STATEMENT OF CAPT. J. S. BAILEY.
I saw the stone first, I think, in November, in the fall of 1881, and a few days after Mr. Paxon had obtained the second piece. He had said to me that he had a curious stone which he wished to show me. I remember his mentioning the figure of a turtle, a snake, and an elephant carved on the stone, although he did not first mention the elephant figure or show that he appreciated the mammoth. It was not till he had read my article in the county newspaper that he came to know the value of the carving. He was only eighteen or nineteen then, and I believe would have sold the stone for a comparatively trifling sum. As soon as I took the stone home, after Mr. Paxon had lent it to me, all my family saw it. Judge Paxon, his uncle, did not realize its archæological importance, neither did Mr. Paxon, the owner's father. I showed it to Judge Paxon before I wrote the article. The first time Mr. Harry Paxon showed me the stone I remember his saying that "he could sell it for five dollars." He wanted me to glue or cement the pieces together, but I discountenanced the plan. I think he must have scraped out the original soil clinging to it with a nail or some sharp instrument, and I told him that he had cleaned the lines too much and that the stone had lost the look of age. The next time I saw it he had filled the lines with clay, and this I advised him to remove, as it did not resemble the soil of the original field. So the next time I saw it he had cleaned it again. I took the stone to the January or April meeting of the Bucks County Historical Society, 1882, and showed it to all the members present. I showed it to Gen. Davis, who advised me in connection with it to prepare an article on the Indian relics found in Bucks County, to be read before the July meeting at Penn's Manor. A few days after that I returned the stone to Mr. Paxon. Somewhere in June or July (1882) I borrowed it again, and kept it until two or three weeks after the meeting at Pennsbury. This meeting was on the third Tuesday in July, 1882. Mr. Paxon did not go to the meeting, but after reading my article in the paper he set a higher value on his relic and wished me to return it. I do not recollect seeing either part separately. The two pieces were together when I first saw it. I think Hansell told me that the large part had been found first. Very many people saw the stone at my lecture at Penn's Manor. I had a large diagram of the inscription, several feet long. Two hundred people must have seen it. There was an article in the Bucks County Intelligencer about it, and it was at the Bi-Centennial and there seen by everybody.
[Signed]JOHN S. BAILEY.
Affirmed before
Elias Eastburn, J. P., Nov. 8, 1884.
Letter from Dr. D. G. Brinton, Professor of Archæology and Ethnology in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
To the Editor of the Bucks County "Intelligencer":
The discussion in your paper about the so-called "Lenape Stone," in which my name has incidentally been introduced, leads me to address you a few lines on some archæological points, especially on the methods of distinguishing genuine from fabricated specimens. I shall only refer to the Lenape Stone by way of illustration. It was first shown to me by Professor Lewis, and after a careful inspection I pronounced it a modern piece of work, which opinion has been substantiated by later observers. My opinion was based, first, on the design, and secondly, on the execution. It may be laid down as a rule, holding good in all aboriginal designs of the Eastern United States, that no lines indicating either shading or rounding are found on figures of pure native origin. Every line was significant, and nothing was done for affect. Grouping was also unknown, and any such triple arrangement as the brute, the human, and the divine groups, standing in immediate relation to each other and forming parts of a picture, as appears on the Lenape Stone, was as far above aboriginal æsthetic conceptions as the Sistine Madonna would be above the execution of a sign-painter. Certain artistic details, as the lightnings shooting in various directions from a central point (as from the hand of Jove), were also unknown to the art notions of the red race. The treatment of the sun as a face, with rays shooting from it, I also consider foreign to the pictography of the Delaware Indians, nor have I yet seen any specimens proved to be of their manufacture that present it. It is found, indeed, in Chippeway pictography, but there only in late examples.
The execution of such imitations also usually betrays their origin. The lines on the Lenape Stone are obviously cut with a metal instrument, making clean incisions, deepest in the centre and tapering to points—quite different from the scratch of a flint point. Shrewder fabricators than the unknown author of this one make use of flint points. Some of the Western "tablets" have been so inscribed. They may thus conceal their tools, but there are other resources for the archæologist. The surface of all stones undergoes a certain chemical change on exposure to the air, which is called by the French term patine. In many varieties, as flints, jasper, and hard shales, this affords a decisive means of discriminating a modern from an ancient inscription or arrow-head. It requires the use of the microscope and some practice, but with these most of such impostures can be detected. This does not exhaust the resources at the command of the antiquary to circumvent those who would practise on his love for relics of the past. But I have said enough to show that opinions on relics need neither be vague nor prejudiced. It is most desirable that the citizens of our Commonwealth should take an earnest interest in the collection of our aboriginal remains, and it is gratifying to learn that Bucks County is not behindhand in this direction.
Respectfully yours,
[Signed]D. G. BRINTON, M.D.
From the Bucks County Intelligencer
of Sept. 6, 1884.
Letter from Mr. H. Carvill Lewis, Professor of Mineralogy, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
Philadelphia, Feb. 19, 1884.
Capt. J. S. Bailey:
Dear Sir:—Upon careful examination I am convinced that the mammoth on the Indian tablet is a forgery, being copied directly from the drawing of a mammoth on a piece of ivory found in the cave of La Madeleine, Perigord, France. The tablet is genuine, but the drawing upon it is recent.
Who do you think perpetrated this fraud?
Yours, very truly,
[Signed] H. CARVILL LEWIS.
Letter from Dr. F. W. Putnam, Curator of the Peabody Museum of Archæology, Cambridge, Mass.
Cambridge, March 17, 1884.
Dear Mr. Mercer:
In answer to your request, I put on paper a few thoughts in relation to the carved gorget of slate said to have been found in Bucks Co., Penna. It is needless to say that I have examined the stone with great care; for if it is a work of prehistoric times in America, it is a specimen of very great archæological interest. The first impression I received was that it was probably a fraud. This was of course natural, after having seen several gorgets with figures carved upon them which were unquestionable frauds. I therefore first of all examined the stone, and was sorry to find that it had been so much cleaned, and rubbed, and scrubbed, and probably oiled, that no evidence could be derived from the character of the lines cut upon the surface of the stone, or from the stone itself, bearing upon its antiquity. So far as the testimony of the stone itself is concerned, the lines may have been cut within a few weeks or many years ago. Throwing out of consideration all the facts you have given me in relation to the history of the stone as known to you, I am left with the character of the carvings alone upon which to draw conclusions. From a study of these I get the following results:
1st. The person who carved the stone must have been familiar with the appearance of an elephant or mammoth, either from having seen one or the other in life or represented in pictures. There is too much expression given to the details of outline of forehead, curve of back and belly, and position of the legs, representing the animal as walking, to be the work of one who only knew the animal from a general description handed down by tradition.
2d. Most of the other figures on both sides of the stone are of a character common to Indian picture-writing, but there are a few which, like the "mammoth," show an appreciation of details or ideas unlike any I can recall in Indian picture-writings. Take, for example, the fish on the edge of the small piece, and the long eel-like figure by the side of the bird—each of these have a few hair-lines drawn from the back as if to represent the rays of fins, in order to impress the character of a fish, although the rays are out of natural position. The figure of a man on his back under the foot of the "mammoth" is not drawn in the usual conventional manner, like the figure of the man with the bow.
3d. The idea of the heavens, conveyed by the figures of stars, moon, and sun, is probably not an unusual way of representing the sky or the heavens, but the mass of crossed lines near the sun, which are supposed to represent lightning, seems to me to be more the conventional symbol of the white man than the Indian.
Considering all these points I draw these conclusions:
1st. The carvings were made in ancient times by an Indian of superior artistic skill, who had seen a living mammoth, and who wished to preserve some myth or tradition relating to the animal, in picture-writing upon his gorget; or,
2d. The carvings were made by an Indian in comparatively recent times, with the same idea of preserving a myth about the "great beast," and he was aided in his work by some white man; or,
3d. That the carving is the work of some white man in very recent times, who may or may not have known of the myth and tradition of the Indians relating to the "mammoth."
An attempt to read the stone as a pictograph illustrating the myth of the "great beast" may be going too far, but if it can be shown to be a piece of Indian work beyond reasonable doubt, the interpretation of the figures in that connection is certainly legitimate from the remarkable coincidence between them and the myth.
I certainly hope you will bring every possible evidence to bear in your work, and that by a study of many pictographs you will be able to test the doubtful figures on the stone.
Yours, very truly,
[Signed] F. W. PUTNAM,
Curator Peabody Museum.
Extracts from a report of an examination of the Lenape Stone by Dr. M. E. Wadsworth, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The answers are Dr. Wadsworth's.
Q. Are the carvings made by steel or flint instruments?
A. The depth and regularity of the carvings indicate that they were made by some dulled steel tool like an awl.
Q. Are the carvings later than the fracture of the ends and the middle?
A. Later—for the tool-mark can be seen at one end striking across the broken surface, and lines crossing the middle fracture do not match on both sides. On one side they pass down on the rounded and worn surface of the fracture, below their position on the other side. This is seen in all the marks (three only) crossing the line of fracture. One other line sinks down on one side, and ends against the fractured portion opposite. This appears to have been made after the fracture by holding the pieces together. It is very remarkable that the line of fracture should cross the specimen at the only place it could and intersect the minimum number of the lines of carving. Even in two of those cuts, the fracture breaks across the point where they cross one another. * * *
[Signed] M. E. WADSWORTH.
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
March 17, 1884.
Extracts from a report of an examination of the Lenape Stone by Mr. J. P. Iddings, of the U. S. Coast Survey. The answers are Mr. Iddings'.
Q. Can it be decided beyond reasonable doubt whether the carvings were made with a steel or flint instrument—is there a great probability either way?
A. I do not know.
Q. Are the carvings beyond a reasonable doubt later than the fracture in the middle—(or other fractures)?
A. They appear to be later than the middle fracture; they do not lie at the same depth on the edges of both pieces. The small arrow's shaft does not appear to have been a continuous line. It is interesting to note that the middle fracture only crosses three lines on one side and none on the other side, and that in no other position could one happen without cutting half a dozen or more. The carvings appear to have been arranged with reference to the break.
[Signed] JOSEPH P. IDDINGS.
New York, March 24, 1884.
Letter from Dr. F. W. Putnam referring to the two carved stones (figs. 19 and 20) found on the Hansell Farm in the summer of 1884.
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 30, 1884.
Dear Mr. Mercer:
I have examined the two specimens you have placed in my hands from the Hansell Farm, Bucks Co., Penn., and see no reason to doubt their authenticity. The lines cut upon them seem to have been made a long time since, as exhibited by the weatherings within the incisions. One stone seems first to have been designed for a perforated ornament, but not completed, and was afterwards used as a rubbing implement, as shown by the notches on the edge. The other stone is of a natural form, in which two holes have been drilled, and on one surface a number of waves and zig-zag lines were cut, evidently for the purpose of using the stone for an ornament.
Yours very truly,
[Signed] F. W. PUTNAM.
The reader is referred to a series of articles mentioning the Lenape Stone in the Bucks County Intelligencer of August 9, 23, and 30, and September 20, 1884, and headed, "Who Perpetrated the Forgery?" also to a personal discussion which took place in the columns of that newspaper between the owner of the Stone and Mr. H. C. Lewis, of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, in which arise various questions of veracity as to the facts of an interview which had taken place between them—i. e., whether Mr. Lewis had or had not wished to buy the Stone, and how long he had been allowed the loan of it; whether he had or had not been permitted to take photographs; and whether he or Mr. Paxon had scratched the surface of the Stone "to see its inside structure."
After a fair consideration of every fact bearing upon the case, and with ample knowledge to judge of the particulars of this interview at the time it took place, personal considerations prevent the writer from discussing the merits of this controversy, purely personal in its nature and irrelevant to the question before us.