North American Stone Implements

by Charles Rau

Concerning North American flint implements of the European drift type in general, Mr. Stevens expresses himself thus: "The legitimate conclusion at which we may at present arrive, is that implements, in form resembling some of the European palaeolithic types, were made by the aborigines of America at a comparatively late period, and that the people usually termed the 'mound-builders,' were, probably, the makers of these implements." (p. 443.)

There is no sufficient ground, I think, for attributing these implements exclusively to the mound-builders, considering that they occur on the surface, and in deposits below it, in regions where the people designated as the mound-builders are not supposed to have left their traces. In the States of New York and New Jersey, for instance, such articles repeatedly have been met. I will only refer to the leaf-shaped implements in possession of Mr. Cowing, which were found in New York, and are the finest specimens of that kind ever brought to my notice. That the people who erected the mounds made and used tools resembling the palaeolithic types of Europe, is proved by the occurrence of those tools in the mounds; but it follows by no means that they are to be considered as the sole makers of that class of implements. Supposing that the mound-builders really were a people superior in their attainments to the aborigines found in possession of the country by the whites, it is certainly very difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the manufactures of the ancient and those of the more recent indigenous inhabitants of North America. The mound-builders—to preserve the adopted term—certainly did not stow away all their articles of use and ornament in the mounds, but necessarily left a great many of them scattered over the surface, which became mingled with those of the succeeding occupants of the soil. Both the mound-builders and the later Indians lived in an age of stone, and as their wants were the same, they resorted to the same means to satisfy them. Their manufactures, therefore, must exhibit a considerable degree of similarity, and hence the great difficulty of separating them.

Yet Mr. Stevens goes in this respect farther than any one before him. He is particularly orthodox in the matter of pipes. Those who have paid some attention to the antiquities of North America, are aware of the fact that Messrs. Squier and Davis found in the mounds of Ohio, especially in one mound near Chillicothe, a number of stone pipes of peculiar shape, which they have described in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." In these pipes the bowl rises from the middle of a flat and somewhat curved base, one side of which communicates by means of a narrow perforation, usually one-sixth of an inch (about four millimeters) in diameter, with the hollow of the bowl, and represents the tube, or rather the mouth-piece of the pipe, while the other unperforated end forms the handle by which the smoker held the implement and approached it to his mouth. In the more elaborate specimens the bowl is formed, in some instances, in imitation of the human head, but generally of the body of an animal—mammal, bird, or reptile. These pipes, then, were smoked either without any stem, which seems probable, or by means of a very diminutive tube of some kind, the narrow bore of the base not allowing the insertion of anything like a massive stem. The authors of the "Ancient Monuments" called these pipes "mound-pipes," merely to designate that particular class of smoking utensils; it was not their intention to convey the idea that the mound-builders had been unacquainted with pipes into which stems were inserted. On the contrary, they distinctly assign a beautiful pipe of the latter kind, representing the body of a bird with a human head,[7] to the mound-builders, though this specimen was not found in a mound, but within an ancient inclosure twelve miles below the city of Chillicothe. Referring to this pipe, Mr. Stevens says: "Squier and Davis consider that this object is a relic of the mound-builders; but it does not appear that any pipe of similar form, or indeed any pipe intended to be smoked by means of an inserted stem, has been found in any of the Ohio mounds." Upon inquiry I learned from Dr. Davis that mounds had been leveled by the plough within the inclosure where the pipe in question was found, which, he is convinced, belonged to the original contents of one of those obliterated mounds. In the Smithsonian report for 1868, I published (on page 399) the drawing of a pipe then in possession of Dr. Davis. Its shape is that of a barrel somewhat narrowing at the bottom, and its material an almost transparent rock-crystal. The two hollows, one for the reception of the smoking material, and the other for inserting a stem, meet under an obtuse angle. This pipe was taken from a mound near Bainbridge, Ross County, Ohio. Mr. Stevens suggests it had been associated with a secondary interment, (p. 524.) Dr. Davis, however, who is acquainted with the circumstances of its discovery, told me that it belonged, with various other objects, to the primary deposit of the mound. Thus it would seem that the mound-builders confined themselves by no means to the use of one particular class of pipes.

Those who advocate a strict classification of North American relics according to earlier or later periods, should bear in mind that mound-building was still in use—if not in Ohio, at least in other parts of the present United States—when the first Europeans arrived, though the practice seems to have been abandoned soon after the colonization of the country by the whites. Yet, even in comparatively modern times, isolated cases of mound-building have been recorded,[8] which fact would indicate, perhaps, a lingering inclination to perpetuate an ancient, almost forgotten custom. Many of the earthworks in the Southern States doubtless were built by the race of Indians inhabiting the country when the Spaniards under De Soto made a vain attempt to take possession of that vast territory, then comprised under the name of Florida. For this we have Garcilasso de la Vega's often-quoted statement relating to the earth-structures of the Indians. The Floridians, we also know, erected at the same period mounds to mark the resting-places of their defunct chieftains. Le Moyne de Morgues has left in the "Brevis Narratio" a representation and description of a funeral of this kind. When the mound was heaped up, the mourners stuck arrows in the ground around its base, and placed the drinking vessel of the deceased, made of a large sea-shell, on the apex of the pile.[9] But even without such historical testimony, the continuance of mound-building might be deduced from the fact that articles of European origin are met, though rarely, among the primary deposits of mounds. The following interesting communication, for which I am indebted to Colonel Charles C. Jones, will serve to illustrate one case of mound-burial that can be referred with certainty to a period posterior to the European occupation of the country:

Fig. 4.

"I have found in several mounds," says my informant, "glass beads and silver ornaments, and, in one instance, a part of a rifle-barrel, which were evidently buried with the dead. These, however, were secondary interments, the graves being upon the top, or sides, or near the base of the mound, and only a few feet deep. Never but in one case have I discovered any article of European manufacture interred with the dead in whose honor the mound was clearly erected. Upon opening a small earth-mound on the Georgia coast, a few miles below Savannah, I found a clay vessel, several flint arrow-heads, a hand-axe of stone, and a portion of an old-fashioned sword deposited with the decayed bones of the skeleton. This tumulus was conical in shape, about seven feet high, and possessed a base diameter of some twenty feet. It contained only one skeleton, and that lay, with the articles I have enumerated, at the bottom of the mound, and on a level with the plain. The oaken hilt, most of the guard, and about seven inches of the blade of the sword still remained. The rest of the blade had perished from rust. Strange to say, the oak had best resisted the 'gnawing tooth of time.' This mound had never been opened or in any way disturbed, except by the winds and rains of the changing seasons. I have no doubt but that the interment was primary, and that all the articles enumerated were deposited with the dead before this mound-tomb was heaped above him. This, within the range of my observation, is an interesting and exceptional case. I am persuaded that mound-building, at least upon the Georgia coast, was abandoned by the natives very shortly after their primal contact with the whites."

Fig. 5.

From mound-building I turn again to North American flint implements. Mr. Stevens refers in his work to the absence of flint scrapers in the series from the United States exhibited in the Blackmore Museum. Scrapers of the European spoon-shaped type, however, are not as scarce in the United States as Mr. Stevens seems to suppose. The collection of the Smithsonian Institution contains a number of them; and I found myself two characteristic specimens in the Kjökkenmödding at Keyport, New Jersey, described by me in the Smithsonian report for 1864. They lay upon the shell-covered ground, a short distance from each other, and were perhaps made by the same hand. In Fig. 4 I give a full-size drawing of one of my specimens, both of which consist of a brown kind of flint, such as probably would be called jasper by mineralogists. The figured specimen, it will be seen, possesses all the characteristics of a European scraper. Its lower surface is formed by a single curved fracture. The rounded head is somewhat turned toward the right, a feature likewise exhibited in the other specimen, which is a little larger, but not quite as typical as the original of Fig. 4. As the peculiar curve of the broad part is observable in both specimens, it must be considered as having been produced intentionally. Indeed, I have among my flint scrapers from the pilework at Robenhausen one which is curved in the same direction. In fashioning their implements in this particular manner, the Indian and the ancient lake-man possibly had the same object in view.