Probably but few geologists will take exceptions to these views. Thus we have very satisfactory reasons for connecting these Paleolithic people with the close of the Glacial Age—a conclusion to which the scattering discoveries mentioned in the preceding pages also points. But as regards Dr. Abbott’s discoveries, they are on such a scale, and vouched for by so many eminent observers, that we need no longer hesitate to accept them, or complain of the scattering nature of the finds.
But we might inquire whether this is the earliest period to which the presence of man can be ascribed in this country? Excepting, of course, California, we do not know of any well established fact on which to base a greater antiquity for man. However, this subject is very far from being as closely studied as in Europe. Believing that in Europe man was living before the Glacial Age, and that in all probability he was living in California at the same early time, we would naturally expect to find some evidence of his presence in the Mississippi Basin and along the Atlantic seaboard. But no explorer has yet been fortunate enough to make such discoveries.59
It is scarcely necessary to point out that we have only the relative age of these gravel deposits. We have not yet arrived at an answer in years. This we are not able to do. As we have several times remarked, our American scholars, as a rule, do not think many thousands of years have elapsed since the Glacial Age, and yet they are not all agreed on that point. From the depths in the gravel and loess deposits that the stone relics are found, we may suppose that man was present during the entire series of years their formation represents. Prof. Aughey, to whose discoveries in loess deposits in Nebraska we have referred, estimates the length of time necessary to produce those deposits as between nineteen and twenty thousand years, and this he considers a low estimate. So we see that, at any rate, the date of man’s first appearance in America was certainly very far in the past.
In forming a mental picture of the conditions of life at that early time, it is not necessary to imagine a dreary scene of Arctic sterility. This is not true of the time when the Glacial Age was at its greatest severity. But at the time we are now considering, the glaciers had retreated over a large part of the country, though they still lingered in northern and mountainous regions. Great lakes and majestic rivers were the features of the country. The St. Lawrence was still choked with ice, and the great lakes must have discharged their waters southward.60 The Mississippi, gathering in one mighty stream the drainage of the Central Basin, sped onward to the Gulf, doubtless many times larger than its present representative. The animals then living included several species that have since become extinct. Mastodons and elephants must have been numerous, as their remains are frequently found in loess deposits.61 They have also been found in the gravels of New Jersey, in connection with the rude implements already mentioned. Probably keeping close to the retreating glaciers were such animals as the moose, reindeer, and musk-ox, while the walrus disported itself in the waters off the coast. At any rate those animals now only found in high northern latitudes were living during Glacial times as far south as Kentucky and New Jersey.62
A good deal of interest is connected with the finding of one mastodon’s tooth. It was found in the gravel deposit, about fourteen feet beneath the surface. It must have been washed to the position where found when the great floods from the melting glacier, with their burden of sand and gravel, were rolling down the valley. We can either conclude that the climate was such as to permit the existence of such animals, or that the animal to which it belonged lived in some far away pre-glacial time. But our interest suddenly increases when we learn that, but a few feet away, under exactly similar circumstances, was found the wisdom tooth of a human being. It, too, was rolled, scratched, and polished, and had evidently been swept along by the tumultuous flood. “The same agency that brought the one from the Upper Valley of the Delaware brought the other, and, after long years, they come again to light, and jointly testify that, in that undetermined long ago, the creatures to which they respectively belonged were living together in the valley of the river.”63
We must now consider the question of race. Who were the men that fashioned the implements? Were they Indians? or were they a different people? As far as we know the Indians, they were Neolithic. Their implements and weapons are often polished, pecked, and finely wrought; and, as before remarked, they employed the best kind of stone for their purpose. Dr. Abbott, who speaks from a very extensive personal experience, tells us, that it is not practical to trace any connection between the well-known Indian forms and the Paleolithic implements of the river gravels: “The wide gap that exists between a full series of each of the two forms is readily recognized when the two are brought together.”64 Besides this difference in form, there is also a difference in material. The ruder forms not being of jasper and allied minerals, but are almost exclusively of argillite.65 In addition to the foregoing, we must consider the different positions they occupy—the former being found only on or near the surface, the latter deeply buried within. These different reasons all point to the same conclusion: that is, that the Indians were preceded in this country by some other people, who manufactured the Paleolithic specimens recently discovered.
In Europe, Prof. Dawkins, as we have seen, maintains that the Cave-men were the predecessors of the Eskimos. This may serve us as a point of departure in the inquiry as to who the pre-Indian people were? It is manifest, however, that we must have some ground on which to base this theory. The Eskimo seem to belong to the Arctic region, as naturally as the white bear and the walrus. At the early time we are considering in America, glaciers had not retreated very far. So his climatic surroundings must have been much the same as at present. But the Eskimo may not live where he does now by choice: we may behold in him a people driven from a fairer heritage, who found the ice-fields of the North more endurable than the savage enemy who envied him his possession. It seems very reasonable to suppose that the Eskimos long inhabited this country before the arrival of the Indians, if it was not, in fact, their original home.
Mention has been made of the Eskimo traits still to be observed among the tribes of California. Prof. Putnam thinks that this fact can best be explained on the supposition that these tribes came in contact with primitive Eskimo people.66 Dr. Rink, from investigation of the language and traditions of the different Eskimo tribes, thinks they are of American origin, and must once have lived much farther south.67 He says, “The Eskimos appear to have been the last wave of an aboriginal American race, which has spread over the continent from more genial regions— following principally the rivers and water-courses, and continually yielding to the pressure of the tribes behind them until they have at last peopled the sea-coasts.”68 Mr. Dall, in his explorations of the Aleutian Islands, comes to the same conclusion as Dr. Rink. He says his own conclusions are, “that the Eskimos were once inhabitants of the interior of North America—have much the same distribution as the walrus, namely, as far south as New Jersey.”69
All this tends to prove that the Paleolithic people of New Jersey were ancestors of the Eskimos. This becomes highly probable when we pursue the subject a little farther. Dr. Abbott has shown, from the similarity of implements, position in which found, and so forth, that the Paleolithic people continued to occupy the country down to comparatively recent times, when Indian relics took their place.70 This is such an important point that we must give his reasons more in detail. Remember that Dr. Abbott speaks from the experience gained by gathering over twenty thousand specimens of stone implements, and paying especial attention to the position in which they were found. The surface soil of that section of New Jersey, where he made his explorations, was formed by the slow decomposition of vegetable and forest growth. In this layer he found great numbers of undoubted Indian implements. The number, however, rapidly decreases the deeper we go in this stratum. This would show that the Indians were late arrivals. Below this surface soil is a stratum of sand, overlying the gravelly beds below and passing into the surface soil just mentioned. In this layer were found great numbers of implements inferior to the Indian types found on the surface, but superior to the Paleolithic specimens described. They are not only inferior in finish to the Indian specimens, but are of different material. They are always formed of argillite. It was further noticed that the number of these rapidly decreased in the layer of surface soil, and are but rarely found on the surface.
Now it might be said that these rude forms were fashioned by Indians when in a rude state of culture, and, as they became more advanced, they learned the superior qualities of flint, and so dropped the use of argillite. But it so happens that we have found several places where were veritable manufactories of Indian implements. It is very significant that we never find one where the workman used both flint and argillite. He always used flint alone. Every thing seems to point to the fact, that the tribes who fashioned the argillite implements were different from the Indian tribes who made the flint implements. It is Dr. Abbott’s conclusions that the former, the descendants of the Paleolithic tribes, were the Eskimos, who, according to these views, must have inhabited the eastern portion of the United States to comparatively recent times.