An equally interesting and more generally distributed class of antiquities are the beds and heaps of shells. These are found with more or less frequency on the shores of every State from Connecticut southward along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Some of them are of enormous extent, covering acres of ground, and of a singular height. For a long time it was a debateable point whether they belonged to the domain of the geologist or antiquarian; later researches have awarded them to both, by distinguishing between those of natural and artificial origin.[334] The latter are recognized by the presence of darts, pottery, charcoal, &c., in original connection with the shells and debris throughout the mass, by the presence of surface soil, roots, and stumps, in situ beneath the heap, by nearness to an open fishing shore, and finally by the valves of the shell fish being asunder and their edges factured or burnt; on the other hand, whole closed shells as at Easton in Maryland, fragments of older fossils in original connection, distinct stratification,[335] and remoteness from any known oyster bed, as those of northern Texas, northern Georgia, and perhaps of Cumberland county, New Jersey, are convincing proofs of their natural deposition.
Examples in Florida are numerous and striking. At Fernandina new town on Amelia island, a layer extends along the face of the bluff for one hundred and fifty yards and inland a quarter of a mile, sometimes three feet in depth, composed almost wholly of shells of the esculent oyster though with clams and conches sparsely intermixed. The valves are all separate, the shells in some places rotten, fractured and mixed with sand, charcoal, and pottery, while in others as clean and sound as if just from the hands of the oysterman.
Similar deposits are found in various parts of the island; on the main land opposite; on both sides of the entrance to the St. Johns; on Anastasia island; and every where along the coast both of the Atlantic and the Gulf. One of the most remarkable is Turtle Mound on Musquito Lagoon, near New Smyrna. “It is thirty feet high, composed almost altogether of separate oyster shells, it being rare to find an entire one; there are also some conch and clam shells, both of which are, however, exceedingly scarce. That it is artificial there is no doubt on my mind. Some eight or ten years since we experienced a gale in this section of the country, from the northwest, which caused that portion of the mound facing the river, the steepest part, to wash and fall considerably; being there a few days afterwards, I took considerable pains to examine the face of it, and found as low as the bottom and as high up as I could observe, numberless pieces of Indian pottery, and quantities of bones principally of fish, but no human ones; also charcoal and beds of ashes. The one on which I reside, opposite New Smyrna, is precisely of the same formation. Having had occasion some time back to dig a hole six or eight feet deep, I found precisely the same contents that I have described at Turtle Mound, with the addition of some few flint arrowheads.”
For this interesting description from the pen of a gentleman of the vicinity I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. F. L. Dancy, State Geologist of Florida; he adds from his own observation an account of one on Chrystal river, on the Gulf coast, four miles from its mouth. “The marsh of the river at that point is some twenty yards wide to the firm land, at which point this mound commences to rise; it is on all sides nearly perpendicular, the faces covered with brush and trees to which the curious have to cling to effect an ascent. It is about forty feet in height, the top surface nearly level, about thirty feet across, and covered with magnolia, live-oak, and other forest trees, some of them four feet in diameter. Its form is that of a truncated cone, and as far as can be judged from external appearance, it is composed exclusively of oyster shells and vegetable mould. These shells are all separated. The mound was evidently thrown up by the Indians for a lookout, as the Gulf can be distinctly seen from its summit. There are no oysters growing at this time within four or five miles of it.”
Other shell heaps are met with along the coast but none equalling in magnitude that seen by Sir Charles Lyell[336] on Cannon’s Island at the mouth of the Altamaha, covering ten acres of ground, “elevated in some places ten feet and on an average five feet above the general level,” and which this eminent geologist attributes exclusively to the Indians, or the vast beds of Gnathodon Cuneatus, on Mobile Bay, described by Mr. Hale,[337] which, however, are probably of natural formation, though containing quantities of human bones, pottery, images, &c.
It is strange that we find no notices of the formation of these heaps by the early travellers; I do not remember to have met with any except a line in Cabeza de Vaca, where, speaking of a tribe on the Gulf, he says their houses were “built of mats on heaps of oyster shells.”[338]
Along Manatee river I noticed numerous small heaps of conches, attributable to the later Indians, and in the post-pliocene shellbluffs at the mouth of this river, nearly twenty feet in height composed largely of a species of Pyrula,[339] I found numerous fragments of a coarse, ill-marked, pottery, not, however, where the shells were unbroken and clean, but where they were fragmentary, mixed with charcoal, ashes and dirt, and never more than three feet below the surface. The singular hillocks, whose formation is a geological enigma not readily solved, so frequent along the St. Johns, vast aggregations of Helices with some Unios and other fresh water shells in connection, without admixture of earth, in some cases thirty feet high, and irregularly stratified, are not to be mistaken for those of artificial construction, though from the frequency of Indian relics found in them, they seem to have been a chosen place of burial for the aboriginal tribes.
Among the relics dating from a later period are the “Indian Old Fields.” These are portions of land once cleared and cultivated by the Seminoles, and are found wherever the fertility of the soil promised favorably for agriculture. They are very abundant in Alachua, where, says Bartram,[340] “almost every step discovers traces of ancient human habitation,” reminding us of the time “when the Indians could assemble by thousands at ball play and other juvenile diversions and athletic exercises on these then happy fields and green plains.” Such is the tenacity of the soil for retaining impressions, that the marks of tillage by which these are distinguished from the Spanish old fields are easily seen and readily discriminated, even after they are covered by a dense growth of trees.