornstone, the quartzite, jasper, and other useful minerals, were thus furnished to tribes whose homesteads and hunting-grounds yielded no such needful supplies. But the same region which abounds in such remarkable evidences of the ingenious arts of a vanished race, also furnishes traces of the old miners, by whose industry the flint was quarried and roughly chipped into available forms for transport to distant localities, or for barter among the Mound-Builders in the region traversed by the great river. At various points on Flint Ridge, Ohio, and localities far beyond the limits of that state, as at Leavenworth, 300 miles south of Cincinnati, where the gray flint abounds, evidences of systematic quarrying illustrate the character and extent of this primitive commerce. Funnel-shaped pits occur, in many cases filled up with the accumulated vegetable mould of centuries, or only traceable by a slight depression in the surface of the ground. When cleared out, they extend to a depth of from four or five, to nearly twenty feet. On removing the mould, the sloping sides of the pit are found to be covered with pieces of fractured flint, intermingled with unfinished or broken implements, and with others partially reduced to shape. The largest hoes and spades hitherto noted appear to have been fashioned of quartzite, but those of most common occurrence in Ohio and Kentucky are made of the gray flint or chert, which abounds in the Flint Ridge pits in blocks amply sufficing for the manufacture of tools upwards of a foot in length, such as may be assumed to have been employed in the construction of the great earthworks. But the transportation of the unwrought blocks of hornstone to the work-yards in the valley would have involved great labour in the construction of roads, as well as of sledges or waggons suited to such traffic. In lieu of this, the accumulated waste chips in the quarries show the amount of labour that was expended there in order to facilitate the transport of the useful material. Suitable flakes and chips were no doubt also carried off to be turned to account for scrapers,knives, and other small implements. Partially shaped disks and other pieces of all sizes abound in the pits, but the finer manipulation, by means of which small arrow heads, lances, drills, scrapers, etc., were fashioned, was reserved for leisure hours at home, and for the patient labour of the skilled tool-maker, for whose use the raw material was chiefly quarried.
In the tool-bearing drift of France and England the large characteristic flint implements occur in beds of gravel and clay abounding in flakes and chips in every stage of accidental fracture, to some of which M. Boucher de Perthes assigned an artificial origin and very fanciful significance. But if the palæolithic flint-worker in any case quarried for his material before the latest geological reconstruction of the beds of rolled gravel, the fractured flints may include traces of primeval quarrying as well as of the tool-maker’s labours; for the rolled gravel beds occur in river-valleys best adapted to the habitat of post-glacial man.
In a report furnished to the Peabody Museum of Archæology, by Mr. Paul Schumacher, he contributes some interesting evidence relative to the stone-workers of Southern California. The Indians of the Pacific coast, south of San Francisco, not only furnished themselves with chisels, axes, and the like class of implements, but with pots for culinary purposes, made of steatite, usually of a greenish-gray colour. In 1876, Mr. Schumacher discovered various quarries of the old pot-manufacturers, with their tools and unfinished articles lying there. The softer stone had been used for pots, while the close-grained darker serpentine was chiefly employed in making the weights for digging sticks, cups, pipes, and ornaments. “I was struck,” he says, “on examining the locality through a field-glass, by the discovery of so many silver-hued mounds, the debris of pits, the rock quarries and open-air workshops, so that I believed I had found the main factory of the ollas of the California aborigines.”[28]He also discovered the slate quarry, where the rock had been broken off in irregular blocks, from which pieces best adapted for chisels were selected and fashioned into the forms specially useful in making the steatite pots. A venerable Spanish lady told Mr. Schumacher that she recollected her mother telling her how the Indianshad broughtollasin canoe-loads from the islands in Santa Barbara Channel to the mainland, and there exchanged them for such necessities as the islanders were in need of. This tradition was subsequently confirmed by an old Mexican guide. Similar evidence of systematic industry with the accompanying trade, or barter, meets the explorer at many points from the Gulf of Mexico northward to beyond the Canadian lakes. The pyrulæ from the Mexican Gulf are of frequent occurrence in northern ossuaries and grave mounds, while corresponding southern sepulchral deposits disclose the catlinite of the Couteau des Prairies and the native copper of the Lake Superior mines. Obsidian is another prized material only to be foundin situin volcanic regions, but met with in manufactured forms in many diverse regions, remote from the obsidian quarries.
The routes of ancient traffic, determined in part by the geographical contour of the regions through which they pass, are familiar to the historical students in the Old World. The ancient lines traversed by the traders between the Persian Gulf and the Levant; the routes of caravans by way of the oases, across the centre of the Arabian peninsula to the Red Sea; the lines of access by road and river from the Baltic to the Danube; and from the British Isles and the North Sea, by the valley of the Rhone, to the Mediterranean: are all indicated by a variety of evidence. The geography of Central Africa appears to have been familiar to the Arabian traders from remote ages. Similar well-trodden routes, and traverses by lake and river, are well known to the investigators of American antiquity. The great trail across Pennsylvania to the Mississippi; the route by the great lakes and by portage to the Hudson valley, and so to the Atlantic; from Lake Ontario, by the Humber and Lake Simcoe, to the Georgian Bay; from Lake Superior, by the Mitchipicotten river, to the Hudson Bay; and by the Mississippi and its tributaries to the Gulf of Mexico: are all demonstrated by abundant traces of the interchange of the products of widely severed regions, as disclosed in ancient burial mounds, and deposits assignable to remote periods and to long-extinct races. West of the Rocky Mountains the trails from the Pacific coast to the interior, and through the passes of that lofty range, have been recovered.Owing to the bold contours of the region, in the abrupt descent from the western slope of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, the routes of travel are more strictly defined by the physical geography of the country than in the long stretches of the continent to the east of that mountain range. An interchange of commodities between the tribes of the coast and the interior appears to have been carried on from remote times. Dr. Dawson’s own personal observations in British Columbia have satisfied him that trading intercourse was prosecuted by the coast tribes with those of the interior, along the Fraser River Valley; Bella Coola Valley, from head of Benetinck Arm; Skeena River; Stiking River; and Chilkoot Pass, from the head of Lynn Canal. By the second of the above routes oolacten oil was carried far into the interior; and the old trail leading from Bella Coola and Fraser river is chiefly associated by the inland Indians with this traffic. The habitual traffic engendered by the local advantages of some of the tribes on the northern Pacific coast has manifestly developed some peculiarities which distinguish them from other Indians of the northern continent. The Bilqula, a people inhabiting a limited tract in the vicinity of Dean Inlet and Benetinck Arms, by reason of their geographical position have held command of the most important natural pass and trade route from the ocean to the interior between the Skeena and the Fraser rivers, a distance of upwards of 400 miles. From remotest times embraced in the native traditions a route has been traversed by way of the Bella Coola river, thence northward to the Salmon river, and then along the north side of the Blackwater river to the Upper Fraser. Dentalium shells and other prized objects of barter were carried over this route; but the article of chief value brought from the coast was the oil of the Oolacten or Candle Fish; and hence this thoroughfare is commonly known among the Tinné of the interior as the “Grease Trail.”
Along this and other long-frequented trails the broken implements, flint and obsidian chips, and other traces of the natives by whom they have been traversed, not only afford proof of their presence there, but at times disclose indications of the regions they have visited in going to or returning from the interior. Dr. G. M. Dawson informs me that, whiletravelling along various Indian trails and routes in British Columbia, west of Fraser river, and between lats. 52° and 54°, chips and flakes of obsidian were not unfrequently observed. The Tinné Indians stated that the material was obtained from a mountain near the headwaters of the Salmon river (about long. 125° 40′, lat. 52° 40′), which was formerly resorted to for the purpose of procuring this prized material. The Indian name of this mountain isBece, and Dr. Dawson further notes the suggestive fact that this word is the same with the Mexican (Aztec?) name for “knife.” Mr. T. C. Weston, of the Geological Survey, also noted, in 1883, the finding of a flake of obsidian in connection with a layer of buffalo-bones, occurring in alluvium, and evidently of considerable antiquity, near Fort M’Leod, Alberta. The nearest source of such a material is the Yellowstone Park region. Those regions, it is obvious, were visited by native explorers, not merely to supply their own wants, but for the purpose of securing coveted objects available for trade or barter. Dr. Dawson reports to me as the result of observations founded on repeated visits to the region, in the work of the Geological Survey: That all the coast tribes of British Columbia are born traders, and possess in a high degree the mental characteristics generally attributed to the Jews. Those holding possession of the above routes regarded trade with the neighbouring inland tribes as a valuable monopoly, and were ready to fight for it. They also traded among themselves, and certain localities were well known as the source of commodities. Thus the Haida Indians regularly purchased oolacten oil from the Tshimsians, who caught the oolacten at the mouth of the Nass and Stiking rivers, giving in exchange cedar canoes, for the manufacture of which they were celebrated. Through the agency of the Tshimsians they also procured from the inland Indians the large mountain sheep horns, from which they executed elaborately carved spoons and other implements. Cumshewa, in Queen Charlotte Islands, was, again, noted for Indian tobacco, an undetermined native plant, which was an article of trade all along the coast.
Copper was not unknown to the native tribes on the Pacific coast, and rich supplies of the native metal appear to have been partially worked, by the tribes along the shores ofLake Superior from a remote date. The ancient mines have been disclosed, in the process of turning their resources to account by the enterprise of civilised settlers; and abundant evidence has been recovered to show that the native copper of the Keweenaw peninsula, Ontonagon, Isle Royale, and other points on Lake Superior, was worked extensively by its ancient miners, and undoubtedly formed a valuable object of traffic throughout the region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, and along the whole eastern routes to the seaboard. But, with the imperfect resources of the native miners, it was a costly rarity, procurable only in small quantities by barter with the tribes settled on the shores of Lake Superior. Axe blades, spear heads, knives, gorgets, armlets, tubes and beads, all fashioned out of the native copper solely with the hammer, have been recovered from ancient grave mounds and ossuaries in the valleys of the St Lawrence, the Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and their tributaries; and to the west of the Rocky Mountains, copper implements again occur manufactured from metal derived from some native source on the Pacific slope. The copper was, no doubt, recognised as a malleable rock, differing from all others in its ductility, so that it could be fashioned, with the aid of a hammer-stone, to any desired form. By this means the ancient miners of Lake Superior provided themselves with the most suitable tools for their mining operations, and were probably the manufacturers of most of the widely diffused copper implements. But for general purposes, both of industry and war, American man had to be content with the more abundant chert, hornstone, and quartzite.
The source from whence the tribes on the Pacific obtained the coveted metal has not yet been ascertained; but it was obviously procured only in small quantities, insufficient to be turned to account for economic uses. Among a curious collection of objects illustrative of the arts of the Haida Indians, now in the Museum of the Geological Survey at Ottawa, is a large copper ring, or torque, which appears to have been handed down for successive generations, from chief to chief, as a prized heirloom; and, it may be assumed, as a symbol of official rank. The ring, or necklet, is composed of three twisted bars, or strands of hammered copper, each tapering atboth ends, and is fashioned with remarkable skill, if due allowance be made for the imperfect tools of the native artificer. This unique relic seems to show the accumulated metallic wealth of the tribe fashioned into a symbol of official rank; not improbably with mysterious virtues ascribed to it, which passed with it to its official custodian. A block of native copper now in the National Museum at Washington is described by the Père Charlevoix as a sacred object of veneration by the Indians of Lake Superior, on which a young maiden had been offered in sacrifice.[29]But it is beyond question that throughout the region north of the Mexican Gulf the native manufacturer resorted mainly to the abundant hornstone, chert, quartzite, and the like materials of the Stone period. These were in universal demand, and must have been industriously collected in the localities where they abound, and disposed of by a regular system of exchange for furs, wampum, or other objects of barter. Mr W. H. Dall, in his report onThe Tribes of the Extreme North-West, notes the absence in the Aleutian Islands of any stone, such as serpentine, fit for making the celts or adzes, recovered by him from the shell mounds. “They were,” he says, “probably imported from the continental Innuit at great cost, and very highly valued”; and on a subsequent page he adds: “The intertribal traffic I have referred to is universal among the Innuit.”[30]
The occurrence of well-stored caches in some of the ancient mounds of the Ohio valley, as well as their repeated discovery in other localities, accords with the idea of systematised industrial labour, and the storing away of the needful supplies for agricultural and domestic operations, and for war. Messrs. Squier and Davis, in theirAncient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, describe one of the mounds opened by them within the great earthwork on the North Fork of Point Creek, in which, according to their estimate, about four thousand hornstone disks were disposed in regular order, in successive rows overlapping each other. In 1864, I had an opportunity of examining some specimens retained in the possession of Dr. Davis. They were mostly disks measuring about six inches long and four wide, more or less oval, orbroad spear-shaped, and fashioned out of a fine gray flint with considerable uniformity of character. Mr. Squier assumed that the deposit was a religious offering; but subsequent disclosures of a like character confirm the probability that it was a hoard of material stored for the tool-maker.[31]
In other, though rarer cases, the cache has been found containing finished implements. In digging a cellar at Trenton, New Jersey, a deposit of one hundred and twenty finished stone axes was brought to light, at a depth of about three feet below the surface. Another discovery of a like character was made when digging for the construction of a receiving vault of the Riverview Cemetery, near Taunton; and similar deposits are recorded as repeatedly occurring in the same state.[32]In two instances all the specimens were grooved axes. In another, fifty porphyry celts were found deposited in systematic order. Mr. Charles Rau has given the subject special attention, and in a paper entitled “Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America,” he furnishes evidence of addiction to certain manufactures, such as arrow heads, hoes and other digging tools, spear heads, chisels, etc., by skilled native craftsmen.[33]Deposits closely corresponding to the one reported by Mr. Squier as the sole contents of one of the mounds, in “Clark’s Work,” Ohio, have been subsequently discovered in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. One of the Illinois deposits contained about fifteen hundred leaf-shaped or rounded disks of flint arranged in five horizontal layers. Another, said to have contained three thousand five hundred specimens, was discovered at Fredericksburg, in the same state. A smaller, but more interesting hoard was accidentally brought to light in 1868, when some labourers in opening up a new street, at East St. Louis, in the same State of Illinois, came upon a collection of large flint tools all of the hoe and shovel type. There were about fifty of the former and twenty of the latter, made of a yellowish-brown flint, and betraying no traces of their having been used. Near by them lay several large unworked blocks of flint and greenstone, and many chippings and fragments of flint.[34]Deposits of a likecharacter, but varying both in the number and diversity of their contents, and, in general, showing no traces of use, have been discovered in other states to the east of the Mississippi. In theSmithsonian Reportfor 1877, Mr Rau prints a curious account of “The Stock in Trade of an Aboriginal Lapidary.” In the spring of the previous year Mr. Keenan presented to the National Museum at Washington a collection of jasper ornaments, mostly unfinished, which had been found in Lawrence County, Mississippi. They were brought to light in ploughing a cotton field, where a deposit was exposed, lying about two and a half feet below the natural surface. It included four hundred and sixty-nine objects, of which twenty-two were unwrought jasper pebbles; one hundred and one were beads of an elongated cylindrical shape, and a few of them partially perforated. Others were ornaments of various forms, including two animal-shaped objects. The whole were made of jasper of a red or reddish colour, occasionally variegated with spots or streaks of pale yellow, but nearly all were in an unfinished state, and so fully bore out the idea of their being the stock in trade of some old native workman, who finished them in sufficient numbers to meet the demands of his customers.[35]
From time to time fresh disclosures prove the extent to which such systematic industry was carried on. The various collections thus brought to light were unquestionably the result of prolonged labour, and were, for the most part, undoubtedly stored for purposes of trade. In some cases they may have been accumulated in the arsenal of the tribe in readiness for war. But whether we recognise in such discoveries the store of the trader, or the military arsenal, they indicate ideas of provident foresight altogether distinct from the desultory labours of the Indian savage in the preparation of his own indispensable supply of implements for the chase or for war.
But there were also, no doubt, home-made weapons and implements, fashioned with patient industry out of the large rolled serpentine, chalcedony, jasper, and agate pebbles, gathered from the sea coast and river beds, or picked up wherever they chanced to occur. When camping out on the Neepigon river, with Indian guides from the Saskatchewan, I observed themcarefully collecting pieces of a metamorphic rock, underlying the syenite cliffs, which, I learned from one of them, was specially adapted for pipes. This they would carry a distance of fully 800 miles before reaching their lodges on the prairie. Dr. Robert Bell described to me a pipe made of fine green serpentine, of a favourite Chipewyan pattern, which he saw in the possession of an Indian on Nelson river. Its owner resisted all attempts to induce him to part with it, assigning as a reason of its special value that it had been brought from Reindeer Lake distant several hundred miles north of Frog Portage, on Churchill river. The diverse forms in which various tribes shape the tobacco pipe are highly characteristic. In some cases this is partly due to the texture and degrees of hardness of the material employed; but the recovery of pipes of nearly all the very diverse tribal patterns, made from the beautiful catlinite, or red pipestone of the Couteau des Prairies, leaves little room for doubt that the stone was transported in rough blocks and bartered by its quarriers to distant tribes. This flesh-coloured rock has suggested the Sioux legend of its origin in the flesh of the antediluvian red men, who perished there in the great deluge. It is soft, of fine texture, and easily wrought into minutely varied forms of Indian art, and so was coveted by the pipe-makers of widely severed tribes. Hence red pipestone pipes of many ingenious forms of sculpture have been recovered from grave mounds down the Mississippi, eastward to the Atlantic seaboard, and westward beyond the Rocky Mountains. This prized material appears to have circulated among all the Plain tribes. Pipes made of it were to be found in recent years preserved as cherished possessions among both the Sioux and the Blackfoot tribes. Dr. George M. Dawson found in 1874 part of an ancient catlinite pipe on Pyramid Creek, about lat. 49°, long. 105°.
A very different material was in use among the Assiniboin Indians, limiting the art of the pipe sculptor to the simplest forms. It is a fine marble, much too hard to admit of minute carving, but susceptible of a high polish. This is cut into pipes of graceful form, and made so extremely thin as to be nearly transparent, so that when lighted the glowing tobacco presents a singular appearance in a dark lodge. Anotherfavourite stone is a coarse species of jasper, also too hard for any elaborate ornamentation. But the choice of materials is by no means limited to those of the locality of the tribe. I have already referred to my Indian guides carrying away with them pieces of the pipestone rock on Neepigon river; and Paul Kane, the artist, during his travels, when on Athabaska river, near its source in the Rocky Mountains, observed his Assiniboin guides select a favourite bluish jasper from among the water-worn stones in the bed of the river, to carry home for the purpose of pipe manufacture, although they were then fully 500 miles from their lodges.
The favourite material of the Chippewas was a dark, close-grained schist obtained at some points on Lake Huron. It is easily carved, and many of their pipes are decorated with groups of human figures and animals, executed with much spirit. Pabahmesad, an old Chippewa pipe-maker of unusual skill, pursued his craft on Great Manitoulin Island, on Lake Huron, in comparatively recent years. The peculiar style of his ingenious carvings may be detected on pipes recovered from widely scattered localities, for his fame as a pipe sculptor was great. He was generally known among his people asPwahguneka, the pipe-maker. He obtained his materials from the favourite resorts of different tribes, using the black pipestone of Lake Huron, the white pipestone procured on St. Joseph’s Island, and the catlinite or red pipestone of the Couteau des Prairies. But the most varied and elaborate in device of all the peculiar native types of pipe sculpture are those executed by the Chimpseyan or Babeen and the Clalam Indians, of Vancouver Island and the neighbouring shores along Charlotte Sound. They are carved out of a soft blue claystone or slate, from which also bowls, platters, and other utensils are made, decorated with native legendary symbols and other devices. But the most elaborate carving is reserved for their pipes, which are not less varied and fanciful in design than the details of Norman ecclesiastical sculpture. The same easily carved claystone was in great request among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands for their idols, and for ornamental gorgets and utensils of various kinds. Thus the available materials of different localities are seen to modify the forms alike of implements, weapons, and articles designed forpersonal ornament or domestic use, and were sought for and transported to many distant points, with the same object as the tin and copper which played so important a part in the commercial exchanges of nations at the dawn of history.
In regions where flint or hornstone is not available, the quartzite appears to have been most commonly resorted to. I have in my possession some spear heads measuring from seven to nine inches long, which were dug up on an old Indian trail at Point Oken, lying to the north of Lake St. John, Quebec; and implements of the like material are common throughout eastern Canada. The same widely diffused material was no less freely resorted to by the tribes on the Pacific coast. The arrow heads found throughout the Salish country of southern British Columbia are chiefly formed of quartzite, though chert is also used. The quartzite occurs in so many localities that it is difficult to trace its special source. But near the east end of Marble Cañon, and at the Big Bock Slide, about six miles above Spence’s Bridge, on Thompson river, chips occur in considerable quantities, suggestive of one of the chosen localities resorted to for quarrying and manufacture.
The old arrow-makers evidently derived pleasure from the selection of attractive materials for some of their choicest specimens of handiwork. The true crystalline quartz was prized for small arrow heads, some of which are equally pleasing in material, form, and delicacy of finish. But the material most usually employed in eastern Canada, as well as that previously referred to as in request by the old workers of the Ohio valley for their largest implements, is a gneissoid rock of comparatively common occurrence, which chips off with a broad facet when sharply struck, and leaves an acute edge and point. Mr. Seller’s valuable paper on the ancient workshops of Ohio and Pennsylvania also contains an account of his own experience relative to the flaking and chipping of flint implements.[36]In this communication he remarks: “Most of the arrow points found within my reach in Philadelphia, Delaware, and Chester Counties, Pennsylvania, were chipped from massive quartz, from the opaque white to semi-transparent, and occasionally transparent.” He further describes his first chance discovery of one of the native work-places. He was incompany with two scientific mineralogists, when, as he writes, “we came to a place where (judging from the quantities of flakes and chips) arrow points had been made. After much diligent search, only one perfect point was found. There were many broken ones, showing the difficulty in working the material. Mr. Lukins, a scientific mineralogist, collected a quantity of the best flakes to experiment with, and, by the strokes of a light hammer, roughed out one or two very rude imitations.” Major J. H. Long traversed the continent westward to the Rocky Mountains, as head of the United States Military Topographical Department; and from him Mr. Sellers derived information of the habits of the rude western tribes long before they had been brought into direct contact with any civilised settlers. “He said that flakes prepared for points and other implements seemed to be an object of trade or commerce among the Indian tribes that he came in contact with; that there were but few places where chert or quartzite was found of sufficient hardness, and close and even grain, to flake well, and at those places there were men very expert at flaking.”[37]
Mr. Sellers had known Catlin, the artist and traveller, in his youth, while he was still an expert worker in wood and ivory in the service of the elder Catlin, a musical instrument maker in Philadelphia; and from him he learned much relative to the modes of operation and the sources of material of the Indian workers in stone. “He considered making flakes much more of an art than the shaping them into arrow or spear points, for a thorough knowledge of the nature of the stone to be flaked was essential, as a slight difference in its quality necessitated a totally different mode of treatment. The principal source of supply for what he termed home-made flakes was the coarse gravel bars of the rivers, where large pebbles are found. Those most easily worked into flakes for small arrow points were chalcedony, jasper, and agate. Most of the tribes had men who were expert at flaking, and who could decide at sight the best mode of working. Some of these pebbles would split into tolerably good flakes by quick and sharp blows, striking on the same point. Others would break by a cross fracture into two or more pieces. Thesewere preferred, as good flakes could be split from their clean fractured surface, by what Mr. Catlin called ‘impulsive pressure,’ the tool used being a shaft or stick of between two and three inches in diameter, varying in length from thirty inches to four feet, according to the manner of using them. These were pointed with bone or buckhorn.” It is thus apparent that among rude tribes of modern centuries, as in the prehistoric dawn, exceptional aptitude and skill found recognition as readily as in any civilised community. There were the quarriers and the skilled workmen, on whose joint labours the whole community largely depended for the indispensable supply of all needful tools.
In the summer of 1854, when civilisation had made very slight inroads on the western wilderness, I visited a group of Chippewa lodges on the south-west shore of Lake Superior, where they still maintained many of their genuine habits. Their aged chief, Buffalo, was a fine specimen of the uncorrupted savage, dressed in native attire, and wearing the collar of grizzly bear’s claws as proof of his triumph over the fiercest object of the chase. Their weapons were partly of iron, derived from the traders. But they had also their stone-tipped arrows; and one Indian was an object of interest to a group of Indian boys as he busied himself in fashioning a water-worn pebble into an edged tool. He held an oval pebble between the finger and thumb, and used it with quick strokes as a hammer. But he was only engaged on the first rough process, and I did not see the completion of his work. No doubt, the leisure of all was turned more or less to account in supplying themselves with their ordinary weapons and missiles. But Catlin’s free intercourse with the wild western tribes familiarised him with the regular sources of general supply. “The best flakes,” he said, “outside of the homemade, were a subject of commerce, and came from certain localities where the chert of the best quality was quarried in sheets or blocks, as it occurs in almost continuous seams in the intercalated limestones of the coal measures. These seams are mostly cracked or broken into blocks that show the nature of the cross fracture, which is taken advantage of by the operators, who seemed to have reduced the art of flaking to almost an absolute science, with division of labour; one setof men being expert in quarrying and selecting the stone, others in preparing the blocks for the flakers.”[38]But suitable and specially prized material were sometimes sought on different sites, and disseminated from them by the primitive trader. Along eastern Labrador and in Newfoundland arrow heads are mostly fashioned out of a peculiar light-gray translucent quartzite. Dr. Bell informs me that near Chimo, south of Ungava Bay, is a spot resorted to by the Indians from time immemorial for this favourite material; and arrows made of it are not uncommon even in Nova Scotia. Among the tribes remote from the sea coast, where no exposed rock furnished available material for the manufacture of their stone implements, the chief source of supply was the larger pebbles of the river beds. From these the most suitable stones were carefully selected, and often carried great distances. Those most easily worked into flakes for small arrow heads are chalcedony, jasper, agate, and quartz; and the finer specimens of such weapons are now greatly prized by collectors. The coast tribes both of the Atlantic and the Pacific found similar sources of supply of the stones best suited for their implements in the rolled gravel of the beach, and this appears to have been the most frequent resort of the Micmacs and other tribes of the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
I have already referred to information derived from Dr. G. M. Dawson and Dr. Robert Bell, to both of whom I have been indebted for interesting results of their own personal observations as members of the Canadian Geological Survey. Collectors are familiar with the elongated flat stones, with two or more holes bored through them, variously styled gorgets, implements for fashioning sinew into cord, etc. They are made of a grayish-green clay slate, with dark streaks; and the same material is used in the manufacture of personal ornaments, ceremonial objects, and occasionally for smooth spear heads and knives. Relics fashioned of this peculiar clay slate are found throughout Ontario, from Lakes Huron and Erie to the Ottawa valley. A somewhat similar stone occurs in situ at various points, but Dr. Bell believes he has satisfactorily identified the ancient quarry at the outlet of Lake Temagamic, nearly 100 miles north of Lake Nipissing. No clay slateprocured from any other locality corresponds so exactly to the favourite material. The site is accessible by more than one canoe route; and quantities of the rock from different beds lie broken up in blocks of a size ready for transportation. Dr. Bell found on the shore of Lake Temissaming a large unfinished spear head, chipped out of this clay slate, and ready for grinding. When the region is settled and the land cleared, sites will probably be discovered where the aboriginal exporters reduced the rough blocks to forms convenient for transport.
Dr. Bell has described to me specimens of narrow and somewhat long spear points, of local manufacture, made from smoky chert found on or near the Athabaska, in Mackenzie river basin; and an arrow head of brown flint from the mouth of Churchill river, Hudson Bay. The flint implements of Rainy river and Lake of the Woods are of brownish flint and chert, such as are found in the drift all over the region to the south-westward of Hudson Bay; and are mostly derived from the Devonian rocks. Worn pebbles of this kind occur in the drift as far south as Lake Superior. A branch of Kinogami river is called by the Indians Flint river (Pewona sipi) from the abundance of the favourite material they find in the river gravel and shingle. The finest flint implements of Canada are those of the north shore of Lake Huron, made from material corresponding to a very fine-grained quartzite, approximating to chalcedony, found among the Huronian rocks of that region.
Along the western coast of the Province of Nova Scotia a high ridge of trap rock extends, with slight interruption, from Briar Island to Cape Blomidon. Here the strong tidal rush of the sea undermines the cliff, and the winter frosts split it up, so that every year the shore is strewn with broken fragments from the cliff, exposing a variety of crystalline minerals, such as jasper, agate, etc. The beach gravel is also interspersed with numerous rounded pebbles derived originally from the same source. I am indebted to Mr. George Patterson, of New Glasgow, N.S., for some interesting notes on this subject. The pebbles of this beach seem to have been one of the chief sources of supply for the Indian implement-makers of Nova Scotia. Few localities have hitherto been noticed in the Maritime Provinces marked by any such large accumulationof chips as would suggest the probability of manufacture for the purpose of trade; though chips and finished implements occasionally occur together on the sites of Indian villages or encampments, suggestive of individual industry and home manufacture. But Mr. Patterson informs me that one place at Bauchman’s Beach, in the county of Lunenburg, furnishes abundant traces of an old native workshop. There, until recently, could be gathered agate, jasper, and other varieties of the fine-grained crystalline minerals from the trap, sometimes in nodules, rounded and worn, as they occur at the base of the ocean-washed cliffs. At times they showed partial traces of working; but more frequently they were split and broken, bearing the unmistakable marks of the hammer. Along with those were cores and large quantities of flakes, or chips, with arrow heads, more or less perfectly formed. At one time they might have been gathered in large quantities; but recent inroads of the sea have swept away much of the old beach, and strewed the products of the Indian stone-workers where they may be stored for the wonder of men of other centuries. It is curious, indeed, to reflect on the memorials of ages so diverse from those with which the palæontologist deals, that are now accumulating in the submarine strata in process of formation, for the instruction of coming generations, should our earth last so long. The world will, doubtless, have grown wiser before that epoch is reached. But it will require some discrimination, even in so enlightened an age, to read aright the significance of this mingling of relics of rudest barbarism with all the products of modern civilisation that are being strewn along the great ocean highways between the Old and the New World.
A curious illustration of the possible confusion of evidence is shown by the discovery in 1884 of a large stone lance head of the Eskimo type, deeply imbedded in the tissues of a whale taken at the whaling station on Ballast Point, near the harbour of San Diego, California.[39]In the Museum of the University of Edinburgh is the skeleton of a whale, stranded in the ancient estuary of the Forth in a prehistoric age, when the ocean tides reached the site which had been elevated into dry land long ages before the Roman invaders of Caledoniamade their way over it. Alongside of the buried whale lay a rude deerhorn implement of the old Caledonian whaler; and had the San Diego whale sunk in deep waters off the Pacific coast, it would have perpetuated a similar memorial of rudest savage life, in close proximity, doubtless, to evidences of modern civilisation. Such, though in less striking form, is the process of intermingling the arts of the American Stone age with products of modern skill and refinement, that is now in progress off the Lunenburg coast of Nova Scotia. The inroads of the sea have not, however, even now effaced all traces of the old arrow-makers of Bauchman’s Beach. Specimens of their handiwork may still be gathered along the shore. To this locality it is obvious that the inland tribes resorted from remote Indian villages for some of their most indispensable supplies. Implements of the same materials also occur at sites on the northern coast; but the larger number found there are made of quartzite, felsite, or of hard, slaty stone, such as occurs in the metamorphic rocks of the mountain ranges in the interior of the Province.