._A PRE-COLUMBIAN
DINNER_
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A ponderous geologist, with weighty tread and weightier manner, brought
his foot down upon the unoffending sod and declared, “These meadows are
sinking at a rapid rate; something over two feet a century.” We all knew
it, but Sir Oracle had spoken, and we little dogs did not dare to bark.
Not long after I returned alone to these ill-fated meadows and began a
leisurely, all-day ramble. They were very beautiful. There was a wealth
of purple and of white boneset and iron-weed of royal dye. Sunflower and
primrose gilded the hidden brooks, and every knoll was banked with
rose-pink centaury. Nor was this all. Feathery reeds towered above the
marsh, and every pond was empurpled with pontederia and starred with
lilies. Afar off, acres of nut-brown sedge made fitting background for
those meadow tracts that were still green, while close at hand, more
beautiful than all, were struggling growths held down by the
golden-dodder’s net that overspread them.
It does not need trees or rank shrubbery to make a wilderness. This
low-lying tract to-day, with but a summer’s growth above it, is as wild
and lonely as are the Western plains. Lonely, that is, as man thinks,
but not forsaken. The wily mink, the pert weasel, the musk-rat, and the
meadow-mouse ramble in safety through it. The great blue heron, its
stately cousin, the snowy egret, and the dainty least bittern find it a
congenial home.
The fiery dragon-fly darts and lazy butterflies drift across the
blooming waste; bees buzz angrily as you approach; basking snakes bid
you defiance. Verily, this is wild life’s domain and man is out of
place.
It was not always so. The land is sinking, and what now of that older
time when it was far above its present level,—a high, dry, upland tract,
along which flowed a clear and rapid stream? The tell-tale arrow-point
is our guide, and wherever the sod is broken we have an inkling of
Indian history. The soil, as we dig a little deeper, is almost black
with charcoal—dust, and it is evident that centuries ago the Indians
were content to dwell here, and well they might be. Even in colonial
days the place had merit, and escaped not the eager eyes of Penn’s
grasping followers. It was meadow then, and not fitted for his house,
but the white man built his barn above the ruins of his dusky
predecessor’s home. All trace of human habitation is now gone, but the
words of the geologist kept ringing in my ears, and of late I have been
digging. It is a little strange that so few traces of the white man are
found as compared with relics of the Indian. From the barn that once
stood here and was long ago destroyed by a flood one might expect to
find at least a rusty nail.
The ground held nothing telling of a recent past, but was eloquent of
the long ago. Dull indeed must be the imagination that cannot recall
what has been here brought to light by the aid of such an implement as
the spade. Not only were the bow and spear proved to be the common
weapons of the time, but there were in even greater abundance, and of
many patterns, knives to flay the game. It is not enough to merely
glance at a trimmed flake of flint or carefully-chipped splinter of
argillite, and say to yourself, “A knife.” Their great variety has a
significance that should not be overlooked. The same implement could not
be put to every use for which a knife was needed; hence the range in
size from several inches to tiny flakes that will likely remain a puzzle
as to their purpose.
Besides home products, articles are found that have come from a long
distance, and no class of objects is more suggestive than those that
prove the widely-extended system of barter that prevailed at one time
among the Indians of North America. There are shells and shell ornaments
found in Wisconsin which must have been taken there from the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico; catlinite or red pipe-stone ornaments and pipes
found in New Jersey that could only have come from Minnesota. Shell
beads are often found in graves in the Mississippi Valley that were
brought from the Pacific coast, and the late Dr. Leidy has described a
shell bead, concerning which he states that it is the _Conus ternatus_,
a shell which belongs to the west coast of Central America. This was
found, with other Indian relics, in Hartman’s Cave, near Stroudsburg,
Pennsylvania. Two small arrow-points found in New Jersey a year or more
ago proved to be made of obsidian. These specimens could only have come
from the far South-west or from Oregon, and the probabilities are in
favor of the latter locality. It is not unlikely that objects like the
above should find their way inland to the Great Lakes, and so across the
continent and down the Atlantic coast. On the other hand, arrow-points
could have had so little intrinsic value in the eyes of an Indian that
we are naturally surprised that they should have been found so far from
their place of origin. Obsidian has occurred but very rarely east of the
Alleghanies, so far as I am aware. In the Sharples collection, at West
Chester, Pennsylvania, is a single specimen, reported to have been found
near that place, and a few traces have since been discovered in the
uplands immediately adjoining these Delaware meadows, and really there
is no reason to suppose that objects of value should not have passed
quite across the continent, or been carried from Mexico to Canada. There
were no vast areas absolutely uninhabited and across which no Indian
ever ventured.
It has been suggested that, as iron was manufactured in the valley of
the Delaware as early as 1728, the supposed obsidian arrow-points are
really made of slag from the furnaces, but a close examination of the
specimens proves, it is claimed, this not to have been the case, and at
this comparatively late date the making of stone arrow-points had
probably ceased. Just when, however, the use of the bow as a weapon was
discarded has not been determined, but fire-arms were certainly common
in 1728 and earlier.
A careful study, too, of copper implements, which are comparatively
rare, seems to point to the conclusion that very few were made of the
native copper found in New Jersey, Maryland, and elsewhere along the
Atlantic coast, but that they were made in the Lake Superior region and
thence gradually dispersed over the Eastern States. The large copper
spear from Betterton, Maryland, recently found, and another from New
Jersey, bear a striking resemblance to the spear-heads from the
North-west, where unquestionably the most expert of aboriginal
coppersmiths lived. Of course, the many small beads of this metal
occasionally found in Indian graves in the Delaware Valley might have
been made of copper found near by, but large masses are very seldom met
with.
Speaking of copper beads recalls the fact that a necklace comprising
more than one hundred was recently found on the site of an old Dutch
trader’s house, on an island in the Delaware. They were of Indian
manufacture, and had been in the fur trader’s possession, if we may
judge from the fact that they were found with hundreds of other relics
that betokened not merely European, but Dutch occupation of the spot.
This trader got into trouble and doubtless deserved his summary taking
off.
It is not “a most absurd untruth,” as was stated not long ago in the
_Critic_ in a review of a New York history, that the Indians were “a
people of taste and industry, and in morals quite the peers of their
Dutch neighbors.” They had just as keen a sense of right and wrong.
There never was a handful of colonists in North America whose whole
history their descendants would care to have known. The truth is, we
know very little of the Indian prior to European contact. Carpet-knight
archæologists and kid-gloved explorers crowd the pages of periodical
literature, it is true, but we are little, if any, the wiser.
It is supposed, and is even asserted, that the Indian knew nothing of
forks; but that he plunged his fingers into the boiling pot or held in
his bare hands the steaming joints of bear or venison is quite
improbable. Now, the archæologist talks glibly of bone awls whenever a
sharpened splinter of bone is presented him, as if such instruments were
only intended to perforate leather. They doubtless had other uses, and I
am sure that more than one split and sharpened bone which has been found
would have served excellently well as a one-tined fork wherewith to lift
from the pot a bit of meat. Whether or not such forks were in use, there
were wooden spoons, as a bit of the bowl and a mere splinter of the
handle serve to show. Kalm tells us that they used the laurel for making
this utensil, but I fancied my fragment was hickory. Potsherds
everywhere spoke of the Indians’ feasting, and it is now known that,
besides bowls and shallow dishes of ordinary sizes, they also had
vessels of several gallons’ capacity. All these are broken now, but,
happily, fragments of the same dish are often found together, and so we
can reconstruct them.
But what did the Indians eat? Quaint old Gabriel Thomas, writing about
1696, tells us that “they live chiefly on _Maze_ or _Indian Corn_ rosted
in the Ashes, sometimes beaten boyl’d with Water, called _Homine_. They
have cakes, not unpleasant; also Beans and Pease, which nourish much,
but the Woods and Rivers afford them their provision; they eat morning
and evening, their Seats and Tables on the ground.”
In a great measure this same story of The Indians’ food supply was told
by the scattered bits found mingled with the ashes of an ancient hearth.
Such fireplaces or cooking sites were simple in construction, but none
the less readily recognized as to their purpose. A few flat pebbles had
been brought from the bed of the river near by, and a small paved area
some two feet square was placed upon or very near the surface of the
ground. Upon this the fire was built, and in time a thick bed of ashes
accumulated. Just how they cooked can only be conjectured, but the
discovery of very thick clay vessels and great quantities of
fire-cracked quartzite pebbles leads to the conclusion that water was
brought to the boiling-point by heating the stones to a red heat and
dropping them into the vessel holding the water. Thomas, as we have
seen, says corn was “boyl’d with Water.” Meat also was, I think,
prepared in the same manner. Their pottery probably was poorly able to
stand this harsh treatment, which would explain the presence of such
vast quantities of fragments of clay vessels. Traces of vegetable food
are now very rarely found. A few burnt nuts, a grain or two of corn,
and, in one instance, what appeared to be a charred crab-apple, complete
the list of what, as yet, have been picked from the mingled earth and
ashes. This is not surprising, and what we know of vegetable food in use
among the Delaware Indians is almost wholly derived from those early
writers who were present at their feasts. Kalm mentions the roots of the
golden-club, arrow-leaf, and ground-nut, besides various berries and
nuts. It is well known that extensive orchards were planted by these
people. It may be added that, in all probability, the tubers of that
noble plant, the lotus, were used as food. Not about these meadows, but
elsewhere in New Jersey, this plant has been growing luxuriantly since
Indian times.
Turning now to the consideration of what animal food they consumed, one
can speak with absolute certainty. It is clear that the Delawares were
meat-eaters. It needs but little digging on any village site to prove
this, and from a single fireplace deep down in the stiff soil of this
sinking meadow have been taken bones of the elk, deer, bear, beaver,
raccoon, musk-rat, and gray squirrel. Of these, the remains of deer were
largely in excess, and as this holds good of every village site I have
examined, doubtless the Indians depended more largely upon this animal
than upon all the others. Of the list, only the elk is extinct in the
Delaware Valley, and it was probably rare even at the time of the
European settlement of the country, except in the mountain regions. If
individual tastes varied as they do among us, we have certainly
sufficient variety here to have met every fancy.
With a food supply as varied as this, an ordinary meal or an
extraordinary feast can readily be recalled, so far as its essential
features are concerned. It is now September, and, save where the ground
has been ruthlessly uptorn, everywhere is a wealth of early autumn
bloom. A soothing quiet rests upon the scene, bidding us to
retrospective thought. Not a bit of stone, of pottery, or of burned and
blackened fragment of bone but stands out in the mellow sunshine as the
feature of a long-forgotten feast. As I dreamily gaze upon the
gatherings of half a day, I seem to see the ancient folk that once dwelt
in this neglected spot; seem to be a guest at a pre-Columbian dinner in
New Jersey.
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