those shafts of the ancient workmen, are analogous to others that reveal
the funnel-shaped excavations hereafter described, on Flint Ridge, the
sites of ancient flint pits of the American arrow-makers. In France,
Germany, and Switzerland, as well as in Great Britain, many localities
are no less familiar, on which the refuse flakes, and chippings of flint
and other available material, show where they have been systematically
fashioned into implements. The Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland has acquired numerous interesting additions to its collections
of objects of this class by encouraging systematic research. From the
sands at Colvin and Findhorn, Morayshire; Little Ferry, Sutherlandshire;
and from Burghhead, Drainie, and Culbin sands, Elginshire, nearly seven
thousand specimens have been recovered, consisting chiefly of flint
flakes and chippings; but also including several hundred arrow heads,
knives, and scrapers, many of them unfinished or broken.
Thus, in various localities, remote from native sources of flint, a
systematic manufacture of implements appears to have been carried on.
There can, therefore, be scarcely any hesitation in inferring, from the
evidence adduced, first a trade in the raw material brought from the
distant localities of the flint mines; and then a local traffic in the
manufactured implements, as was undoubtedly the case among the American
aborigines at no remote date. This aspect of primitive interchange, both
of the raw material and the products of industrial skill, in so far as
it is illustrated in the practice of the American Indian tribes, merits
the most careful study, as a help to the interpretation of the
archæological evidence pertaining to prehistoric times. To the
superficial observer, stone is of universal occurrence; and it seems,
therefore, needless to inquire where the implement-maker of any Stone
age procured the rough block out of which he fashioned his weapon or
tool. Only when copper, bronze, and iron superseded the crude material
of the Stone age has it been supposed to be needful to determine the
sources of supply. But that is a hasty and wholly incorrect surmise. The
untutored savage is indeed greatly limited in his choice of materials.
We are familiar with the shell-workers of the Caribbees and the Pacific
Islands, and the horn and ivory workers of Arctic regions; but where the
resources of an ample range could be turned to account, the primitive
workman learned at a very early date to select by preference such stones
as break with a conchoidal fracture. Only where such could not be had,
the most available chance-fractured chip or the apt water-worn stone was
turned to account. Rude implements are accordingly met with fashioned of
trap, sienite, diorite, granite, and other igneous rocks, as well as
from quartzite, agate, jasper, serpentine, and slate. Some of those
materials were specially favoured by the neolithic workmen for certain
classes of their carefully finished weapons and implements, such as
perforated hammers, large axes, gouges, and chisels. But the natural
cleavage of the flint, and the sharp edge exposed by every fracture,
adapt it for fashioning the smaller knives, lance and arrow heads, in a
way no other material except obsidian equals. Hence flint appears to
have been no less in request among ancient tool-makers than copper, tin,
and iron in the later periods of metallurgic art.
The fact that tin is a metal of rare occurrence, though found in nearly
inexhaustible quantities in some regions, has given a peculiar
significance to certain historical researches, apart from the special
interest involved in the processes of the primitive metallurgist, and
the widely diffused traces of workers in bronze. The comparative rarity
of flint, and its total absence in many localities, suggest a like
inquiry into the probable sources of its supply in regions remote from
its native deposits. The flint lance or arrow head, thrown by an enemy,
or wrested from the grasp of a vanquished foe, would, as in the case of
improved weapons of war in many a later age, first introduce the prized
material to the notice of less favoured tribes. As the primitive
tool-maker learned by experience the greater adaptability of flint than
of most other stones for the manufacture of his weapons and implements,
it may be assumed that it became an object of barter in localities
remote from those where it abounds; and thus, by its diffusion, it may
have constituted a recognised form of _pecunia_ ages before the barter
of pastoral tribes gave rise to the peculiar significance attached to
that term.
One piece of confirmatory evidence of trade in unwrought flint is the
frequent occurrence of numerous flint flakes among the prized gifts
deposited with the dead. Canon Greenwell describes, among the contents
of a Yorkshire barrow in the parish of Ganton, a deposit of flint flakes
and chippings numbering one hundred and eighteen, along with a few
finished scrapers and arrow heads;[24] and smaller deposits of like kind
are repeatedly noted by him. Still more, he describes their occurrence
under circumstances which suggest the probability of the scattering of
flint flakes, like an offering of current coin, by the mourners, as the
primitive grave was covered in and the memorial mound piled over the
sacred spot. Flints and potsherds, he says, occur more constantly, and
even more abundantly than bones; and this presents to his mind a
difficult problem, in considering which he refers to an analogous
practice of a very diverse age. The maimed rites at poor Ophelia’s grave
are familiar to the reader of _Hamlet_. The priest replies to the demand
of Laertes for more ample ceremony at his sister’s burial:—
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 of largess 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 the
gravel 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 palæoliths _in situ_ in 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, the period 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, Port Colborne,
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.