OPINION OF INDIANS.
The writer has made several efforts to obtain opinions upon the Lenape Stone from modern Indians, particularly Delawares, in the West and in Canada. Mr. Horatio Hale, of Toronto, who kindly showed photographs of the carvings to several Indians in Canada, among whom were some very intelligent Delawares, says that "they thought that the Stone showed Indian workmanship, and would have been inclined to consider it authentic but for the mammoth, which perplexed them. They had never heard of such a creature, and, fearing a hoax, were shy of saying much about the symbols on the reverse side of the Stone; the pipes would naturally, they said, indicate a treaty; the snow-shoe, that some of the tribes concerned came from the North; and the tortoise, hawk, deer, etc., would be the marks or totems of the different tribes; with regard to the doubtful figures, they could give no explanation."
Of course, the value of these opinions would in each case depend upon the tribe to which the Indian belonged, and how far his former knowledge of a pictographic art or the traditions of his race may have been lost by many years of contact with the whites.