The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races

by Emory Adams Allen

Such is Dr. Koch’s very interesting statement of this find. “It was received by the scientific world,” says Foster, “with a sneer of contempt,” and, it seems to us, for very insufficient reasons. It is admitted that his knowledge of geology was not as accurate as it should have been. He made some mistakes of this nature, which have been clearly shown.³⁵ Still, he is known to have been a diligent collector, and we are told “no one who knew him will question but that he was a competent observer.”³⁶ It seems to us useless to deny the truth of his statements. There is, however, nothing to necessitate us believing in an immense age for these remains. This is not to be considered a point against them, for there is no reason for supposing that the mastodon may not have lingered on to comparatively recent times, and that comparatively recent men may not have intercepted and destroyed helpless individuals. Indeed, we are told there are traditions still extant among the Indians of these monsters.³⁷

We have other facts showing that, in this country as in Europe, man was certainly living not far from the time when the land was covered with the ice of the Glacial Age, whatever may be true of still earlier periods. We are told that, when the time came for the final breaking up of the great glaciers, and while they still lingered at the head waters of the Platte, the Missouri, and the Yellowstone rivers, a mighty lake—or, rather, a succession of lakes—occupied the greater portion of the Missouri Valley. The rivers flowing into them were of great size,³⁸ and heavily freighted with sediment, which was deposited in the still waters of the lakes, and thus was formed the rich loess deposits of Nebraska.

From several places in this loess have been taken rude stone arrows, buried at such depths and under such circumstances, that we must conclude they were deposited there when the loess was forming. But this requires us to carry them back to a time when elephants and mastodons roamed over the land, for bones of these huge creatures³⁹ are quite frequently found. This arrow-point —or, it may be, spear-head—was found twenty feet from the surface; and almost directly above it, and distant only thirteen inches, was a vertebra of an elephant. “It appears, then, that some old races lived around the shores of this lake, and, paddling over it, accidentally dropped their arrows, or let them fly at a passing water-fowl;” and, from the near presence of the elephant’s bone, it is shown that man here, as well as in Europe, was the contemporary of the elephant, in at least a portion of the Missouri Valley.⁴⁰

Other examples are on record. In Greene County, Illinois, parties digging a well found, at the depth of seventy-two feet, a stone hatchet. Mr. McAdams carefully examined the well, to see if it could have dropped from near the surface. He tells us the well was dug through loess deposits; and from the top down was as smooth, and almost as hard, as a cemented cistern.⁴¹ The loess was, as in Nebraska, deposited in the still waters of the lake which once occupied the Valley of the Illinois.⁴² And we need not doubt but that it dates from the breaking up of the glacial ice. The position of this hatchet, then, found at the very bottom of the loess deposits, shows that, while yet the glaciers lingered in the north, and the flooded rivers spread out in great lakes, some tribes of stone-using folks hunted along the banks of the lakes, whose bottoms were to form the rich prairies of the West.

Previous to this discovery, Mr. Foster had recorded the finding in this same formation, distant but a few miles, a rude hatchet. There was in this case a possibility that the stone could have been shaped by natural means, and so he did not affirm this to be a work of man; but he says, “had it been recovered from a plowed field, I should have unhesitatingly said it was an Indian’s hatchet.”⁴³ We think it but another instance of relics found under such circumstances, that it points to the presence of man at the close of the Glacial Age.

No doubt many similar discoveries have been made, but the specimens were regarded as the work of Indians; and though the position in which they wore found may have excited some surprise, they were not brought to the attention of the scholars. Nor is it only in the prairie regions of the West where such discoveries have been made. Col. C. C. Jones has recorded the finding of some flint implements in the drift of the Chattahooche River, which we think as conclusively proves the presence of man in a far away time as do any of the discoveries in the river gravels of Europe. It seems that gold exists in the sands of this river, and the early settlers were quick to take advantage of it. They dug canals in places to turn the river from its present channel—and others, to reach some buried channel of former times. These sections passed down to the hard slate rock, passing through the surface, and the underlying drift, composed of sand, gravel, and bowlders. “During one of these excavations, at a depth of nine feet below the surface, commingled with the gravels and bowlders of the drift, and just above the rocky substratum upon which the deposit rested, were found three [Paleolithic] flint implements.”⁴⁴

He adds that, “in materials, manners of construction, and in general appearance, so nearly do they resemble some of the rough, so-called flint hatchets, belonging to the drift type, as described by M. Boucher De Perthes, that they might very readily be mistaken, the one for the other.” “They are as emphatically drift implements, as any that have appeared in the diluvial matrix of France.” On the surface soil, above the flints, are found the ordinary relics of the Indians. The works of the Mound Builders are also to be seen. Judging from their position, the Paleolithics must be greatly older than any of the surface remains. Many centuries must go by to account for the formation of the vegetable soil above them.

Speculating on their age, Mr. Jones eloquently says, “If we are ignorant of the time when the Chattahooche first sought a highway to the Gulf; if we know not the age of the artificial tumuli which still grace its banks; if we are uncertain when the red Nomads who, in fear and wonder, carried the burdens of the adventurous DeSoto, as he conducted his followers through primeval forests, and, by the sides of their softly mingling streams, first became dwellers here, how shall we answer the question as to the age in which these rude drift implements were fashioned and used by these primitive people?”⁴⁵