Fig. 344. (S. 1–4.) Problematical forms. B. H. Young’s collection, Louisville, Kentucky.
Fig. 345. (S. 1–1.) Ceremonial axe of stone. Found at Thornhill Lake, Volusia County, Florida. From “Certain Sand Mounds, St. Johns River, pt. II.” This is one of the angular Southern forms, with expanded wings. It is not of the butterfly type. It reminds one very strongly of a Wisconsin-Michigan form which is typified in Fig. 343. There are few of the winged stones found in Georgia, Florida, or Alabama.
Figs. 343, 349, 357 illustrate the Wisconsin types. Other specimens from Ohio, Indiana, etc., illustrate the more widespread Wisconsin types.
It often happens that a later tribe makes use of an object of ancient form and special purpose, for some service totally foreign to the mind of the original owner.
This fact is illustrated in specimen number 38,205, from our Andover exhibit, shown in Fig. 352, which has a remarkable and interesting history. It was found in Indiana on the banks of the Wabash River, on the site of a Miami Indian village. The Miamis lived on that site about seventy years ago, and the specimen was found shortly after they departed for their reservation west of the Mississippi. As will be seen, the object is an unfinished ceremonial, or possibly an ornament. Material, banded slate. The maker had done little more than block it out roughly. The specimen is clearly prehistoric and is covered with patina. It has every appearance of age. It was picked up from its ancient site by some Miami Indian who was in search of a suitable instrument for tapping sugar-trees. As the specimen was of the right weight, and shaped something like a hammer-head, he lashed it in a stick and used it as an instrument with which to drive pegs or chips into the sugar-maples. The original handle has been preserved, although it is now frail and much decayed.
Fig. 346. (S. 1–3.) Four winged objects and one pick-shaped from the collection of A. L. Addis, Albion, Indiana. Attention is called to the central object, a crescent with the broad ends. This type is interesting, and different from others. Several have been found, but no one can explain the purpose of these peculiar projections on the tips of the wings.
Moreover, the specimen carries a moral. We cannot explain the purpose of the “ceremonial” or unknown or “problematical” class through information or data obtained from modern Indians, and so far as prehistoric times are concerned, modern folk-lore sheds little light on them. In this case the Indian made use of an unfinished ceremonial as a rude hand-hammer. No glimmer of what that specimen stood for in the mind of prehistoric man entered his head. He saw a convenient tool and he made use of it accordingly. How long ago that ceremonial was manufactured, it is impossible to determine. One fact stands forth indisputably, and that is that the modern Miami had not the faintest conception of the original or true import of the object he used as a hammer.
