Their play, however, was not like the games of to-day, as you may see by the pictures of their toys. We might, perhaps, call the principal game of the boys “Playing Man,” for the little stone implements, here pictured, are only miniatures of the great stone axes and long spear-points of their fathers.
In one particular these old-time children were really in advance of the youngsters of to-day; they not only did, in play, what their parents did in earnest, but they realized, in part, the results of their playful labor. A good old Moravian missionary, who labored hard to convert these Indians to Christianity, says: “Little boys are frequently seen wading in shallow brooks, shooting small fishes with their bows and arrows.” Going a-fishing, then, as now, was good fun; but to shoot fishes with a bow and arrow is not an easy thing to do, and this is one way these stone-age children played, and played to better advantage than most of my young readers can.
Among the stone-age children’s toys that I gathered that afternoon, were those of which we have pictures. The first is a very pretty stone hatchet, very carefully shaped, and still quite sharp. It has been worked out from a porphyry pebble, and in every way, except size, is the same as hundreds that still are to be found lying about the fields.
No red man would ever deign to use such an insignificant-looking ax, and so we must suppose it to have been a toy hatchet for some little fellow that chopped away at saplings, or, perhaps, knocked over some poor squirrel or rabbit; for our good old Moravian friend, the missionary, also tells us that “the boys learn to climb trees when very young, both to catch birds and to exercise their sight, which, by this method, is rendered so quick that in hunting they see objects at an amazing distance.” Their play, then, became an excellent schooling for them; and if they did nothing but play it was not a loss of time.
The five little arrow-points figured in the second picture are among those I found in the valley. The ax was not far away, and both it and they may have belonged to the same bold and active young hunter. All of these arrow-points are very neatly made.
The same missionary tells us that these young red men of the forest “exercise themselves very early with bows and arrows, and in shooting at a mark. As they grow up, they acquire a remarkable dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, and small game.”
Every boy remembers his first pen-knife, and, whether it had one or three blades, was proud enough of it; but how different the fortune of the stone-age children, in this matter of a pocket-knife.
flint knife.
In the third picture is shown a piece of flint that was doubtless chipped into this shape that it might be used as a knife.