CONCLUSIONS AS TO GORGETS, WINGED OBJECTS, ETC.
In the preceding pages I have had so much to say about supposed use of problematical forms, that there is little need for lengthy conclusions. Moreover, in general Conclusions in “The Stone Age,” I shall consider the meaning of these and other things in more detail.
Fig. 362. (S. 1–3.) Four beautiful boat-stones from the collection of B. H. Young, Louisville, Kentucky. All are highly executed and polished, from various portions of Kentucky. Materials: Greenstone and banded slate.
Many of the tablets or winged objects have been called “shuttles,” and were supposed to have been used in the weaving of cloth and nets. Other less sensible uses have been applied to these things.
It has always seemed to me ridiculous to claim that the prehistoric peoples made use of objects, on which a great deal of time and hard labor were spent, for ordinary purposes. Last summer when among the Ojibwa, I made particular inquiries of them regarding the use of various implements; particularly the small triangular boards, cut in the form of stone tablets, with which I saw old women weaving nets. They informed me that they used similar small, flat pieces of wood with concave ends in olden times.
Fig. 363. (S. 1–2.) Five ridged gorgets from the Andover collection. Attention is called to the one with the horn-like elevation.
An Indian could make a wooden shuttle in far less time than required to make one of stone, and if he dropped the wooden shuttle it would not break. If he dropped a winged stone and it struck any hard substance, it would be pretty apt to break or at least to be nicked.
Regarding the winged and other forms it is significant that no great number of these objects are found in the mounds, rather do they occur in the surface, pretty much anywhere in the Mississippi Valley and the St. Lawrence basin. In the great mounds of the Ohio Valley and also in the South, copper objects and pipes are common, the winged specimens in slate are very rare. My own opinion is that these things are older than the mounds. The gorgets with raised surfaces, such as Fig. 363, occur more frequently in the mounds of the Scioto Valley, than other types, excepting pendants, which are common everywhere. The same is true of the large squared or rectangular tablets; the double-winged stones are almost entirely wanting in the mounds and graves.
The beauty and symmetry of these specimens have always appealed to students of prehistoric art.
It is interesting to note—and one is persuaded that it has a direct bearing upon the usages to which the aborigines put these objects—that few of the forms are found accompanying the burials, and that these few are confined to the pendant shape, the tablet, and the “boat-shaped”—not hollowed-out. That is, that the “canoe-form” is so seldom found in interments as to be considered an exception, and that even when found it is not hollowed-out.
Fig. 364. (S. 1–2.) Slender bar-amulets. Collection of Albert L. Addis, Albion, Indiana. These three were found near Albion and are more slender than most bars.
Certain forms are common in stated localities. When one has time to list all of the “gorget” class now on exhibition in the museums, it will be possible to deduce further conclusions. Until then, what facts have already been ascertained must suffice.
Cushing thought that many of these slate and granite gorgets were bases on which bird-stones and similar effigies were mounted. Formerly I was inclined to accept Cushing’s views, but as careful study of the soft slate surfaces fails to reveal scratches, I am not now prepared to accept his suggestion. Rather let it be said that, if one is to theorize at all, the more complicated of these gorgets belong to the shamanistic individuals who were numerous in primitive tribes; that these, adorned with a variety of feathers and gewgaws, were brought before the lodge or into the central dance-ground and placed before the shaman, or that they were carried by him, or worn upon his person.
Fig. 365. (S. 1–2.) Bar-amulets; Phillips Academy collection, Andover. These range from base with slightly turned ends to long straight objects pointed at either end. They are of black slate, perforated in the bottom like a bird-stone.
The fact that so few of these are found in burial-places leads me to believe that the problematical class was made and used largely in times previous to the interment of bodies in mounds, graves, or cliff-houses. That is, they were all very old and did not belong to mound-building tribes or to those who were buried in graves. Of course, some of them did, but I am speaking of the average, for a small per cent of them were found in burial-places. Professor Edward H. Williams, Jr., of Woodstock, Vermont, examined with great care for me the surfaces of a number of these problematical forms, testing them from a point of view of chemistry and mineralogy, to ascertain what elements in the stones weathered out and what elements remained. In the Conclusions, Volume II, I present his observations, referring to them by our museum numbers, instead of by the figure numbers used in “The Stone Age.” His observations are of great importance in indicating that many of these stones are old. How old, I do not attempt to say in years, but that the most of them were made and used long before the Christian era, I firmly believe.
Fig. 366. (S. 1–3.) Bar-amulet and four ridged objects, somewhat different from bar-amulets, but of such forms as could be ranged in a series, beginning with bar-amulet and ending in a ridged type, or vice versa.
There is another point with reference to the problematical class that I wish to place before readers. If there is anything that denotes peculiar development here in America on the part of stone-age man—a development dissimilar to that found anywhere else in the world, it is evinced in these strange, problematical forms. Here and there one will find a stone pendant or simple ornament similar to stone pendants elsewhere in the world. But as a class these things stand aloof as distinctly American. Compare them with stone objects from any other country in the world, and you will catch my meaning. They are unique, they are individualistic. I defy any one to pick a series in Egypt, Europe, Babylonia, or elsewhere that will type for type compare with them. They constitute a problem in American archæology. We have seen that on the forearm or chest, or the hand, or the neck, of skeleton remains some of these are found. But most of the forms have not been found buried with the dead. The few vague references to “charm-stones,” and “bull-roarers” are feeble attempts at explanation. Certainly, we do not know, in the broad sense, what they meant to stone-age man. To dismiss them with a wave of the hand as witchcraft stones is likewise a confession to ignorance and of inability to solve the problem. I find no specific reference among the works of early writers to their use. Their distribution is not confined to the territory of the Iroquois, the Creeks, the Delawares, the Eries, or the Ojibwa. While they are most numerous in the areas occupied by such tribes, that does not mean that they were used by those same Indians.
Fig. 368. (S. 1–2.) Two of a series of peculiar pointed type regarding which I am totally in the dark. Material: black slate and granite. Phillips Academy collection, Andover. The one to the right has a groove about the top. There are many of these in all museum collections, and I am sorry I cannot illustrate a large number of them. They range from the ordinary ridged form, unperforated, to long, slender, almost pick-shaped objects. They constitute a study in themselves. There have been many theories as to drilled and winged objects, but these pendant-shaped, “coffin”-shaped, and kindred stones not only defy classification, but there is absolutely no use to be assigned them. There are no perforations, seldom are they grooved, and there is no way whereby one might judge for what purpose they were made use of. Truly the word “problematical” belongs to them more than to any other type of stone objects.
Fig. 367. (S. 1–2.) Peculiar bar-amulet, of which three views are represented; top, side, and bottom. John Merkel collection, Bellevue, Iowa. Material: mottled granite.
I closed my part of the Bulletin no. 2, on gorgets, Phillips Academy publication, with the same quotations with which I close this chapter on “Problematical Forms.” I see no reason to change it, although it applied to gorgets exclusively:—
“If one were to find Zuñi paraphernalia independent of any association of Zuñi people, and if the discoverer had no knowledge of the Zuñis, he could not conceive of the peculiar, not to say incredible, usages to which Zuñi charms are put. The Zuñis gave up most of their time to ceremonies. Other native tribes may have done the same.
“In the earlier Jesuit ‘Relations’ the natives are said to have devoted many days to ceremonies, incantations, etc.,—‘Works of the Devil.’ But there is no clear and tangible reference, in all of the voluminous writings of early explorers, to the more complicated gorgets, to the forms more elaborate than the merely pendant shape. The suggestion forces itself that these objects were made and used before the Discovery by Columbus.”