Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8) / Aboriginal America

by Unknown

Although these argillite spear-points seem principally to occur, as has been stated, in the alluvial mud along the banks of the Delaware, yet they are often found upon the surface, and associated with objects of Indian origin. This circumstance Dr. Abbott attempts to explain by the following considerations: “One marked result of the deforesting of the country and its constant cultivation has been to remove in great part the many inequalities of the surface and to dry up many of the smaller brooks. The hillocks have been worn down, the valleys filled up, and this of course has resulted in bringing to the surface, on the higher ground, the argillite implements which were at considerable depths, and in burying in the valleys the more recent jasper and quartz implements of Indian origin that were left upon the soil when lost or discarded by the red man. In the remnants of forests still remaining, where no such disturbance of the soil has occurred, the relative depths at which argillite and jasper respectively occur indicate the greater age of the former.”[1552]

He recurs to this subject in another place:[1553] “The telling fact with reference to these argillite spear-points is that they are not, in the same sense as jasper arrow-heads, surface-found implements. They occur also, and even more abundantly, beneath the surface-soil. The celebrated Swedish naturalist, Peter Kalm, travelled throughout central and southern New Jersey in 1748-50, and in his description of the country remarks: ‘We find great woods here, but when the trees in them have stood a hundred and fifty or a hundred and eighty years, they are either rotting within or losing their crown, or their wood becomes quite soft, or their roots are no longer able to draw in sufficient nourishment, or they die from some other cause. Therefore, when storms blow, which sometimes happens here, the trees are broken off either just above the roots, or in the middle, or at the summit. Several trees are likewise torn out with their roots by the power of the winds.... In this manner the old trees die away continually, and are succeeded by a younger generation. Those which are thrown down lie on the ground and putrefy, sooner or later, and by that means increase the black soil, into which the leaves are likewise finally changed, which drop abundantly in autumn, are blown about by the winds for some time, but are heaped up and lie on both sides of the trees which are fallen down. It requires several years before a tree is entirely reduced to dust.’[1554] This quotation has a direct bearing on that which follows. It is clear that the surface-soil was forming during the occupancy of the country by the Indians. The entire area of the State was covered with a dense forest, which century after century was increasing the black soil to which Kalm refers. If, now, an opportunity occurs to examine a section of virgin soil and underlying strata, as occasionally happens on the bluffs facing the river, the limit in depth of this black soil may be approximately determined. An average derived from several such sections leads me to infer that the depth is not much over one foot, and the proportion of vegetable matter increases as the surface is approached. Of this depth of superficial soil probably not over one half has been derived from decomposition of vegetable growths. While no positive data are determinable in this matter beyond the naked fact that rotting trees increase the bulk of top-soil, one archæological fact that we do derive is that flint implements known as Indian relics belong to this superficial or ‘black soil,’ as Kalm terms it. Abundantly are they found on the surface; more sparingly are they found near the surface; more sparingly still the deeper we go; while at the base of this deposit of soil the argillite implements occur in greatest abundance. Here, then, we have the whole matter in a nut-shell. The two forms were dissociated until by the deforesting of the country and subsequent cultivation of the soil, except in a few instances, they became commingled.”

A further argument in respect to the relation which argillite implements bear to those made of jasper and quartz is derived from the relative proportion in which they occur in localities which are believed to have been occupied first by the users of argillite, and subsequently by the Indians. “Of a series of twenty thousand objects gathered in Mercer County, New Jersey, forty-four hundred were of argillite, and of such rude forms and in such limited varieties as would be expected of the productions of a less cultured people than the Indian of the stone age. Of this series of forty-four hundred, two hundred and thirty-three are well-designed drills or perforators and scrapers; the others being spear-points, fishing-spears, arrow-heads, and knife-like implements.”[1555] This is supplemented by negative evidence drawn from “the character of the sites of arrow-makers’ open-air workshops, or those spots whereon the professional chipper of flint pursued his calling. In the locality where I have pursued my studies several such sites have been discovered and carefully examined. In no one of these workshop sites has there been found any trace of argillite mingled with the flint-chips that form the characteristic feature of such spots. On the other hand, no similar sites have been discovered, to my knowledge, where argillite was used exclusively. The absence of this mineral cannot be explained on the ground that it was difficult to procure, for such is not the case. It constitutes, in fact, a considerable percentage of the pebbles and boulders of the drift from which the Indians gathered their jasper and quartz pebbles for working into implements and weapons. If the absence of argillite from such heaps of selected stones is explained by the assertion that the Indians had recognized the superiority of jasper, then the belief that argillite was used prior to jasper receives tacit assent. If, however, it was the earlier Indians who used argillite, and gradually discarded it for the various forms of flint, then we ought to find workshop sites older than the time of flint-chipping, and others where the two minerals are associated. This, as has been stated, has not been done.”[1556]

Professor Putnam has found a confirmation of these views of Dr. Abbott in the contents of a great shell-heap at Keyport, in New Jersey, investigated over thirty years ago by Rev. Samuel Lockwood, and now placed in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. “As the shell-heap at Keyport, once covering a mile or more in length along a narrow strip bordered upon one side by the ocean and on the other by Raritan Bay, is entirely obliterated, it is of importance that the materials obtained from it are now in the museum for comparison with our very extensive collections from the shell-heaps of New England. The fact that at certain places on this narrow strip between the bay and the sea the prevailing implements were of argillite and of great antiquity has a peculiar significance in connection with those from Trenton, and again points to an intermediate period between the palæolithic and the late Indian occupation of New Jersey.”[1557]

To these various arguments the writer wishes to add the statement that to his personal knowledge argillite spear-points, and especially those of the fish-spear type, are occasionally found in other parts of our country besides New Jersey. In his own researches, which have been principally carried on upon the seacoast of New England, he has never found an example of them in the shell-heaps proper, which are universally recognized by archæologists as relics of the Indians. The few which he has found himself, or has obtained from others, have come from meadows by the side of rivers or ponds, where they might very well have been used as fish-spears.

A further confirmation of Dr. Abbott’s opinions in regard to the descendants of palæolithic man is derived from certain discoveries made by Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson in the alluvial deposits at Naaman’s Creek, in Delaware. These were first made known in November, 1887, by a letter to the editor of the American Antiquarian. “In 1870, a fisherman living in the village of Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, gave me some spear and arrow heads flaked from a dense argillite, as well as other rude implements of a prehistoric people, which he had found on some extensive mud flats near the mouth of Naaman’s Creek, a small tributary of the Delaware. The finder stated that while fishing ... he had noticed here and there the ends of logs or stakes protruding from the mud, and that they seemed to him to have been placed in rows.... A visit made a few days afterward to the place ... disclosed the ends of much-decayed stakes or piles protruding here and there above the mud.... On my return from France in 1880 I again visited the spot.... While abroad I studied in spare moments many archæological collections, especially those from the Swiss Lake Dwellings, and visited the various lake stations of Switzerland. The rude dressings of the ends of the piles in some places were evidently made with blunt stone implements, and recalled those I had seen on the ends of the posts in the Delaware River marshes. Since 1880 I have quietly examined the remains, excavating what pile ends remained in situ (preserving a few that did not crumble to pieces), preserving careful notes of the dredging and excavations (at low tides), carried on principally by myself, aided at times by interested friends. The results so far seem to indicate that the ends of the piles imbedded in the mud, judging from the implements and other débris scattered around them, once supported shelters of early man that were erected a few feet above the water,—the upper portion of the piles having disappeared in the long lapse of time that must have ensued since they were placed there. (The flats are covered by four and one half feet of water on the flood tide; on the ebb the marsh is dry, and covered with slimy ooze several feet in depth, varying in different places.) Three different dwellings have been located, all that exist in the flats referred to, after a careful examination within the last four years of nearly every inch of ground carefully laid off and examined in sections. The implements found in two of ‘the supposed river dwelling sites’ are very rude in type, and generally made of dense argillite, not unlike the palæoliths found by my friend Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton gravels. The character of the implements from the other or third supposed river dwelling on the Delaware marshes is better finished objects made of argillite.”[1558]

The greater portion of the objects obtained by Mr. Cresson has been placed in the Peabody Museum, to which he is at present attached as a special assistant; but he has also kindly sent to the writer a small illustrative collection from each site, for his study.

The writer would hesitate to draw the inference from this single discovery that the custom of living in pile-dwellings ever prevailed in North America, although there is evidence that such a practice was not unknown in South America. This is to be found in the account of the voyage of Alonso de Ojeda along the north coast of that country, in the year 1499, in which he was accompanied by Vespucius.[1559] I will quote the language of Washington Irving: “Proceeding along the coast, he arrived at a vast, deep gulf resembling a tranquil lake, entering which he beheld on the eastern side a village whose construction struck him with surprise. It consisted of twenty large houses, shaped like bells, and built on piles driven into the bottom of the lake, which in this part was limpid and of but little depth. Each house was provided with a drawbridge, and with canoes by which the communication was carried on. From these resemblances to the Italian city, Ojeda gave to the bay the name of the Gulf of Venice, and it is called at the present day Venezuela, or Little Venice.”[1560] There is no inherent improbability that such a custom may have prevailed upon the shores of Delaware Bay, and for the same reason that has caused it to be followed elsewhere. “It has been stated that the natives living near Lake Maracaybo, in South America, erect pile dwellings over the lake, to which they resort in order to escape from the mosquitoes which infest the shore. Lord also mentions that the Indians of the Suman prairie, British Columbia, on the subsidence of the annual floods in May and June, build pile dwellings over a lake there, to which they retire to escape from the mosquitoes which at that period infest the prairie in dense clouds, but will not cross the water.”[1561]

But it would be safer, probably, to consider these discoveries of Mr. Cresson’s as marking the site of ancient aboriginal fish-weirs, such as are described by Captain Ribault and other early explorers as made by the natives.[1562] The writer agrees with Professor Putnam in thinking that “the fact that at only one station pottery occurs, and, also, that at this station the stone implements are largely of jasper and quartz, with few of argillite, while at the two other stations many rude stone implements are associated with chipped points of argillite, with few of jasper and other flint-like material, is of great interest.”[1563]

Still further confirmation of the progress of the palæolithic man in this region is afforded by discoveries made in a rock-shelter near the headwaters of Naaman’s Creek, as early as 1866, for an account of which, and the preservation of the objects then found, we are also indebted to Mr. Cresson: “The remains of the Naaman’s Creek rock-shelter luckily fell into hands that have preserved them.... To give a detailed account of how the rock-shelter was discovered would consume too much time. Let us rather consider briefly the ... contents of the shelter’s various layers.... Fortunately careful drawings of the shelter were made during its excavation between the years 1866 and 1867.... A glance shows the outcrop of the rock as it appeared before the excavations were begun in 1866. The trees show that the ground was then covered by a thick wood.... From the point that marks the innermost edge of the outcrop, overhanging the hollow, a perpendicular line dropped to the ground would measure five and one eighth feet, the height of the projection of the rock above the ground before the excavations were commenced.