SCRAPERS
TYPES WITH ONE OR MORE SCRAPING EDGES WITHOUT OR WITH NOTCH (INCLUDING
CIRCULAR)
A good deal has been published regarding scrapers. They served pretty
much the same purpose everywhere in the world. While this is true, yet
there is a great difference in scrapers, and the simple statement that
they are scrapers with or without notches does not suffice. There are
ordinary flakes worked to a scraping edge, and scrapers with deep
notches and long tangs; there are scrapers with barbs, and without
barbs; there are broken arrow-heads worked into scrapers. I have
subdivided the scrapers under the Committee’s general class as follows:—
A. Flakes worked to a scraping edge (several in Fig. 192).
B. Ordinary oval and circular scrapers. (See Fig. 184.)
C. Spoon-shaped scrapers. (See bottom row, Fig. 190, and bottom row,
Fig. 184.)
D. Scraping edge extending entirely around (bottom row, Fig. 188).
E. Notched or shouldered scraper. (See Figs. 187, 193.)
F. Crescent scraper. (Two to the left in Fig. 187, one in Fig. 193.)
G. Specialized scraper. (See Figs. 188, 190, 191, 193.)
Scrapers are commonplace tools, yet they played an important part in the
life of ancient man. They illustrate his economy, for we know that he
made over broken spear-heads and arrow-points into scrapers.
I have endeavored to show in these illustrations all types, from the
circular disc with the scraping edge to the highly specialized forms. Of
course, scrapers and knives merge the one into the other, and where the
scraper ends, the knife begins.
Series can be arranged in any large collection beginning with the simple
knife and working back to the scraper, or _vice versa_. In the Mandan
village-site ash-heaps more than seven hundred scrapers were found by
Mr. E. R. Steinbrueck; the large Mandan collection of five thousand
specimens, which contains them, was presented to our Museum through the
kindness of Professor E. H. Williams, Jr. A plate of these scrapers is
shown in Fig. 190.
[Illustration:
FIG. 184. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of classes “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D,”
Phillips Academy collection, Andover, Massachusetts. These are from
various portions of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 185. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of Class “E.” These are the more common
Wisconsin-Minnesota forms. F. M. Caldwell’s collection, Venice,
Illinois.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 186. (S. 1–1.) Scrapers, New Jersey types. Materials: jasper and
quartz. Stephen Van Rensselaer’s collection, Newark, New Jersey.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 187. (S. 1–2.) Twenty scrapers, all with notches or shoulders,
from various portions of the United States. Andover collection.
Attention is called to the second one from the left in the lower
row, which is sharply concave on one side.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 188. (S. 1–1.) Specialized scrapers from the Columbia River
Valley. B. W. Arnold’s collection, Albany, New York.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 189. (S. 2–3.) In the top row a chipped flake and simple forms of
scrapers. No. 20 is a highly specialized form. Dr. Jack Shipley’s
collection, Pilot Point, Texas.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 190. (S. 2–3.) In the lower row, a spoon-shaped scraper to the
left, and four ordinary scrapers; the next row from the bottom, two
heavy flint flakes worked to a scraping edge. They are of the same
form as the Pennsylvania scrapers shown in Fig. 191.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 191. (S. 1–1.) Two specialized scrapers from the collection of
George A. Huber, East Greenville, Pennsylvania. These are of
quartzite and are interesting specimens. The form is not as rare in
Pennsylvania and Georgia as one would imagine. Similar forms are
shown to the left in the middle row of Fig. 190.
]
In the past, among archæologists, there has been no little discussion
with reference to scrapers. They were mounted in short handles of both
bone and wood. Numbers of them have been found in the cliff-houses in
the Southwest attached to their original handles. It is unfortunate that
in the Mississippi Valley, east of the Great Plains, the climate is such
that none of the larger bone tools have withstood decay. At
Madisonville, the cemeteries and ash-pits have furnished us with some of
the larger bone handles, but elsewhere, all have disappeared. Stone
scrapers were inserted by the Plains tribes in bone handles, and under
the chapter devoted to bone objects several of the handles will be
illustrated. One of these was found near the head of the Missouri River
about twenty years ago, and apparently had been lying on the surface for
a considerable length of time. It is of old type, and I have taken it to
represent how the scrapers in ancient times might have been mounted.
There are some similar tools in the Smithsonian, American Museum of
Natural History, Peabody Museum, and other institutions. Scrapers are
few in New England compared to the Mississippi Valley and the North.
[Illustration:
FIG. 192. (S. 2–3.) Andover collection.
]
In view of the small number of flint implements occurring on the Great
Plains, which the Indians called the “buffalo country,” there are more
scrapers of yellow chert, poor jasper, and white flint, in proportion to
other parts of the country than elsewhere in the United States. By the
buffalo country I mean all the territory drained by the following
rivers: the Missouri, Red, Brazos, Arkansas, Mississippi, and
tributaries. The Indians of this region, particularly of the Dakotas,
Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas, depended on the buffalo. The buffalo
was used by them for manifold purposes: (1) Food; (2) bones for
implements and weapons; (3) glue from the hoofs; (4) strings from the
sinews; (5) skin for garments; (6) skin for dwellings; (7) skin for
boats; (8) hide for packing-cases and bags, shields, etc.; (9) skull for
ceremonies; (10) the small bones for rattles; (11) the hair for filling
material; (12) droppings for fuel, etc., etc.
[Illustration:
FIG. 193. (S. 1–1.) Five scrapers from the collection of Stephen Van
Rensselaer, Newark, New Jersey. These are of argillite and red
chert. The central one is quite unique, having three concavities,
all of which show that they have been much used, being polished.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 194. (S. 2–5.) From the collection of the University of Vermont,
Burlington. These specimens were collected about the shores of Lake
Champlain. Ten of them are scrapers, three of them are reamers or
short drills, five of them are scraper-knives and seven are drills.
This little collection is typical of Lake Champlain forms, and
emphasizes how one type merges into another. Near the centre, the
almost angular object with the broken point may illustrate the first
form of drill. Just below it and above the two scrapers is a rudely
chipped object which may also stand for the beginning of the drill
form.
]
The preparation of hides was perhaps the most important work, and
required the attention of all the women in each village and consequently
the employment of thousands of scrapers and flint knives. The value of
the buffalo to the aborigines cannot be overestimated. The Indian killed
and made use of every part of the animal, and the hide-hunters and white
men, who made record killings simply to satiate a lust for blood and
slaughter, exterminated the buffalo. Chief of these was W. F. Cody, or
“Buffalo Bill,” who killed 4280 buffalo in fifteen months, according to
Professor W. T. Hornaday in the Smithsonian Report for 1887. The
slaughter of the buffalo by himself and nameless Bills and Dicks, of
frontier fame, was responsible for much of the trouble with our Plains
tribes. Canada was cursed with no such class of frontiersmen, and Canada
never had one twentieth part of the trouble with her Indians that we
have had with ours. The extermination of the buffalo by the white
hide-hunters was justly considered a national calamity by the Indians of
the West. It menaced their very existence and made paupers of whole
tribes.