The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2

by Warren K. Moorehead

FIELD STUDY NEEDED

Before concluding my remarks on the stone age in North America, I would call attention to the necessity of more and careful field work, and an understanding of the difference between various sites rather than continued museum work, or the reading of reports and publications. That man who considers arts and crafts of tribes to have been pretty much the same in America is very ignorant concerning real archæology. It has been the purpose of this volume to emphasize differences in the arts and crafts among prehistoric tribes. Archæology is like any other comprehensive subject; it requires study, discriminating care, and enthusiasm. One should further add, it requires inspiration. A man who does not love to hunt specimens for the sake of hunting them has not his heart in the work.

We have had many mounds examined, plans have been drawn, the skeletons carefully set down as so many feet from each other. A report is published in regard to that mound, and instead of intelligent observations on the meaning of the evidence ascertained, there is usually nothing but a dry and statistical statement of the distances of the skeletons from a given point. Of course it is necessary to make a survey of mounds and other remains. And it is equally important to have reports, but I do not think that it is necessary to publish field notes—which are no more than survey notes—and call them a report. Many of the reports published in recent years have missed the essential thing in American archæology. They have emphasized the mathematical features of our explorations. They are as if one published tabulated census reports, but offered no explanations as to what the number and assembling of the people in the United States meant. If no conclusions of value are to be drawn from the exploration of a given site, then it seems to me that wealthy people who send out expeditions are wasting their money, and the scientists their time. We are training young men in our universities and museums to measure mounds and village-sites very carefully. All this is eminent and proper, but we are losing sight of the meaning of those same village-sites and mounds and their relation to others and to prehistoric culture in general.

The explorer Stanley made a statement in his work “Darkest Africa,” which I have never forgotten. The scientist Emin Bey was much interested in examining a human skull and measuring it very carefully and setting down the measurements. Stanley was not interested in the skull. He wished to know something regarding the life of the man to whom it once belonged. If some of our students would, for a few years, lay aside cameras, ground-plans, tape-lines, and get down to real field work, much more progress would ensue. The study of sites, collections, types, and local conditions should be placed first, it seems to me.

In Science, April 15, 1910, there appeared an open letter written by Professor B. C. Gruenberg of De Witt Clinton School, New York, along the very lines I have indicated. I quote a paragraph:—

“We all know that there can be no true science that does not rest solidly upon facts. But the thought must often occur to many of us that there is some danger, especially among the younger scientists, that we may become obsessed with an exaggerated sense of the value of facts as such. Is there not too much emphasis laid by many professors in charge of research students on the mere accumulation of observational, statistical, or experimental facts, with too little attention to that side of science which concerns itself with those analytical and synthetic processes that convert facts into valuable ideas? It seems to me that this latter kind of work needs at the present time at least as much encouragement as the other. Of course, there is the possibility for ‘thinking’ to degenerate into profitless speculation; but we are certainly as much in need of the results of thinking about the facts already accumulated as we are of more facts.”

Such studies as those of Professor Holmes on pottery and quarries; such explorations as Mr. C. B. Moore’s in the South; the work done by Volk and Abbott in New Jersey, where they very carefully set aside the argillite and the quartzite and chipped implements as found in different places under different conditions; such work as Professor Mills has done in Ohio in differentiating the Hopewell and the Fort Ancient culture, are things that will count, and works that will stand. A surveyor should measure mounds, number skeletons, and draw plans. The librarian should read reports and compile statistics, but it requires a real archæologist to do the work that I have referred to above.

Squier and Davis, whose “Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley” may be justly considered our standard work upon the mounds, not only explored, but they drew conclusions which, with here and there an exception, or a slight change, will stand at the present time. For many years Dr. Cyrus Thomas used all the tremendous energies of the Bureau of Ethnology to dispute the statements of those hard-working, painstaking, philosophical pioneers Squier and Davis. To-day we know that the culture they described is different from the Shawano, Cherokee, or other cultures which Thomas wished to establish in the Ohio Valley. The work of that distinguished citizen of Illinois, George Sellars, will bear comparison with the work of any other man since his day in the study of chipped flint objects, and if any one doubts the statement let him read and ponder upon Sellars’s complete narrative in the Smithsonian Report for 1885, and then read what has been said since by others.

Aside from the technical study of American archæology, there is a certain charm and fascination in investigation of these ancient remains. Although it has been thirty years since I found my first arrow-head, I never cease to feel a thrill of pleasure when, walking about the shores of lakes or streams, I happen to find one of these evidences of the real and the simple life. One’s mind, if he is inclined to dwell upon prehistoric times in America, naturally reverts to the past under such circumstances, and I close this work with a quotation from Dr. Abbott’s recent publication, “When as many a day has drawn to its close, while yet I lingered in the field and every sign of white man’s industry faded from view, the scattered trees became again a forest, the cry of the cougar and bleat of the fawn were heard, the bark of the fox and howling of the wolf filled the air, a lurid light of a camp-fire lit the sky; the days of the Indian had returned, nor did the illusion pass away until homeward bound, my hand was on the latch.”