CONCLUSIONS
Naturally, the Conclusions to “The Stone Age” are somewhat long, and
while I have embodied them all under two chapters, yet they have been
grouped under subdivisions, as will be observed by readers.
THE POPULATION IN PREHISTORIC TIMES
We should first consider a subject which has been given, it would seem,
scant attention. I refer to the fact that generally throughout the
American continent are unmistakable evidences of a considerable
population in ancient times. At present there are about three hundred
and sixty thousand Indians in the United States and Canada. Perhaps more
than half of these show the effects of marriage with whites or negroes.
The population of to-day is no criterion of that in ancient times. In
studying field evidence of population, we must bear in mind that the
Indian of both periods made use of perishable materials. This is an
essential fact to be noted during the course of our studies. Much that
both the historic and prehistoric Indian made use of was composed of
cloth, iron, wood, brass, leather, etc. It is quite true that the wood,
leather, cloth, etc., of prehistoric times would disappear, but the
stone, bone, shell, clay, and copper objects remained. Iron rusts
quickly, and the use of iron was widespread from the time of the
settlement on the New England coast (1620) down to the present. A great
deal of iron was introduced by De Soto in Florida, South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas; and by Coronado in the Southwest. Both of
these expeditions were in the years 1540–1543, and on them hundreds of
Spaniards penetrated into the interior carrying thousands of objects,
chiefly of iron. All of this must have had an effect on the natives
throughout a considerable portion of North America.
I have elsewhere referred to the difference between historic and modern
sites, but the subject is important and has been, it seems to me, passed
over or not appreciated by others, and it is necessary to emphasize the
difference between the ancient and the modern again. The significant
fact is that all of this iron has disappeared leaving here and there a
streak of rust, and that upon the modern sites were left quantities of
glass beads and other objects that are not perishable. These were in use
among the natives, yet few of these things remain; the only exception
being noted in the sites of the Iroquois of western New York, where the
modern artifacts predominate.
In previous articles I have called attention to the fact that on the
four or five Shawano sites in the State of Ohio, there were large bodies
of Indians assembled during the period embraced between (roughly) 1700
and 1812. These Indians helped to make American history. They were
fairly numerous, of unquestioned ability, and produced such men as
Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet. Their leaders, Tecumseh and
Cornstalk, were engaged in twenty-two actions with our troops; numerous
traders were among them, and they sent many expeditions against the
frontiers. Yet, if one walks over these populous sites of historic
times, one finds practically nothing save here and there a glass bead or
a broken tomahawk.
In any one of perhaps two or three hundred places where prehistoric
villages occurred, an observer may find great quantities of chips,
spawls, broken implements, broken pottery, etc. The needs of ancient man
were few, his implements simple and confined to the types illustrated in
this work. Therefore, the presence of the unnumbered evidences of human
residence indicates either a great length of occupation, or large
numbers of Indians for a short period of time.
I never believed that the population in America exceeded one million
(north of Mexico) at any time, assuming that the field evidence is
against the statement so often made that there are as many Indians in
America to-day as at the time of the discovery.
If the Ohio Valley had been occupied by mound-building people when La
Salle and Hennepin made their voyages of discovery, these worthy and
zealous explorers would have made reference to it in their reports. But
La Salle and Hennepin heard of the great Illinois towns on the river of
the same name in that state and journeyed from Quebec to visit those
towns. There were thousands of Indians living in the Illinois country,
but Ohio appears to have had little population—that is of Indians, and
none whatsoever of mound-building people.
Between Aurora and Lawrenceburg, Indiana, if the Ohio River has not
during a recent flood covered the bottoms with silt, there may be seen a
village-site nearly three miles in extent. I visited it in 1898 and
collected upwards of three thousand specimens from the surface in a
week’s time.
The Indian population was most numerous on that great artery, the
Mississippi River and its tributaries. Perhaps we have not fully
recognized the importance played by this “Father of Waters” in
prehistoric times. Throughout the Mississippi Valley are several
climates varying from extreme cold in northern Minnesota to the
semi-tropical of Louisiana; from the aridity of the foothills of the
Rocky Mountains to the salubrious climate of Tennessee; from the cold of
the extreme Northwest to that of Pennsylvania. The Mississippi Valley
comprises altitude and sea level, mountains and plains, every kind of
soil and every specimen of plant and animal life found in North America
above the City of Mexico.
It would appear that man had penetrated to the heads of every stream
tributary to the Mississippi. Through the Colorado basin, throughout the
length and breadth of all the Southern rivers; to the rivers of New
England, the great St. Lawrence basin, and the Red River of the North,
and even far Yukon in Alaska,—these primitive stone-age people carried
their simple arts and established their villages. In the Cumberland and
Tennessee valleys such multitudes of them lived that even after a
hundred years of ruthless destruction of the stone grave cemeteries,
there still remain thousands of unopened sepulchres.
Apropos of these stone graves, General Gates P. Thruston, of Nashville,
who has studied ancient man in Tennessee more than forty years, reports
by letter to me as follows: “I think that there must have been forty
thousand graves within twenty-five miles of Nashville. I should think
there were probably at one time as many as one hundred thousand
prehistoric inhabitants in the two valleys. The village-sites and
cemeteries cannot be numbered.”
The officials at Washington have underestimated, it seems to me, the
number of Indians in the United States, because they have recorded the
Indian of the historic period rather than the Indian of the past. De
Soto and Coronado both reported continuous population throughout the
regions traversed by them. Yet shortly after the year 1700 small-pox,
measles, cholera, and other diseases destroyed entire tribes. Untold
thousands of our Indians perished during these epidemics. The case of
the Mandans is well known. The early colonists made frequent reference
to the spread of these plagues throughout the country.
[Illustration:
FIG. 722. (S. 1–2.) Views of an unknown object of stone, found in 1885
on a ranch on the Columbia River, Oregon. W. F. Parker’s collection,
Omaha.
]
Fourteen years ago I compiled an archæologic map for the State of Ohio;
the last entry being made in 1897. At that time there were 3292 various
monuments and village-sites recorded. Since then Professor Mills has
continued the work and added to the total. Constant travel over the
State of Ohio in the past years leads me to believe that there were in
ancient times at least twenty thousand monuments great and small in that
state.
All considered, the population in North America in pre-Columbian times
must have been considerable during two or three thousand years, if not
for a longer period.
THE STONE AGE IN HISTORIC TIMES
It is unfortunate that Coronado, De Soto, Captain Smith, Hennepin,
Marquette, and the Pilgrim Fathers did not give us more detail about
stone-age times. When these explorers, or adventurers, or colonists came
here, many of the Indians were still in the stone age. One of the best
references that I have seen is that by Coronado’s historian, who states
that in the mountain region along the Colorado River there lived many
wild tribes who were barbarous; “eat human flesh, worship painted and
sculptured stones, and are much given to witchcraft and sorcery.” These
men represented savage and not barbaric stone-age times. They appear to
have been exceedingly fleet of foot, great hunters, very courageous, and
quite different from later Indians. The historian, speaking of one of
these tribes, says:
“The third language is that of the Acaxes, who are in possession of a
large part of the hilly country and all of the mountains. They go
hunting for men just as they hunt animals. They all eat human flesh, and
he who has the most human bones and skulls hung up around his house is
most feared and respected. They live in settlements and in very rough
country, avoiding the plains. In passing from one settlement to another,
there is always a ravine in the way which they cannot cross, although
they can talk together across it. At the slightest call five hundred men
collect, and on any pretext kill and eat one another. Thus it has been
very hard to subdue these people, on account of the roughness of the
country, which is very great.”
It has been known for many years that the Seri Indians living on an
island in the Gulf of California are still in the stone age. Professor W
J McGee, of the Bureau of Ethnology, visited these Indians and wrote a
long report concerning them.[32] This book should be read by students,
as it gives an insight into what prehistoric times must have been. McGee
states a number of interesting facts which I repeat, with some changes,
in condensed form.
The Seris are bitterly opposed to foreigners, and he considers “their
race sense is perhaps the strongest ever known.” This is due to their
living alone and apart on this small island away from other tribes. They
had bitter experiences with the cruel Spaniards nearly three centuries
ago, which was a contributing factor in bringing about this condition.
They use shells, with which the sea-front abounds, for knives, cups,
dishes, dippers, and other utensils.
The natural, water-worn pebbles need no chipping or fashioning to make
of them hammers and crushers. Occasionally some of these implements
exhibit a little work to bring them into better shape. The seacoast
abounded in thousands of water-worn stone objects, of such forms as made
them convenient for use by the Seri Indians.
Practically no chipped implements occurred. McGee searched patiently but
found only two, both of which were arrow-points. The water-worn stones
were used in the hand and not hafted, the aim serving as the handle.
“The Seri are wonderfully quick in using these stones”—the motions being
faster than if one held the end of the handle in which the stone was
fashioned. The social organization of these people is very peculiar. The
oldest women are matrons who seem to dominate each community. In the
case of the best-looking young woman of the tribe, who would not be
photographed, the matron commanded that she permit a picture to be
taken, and she, who had strenuously objected, at once consented. When
any of these people marry with aliens, they are outlawed or driven away
from the other Seri.
The graves of the Seri are simple pits in which the body is placed with
accompaniment of objects belonging to the deceased in life. If such
burials—near the surface—were made in very ancient times in more moist
or humid climates, it is certain that all bone and other perishable
objects would have disappeared and only the stone things remained. We
would then be unable to determine that a grave once there existed, and
it is possible—I do not say probable—that such graves may have been made
in times of extreme antiquity in the North or South, and that all of the
softer substances and bones have disappeared. In that event, these
graves of an early culture would not appear to us as graves, but as a
small cache of rude implements.
Aside from these two references I have found a few others, but because
of limited space, I am unable to present them here.
Dr. Charles Peabody kindly furnished me with an interesting statement
regarding the use of the bicaves or discoidals, which is herewith
submitted:—
“At the Village of the Houmas. There are eighty cabins, and in the
middle of the village a fine level square, where from morning to night
there are young men who exercise themselves in running after a flat
stone which they throw in the air from one end of the square to the
other, and which they try to have fall on two cylinders that they roll
where they think that the stone will fall.”[33]
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA
We should consider quite briefly this subject. As was remarked on pages
32–4, man may have occupied America in times of great antiquity.
Personally, I cannot understand how all the different Indian dialects
developed in comparatively recent times. It would seem that several
thousand years at least were required for so many and diversified
tongues to have developed among our aborigines.
Not being a geologist, it would be presumptuous for me to pass opinion
on questions in which geology played prominent part. What little is
offered, therefore, is based upon study of man’s handiwork and
distribution of his implements rather than upon geologic evidence. There
has been not a little said concerning the observations of Mr. Ernest
Volk and Dr. Charles C. Abbott in New Jersey, as both of these men have
labored for many years near Trenton, upon fields and in the sands and
gravels. Recently Dr. Abbott published three pamphlets.[34] There are
some personalities in these pamphlets which might have been omitted, and
one or two statements to which some persons might object. But on the
whole these three pamphlets sum up all of Dr. Abbott’s observations
during the past thirty years, with reference to New Jersey archæology
and the antiquity of man in the Delaware Valley.
Waiving these minor considerations, which no broad-minded man would
treasure up against Dr. Abbott, we may safely assume that both he and
Mr. Volk are real archæologists. That is, they understand conditions as
they existed in ancient times, and that is something that few men of
to-day grasp. It cannot be learned from reading the reports, from
studying in museums, or through obtaining a degree from one of our
universities. Both Volk and Abbott have worked hard. There was no fuss
made about it. It was a continuous grind day after day, week in and week
out, year upon year.
[Illustration:
FIG. 723. (S. about 1–3.) A remarkably well-preserved gourd water-jug.
Found in the ashes of Salts Cave, Kentucky. B. H. Young’s
collection, Louisville, Kentucky.
]
No man can dig a pit in the ground and fill it up so that it conforms to
the surrounding natural strata. Such a place always shows disturbed soil
or clay. Walk along the riverbank, where the water has washed out a line
of fence and left the marks of the post-holes, and observe; note
gravel-banks anywhere in this country where aborigines buried in graves,
and as white men haul away the gravel and expose the bank, one is able
to see clearly defined the outlines of the graves. The same is true of
the holes of burrowing animals and of tree-roots, etc. The beds of
streams mentioned by Dr. Abbott in his work play an important part in
archæology. When the implements found in them were lost, the streams
were active. Since then they have filled up. The character of one
deposit in the Delaware Valley investigated by Abbott and Volk differs
from that of another, and the differences are so striking, the deposits
being in the one place sand, and in another place glacial clay, in
another place river gravel, that one cannot but believe that a
considerable period of time elapsed between these various cultures.
In many sections of the country are found not only chipped implements,
but other implements heavily coated with patina, which is an
incrustation accruing by time alone. There are other worn specimens
which appear very old. Select some of these and compare them with
objects from the Mandan or Iroquois sites, or even from the mounds in
the Ohio Valley, and one will observe the apparent difference in the age
of these specimens. The Mandan pottery and some of the Iroquois pottery
are even at this late date coated with soot. There is no soot on the
mound pottery. Along the Atlantic Coast, and in the South, flint
implements are sometimes coated with patina. In Florida shell heaps are
occasionally found skeletons at great depth. Mr. Clarence B. Moore
considered the lower strata of the larger shell heaps to be very old.
There was a skull found by Dr. Wyman during the course of his
exploration many years ago in the base of a shell mound in Florida.[35]
I present a picture of it in Fig. 717. The cranium is heavily incrusted
by cemented shells. Such a burial must be of great age.
These shell heaps accumulate very slowly during the occupancy of the
sites by many generations of Indians. This skull, and the skull found at
Lansing, Kansas, at a depth of twenty-five or thirty feet, and other
finds, are evidences of considerable antiquity. Dr. Hrdlička has said
that the Lansing man was of the same type as the modern Indian. This
does not mean that it is modern, for Assyrian and Egyptian crania five
or more thousand years old have been taken from the tombs, and it would
require experts to distinguish them from crania of living people.
Prof. Edward H. Williams, Jr., of Woodstock, Vt., suggested to me that
an expert analysis be made of the surface of certain problematic forms
and ornaments finished and unfinished. Therefore, I gave to Prof.
Williams some forty objects from our Andover collection, and he made a
careful examination, as did his friend Prof. John D. Irving of Lehigh
University, who is secretary of the Geological Society of America, and
an expert in such matters. Some of these specimens are found to be old,
a few very old, and others more or less recent. I shall quote a few of
his observations. The numbers refer to catalogue numbers in our books:—
“22517—From Georgia. This is a fine-grained diabase. Prof. Irving
reports that the ophitic structure is very well marked. This object has
been buried for some time, and the surface is weathered, and has been
pitted since it was worked.
“23449—Syenitic Gneiss. The feldspar had begun to kaolinize before the
pebble was worked. Since working the surface has been considerably
etched, and the hornblende is left rising above the surface. This black
mineral has also been decomposed since working, and the iron component
has rusted and stained the horn.
“34772—Extremely fine-grained muscovite schist with grains of magnetite.
This was weathered before working, and the magnetite has almost wholly
rotted to soft dark spots. There was some etching of the surface since
working.
“4137—Foliated greenish talc. The lighter pits and scratches are recent.
The surface is darker than the fresh fracture, and shows age and
handling.
“18414—This is a much decomposed rock of the trap variety, which has
become so weathered and softened that it has become almost entirely
chlorite. It looks very much like an argillite. It belongs to one of the
‘greenstone’ rocks.”
As to the exact number of years required for this weathering, it is
impossible to state, but since these specimens were considered from a
geological and mineralogical point of view, and critically analyzed by
two entirely competent men, it is safe to assume that a few hundred
years would not account for the disintegration. I do not know whether
these things are a few hundred or several thousand years old, but the
analysis shows that the stone weathered to some considerable extent, and
this would be indication of age. It would be interesting to analyze some
of the Iroquois objects and to compare.
The different cultures in America would appear to be evidence of the
antiquity of man. One cannot imagine that the Cliff-Dwellers and
mound-building tribes, that the stone-grave people, or the cave people
in the Ozarks, or the shell-heap people of Florida, or the Plains
tribes, and finally, the woods and mountain Indians, who never made any
monuments of any description—that all these cultures developed in a few
hundred years. They are so totally different, and are so influenced and
modified by climate and local conditions, that it would appear plausible
that several thousand years must have elapsed before these sharp lines
of distinction developed. Again, while all Indians have skins more or
less red, the variation in physical appearance among our aborigines is
surprising. No one could fail to distinguish an Ojibwa from an Iroquois,
or a Sioux from an Apache, or an Osage from a Seminole, even if one had
no knowledge of Indian language or customs. Environment and habitat must
have influenced these tribes and affected their stature and physical
conditions.
ADAPTATION TO CONDITIONS
Among our American aborigines one trait stands out prominently, and that
is the art of adapting themselves to existing and local conditions and
environments. Perhaps no race so readily appreciated that it must depend
entirely upon its own resources. We find, therefore, that it is
immaterial whether the native Americans live in Maine or in Florida, in
North Dakota, or Texas; they selected the most available materials. If
the stone was easily chipped or of such consistency that it could be
made use of, they adopted that stone for certain implements. If the
stone was refractory and not easily chipped or worked, they did the best
that they could with it. Therefore it is not always a criterion of poor
workmanship nor does it indicate low degree of culture if the implements
are crude and roughly and imperfectly made. It even means that there is
no good material at hand and that the Indians selected the best they
were able to secure and worked it out as well as they were able. Again,
in certain sections implements made of good material are to be found,
also of poor, coarse, local materials. Frequently the good material was
transported from a distance. It may have come through trade or by means
of conquest. That is immaterial. The point is that the natives naturally
preferred materials more easily worked, but that they were not always
able to obtain them. It is quite likely that few of the tribes were
friendly in prehistoric times. The natives of a given river valley may
have desired the better material to be found two or three hundred miles
distant from their habitat, but because of the hostility of the nation
living in that section where better material could be obtained, they
were unable by either trade or conquest to obtain it, and had to be
content with such unsatisfactory chert or other stone as occurred in
their immediate locality. I think that this factor entered largely into
prehistoric life.
But if no suitable stone could be obtained, the Indians made use of bone
or other substances. In several references to the Mandan village-sites
in this work, the point was made that the Mandans used the large bones
of the buffalo for a multitude of purposes. This was because suitable
stone was scarce, and for the further reason that the bones were more
easily worked and shaped than stone. In certain sections of the
Mississippi Valley where materials of all kinds were in abundance many
varieties of stone, shell, etc., were employed.
The readiness with which the native adapted himself to conditions is
shown in the house structure of the Indians. Those of cold climates
lived in very different structures from those of the South. And the
Plains Indians employed skin coverings, whereas the woods Indians made
use of bark or of logs, and the Pacific Coast Indians used quantities of
hewn boards.
This is an interesting subject, and could be followed at considerable
length did space permit.
ART IN ANCIENT TIMES AND MODERN ART
Too much has been made of the presence of stone and bone tools among
modern tribes. While there have been numerous instances of such clinging
to old forms, yet students of modern Indian life, by their constant
reference to these recurrences, have given a wrong impression to the
world.
It is generally known and accepted that art passes through periods of
transition. As an example one might cite the Renaissance. No student of
art would confuse the Renaissance with an earlier or later period.
Examples of earlier art still persisting during the early Renaissance
are in evidence. But as the influence of the Renaissance broadened, all
art of that period was affected, or leavened by it, and presently
practically all art was Renaissance.
This is precisely true of Indian art. We search diligently to find an
old, really old Navajo blanket to-day, and we pay a fabulous price for
it. Likewise we search—but in vain—for old wooden bowls, painted buffalo
robes, and feather mantles. The utmost corners of remote South America
are visited by explorers from Harvard, the American Museum, and Berlin
and London museums. Why? To discover primitive man untouched by
civilization in order to record his arts and folk-lore, religion, and
daily life, undefiled by contact with our civilization. Is it found?
Scarcely an example remains—all is tinged and influenced even as the
Renaissance changed the preRenaissance. If one will reflect a moment,
one will agree that this is all true.
Examples of sculptures in stone, carving of shell, effigies in copper,
ceramic art in the Cliff-Dweller country are in our leading museums. I
would recommend readers to go to these museums and compare that real art
with the wretched examples in vogue among the Indians at the present
time.
I have said so much regarding ancient arts in various places in this
book that now I wish to speak more particularly regarding certain tribes
of Indians, among whom I spent the spring and summer of the year 1909,
and contrast their art with stone-age art.
In March, 1909, I was sent by the Department of the Interior to
investigate the condition of the Ojibwa Indians. I returned several
weeks later and was again sent out the first of July and remained on the
White Earth Reservation until in October. Because our work was to
establish who were the full bloods, we came in contact with all the
Indians of the Ojibwa tribe who claim to have no white or negro blood in
their veins.
Among our eighteen or twenty witnesses, who were chiefs and persons
ranging from seventy to eighty-five years of age, and who were familiar
with the history of the Ojibwa, with the parents and grandparents of
those whom we established to be full bloods, were several members of the
grand medicine society, the Midiwewin. These persons were frequently
examined by me through our interpreters—all of whom were the most
competent we were able to procure and the best on the reservation—as to
the past history of the Ojibwa tribe. The old record-keeper, commonly
called Daydodge, but whose real name is Bay-bah-dwung-gay-aush, aged
eighty-two, had a remarkable memory. To him had been related all the
Hiawatha traditions by the Indians, and he was able to carry back
history about one hundred and twenty years. This man told me that there
were few, if any, stone implements in use among his people when he was a
boy, and he did not think that stone objects were in use to any extent
when his grandparents were children. He said that occasionally a woman
hafted a stone celt and used it in scraping or cutting, that some stone
mallets were to be found when his grandparents were young, but he
thought that the French and English traders’ goods had displaced all
stone articles in use among the Ojibwa.