Among the Crows, Mandans, Sioux, and other Indians were common, in the days of Lewis and Clark, necklaces of long bones of three to four and sometimes five inches in length arranged in parallel rows. These were highly prized. One of these breast ornaments was presented to me by Mah-een-gonce, a chief of the Ojibway, at a squaw dance in August, 1909, at White Earth Reservation.
While it is my opinion that such objects as are shown in Figs. 199 and 202 were not used as drills, I should like to offer the suggestion that they served other purposes. Perhaps they were made use of as hairpins, possibly they were fastened to strips of buckskin, several of them being worn in parallel rows. Mounted in that manner they would form unique ornaments and appeal to aboriginal fancy.
CACHED FLINT OBJECTS
These would follow, according to classification, under knives and projectile points without stem—“C,” more or less circular.
Fig. 199. (S. 1–2.) Fifteen beautiful slender drills of chalcedony, blooded quartz, and agate. Collection of W. P. Agee, Hope, Arkansas. There were over two hundred of these drills found in one grave. They range from two inches to four and a half inches in length. These beautiful specimens doubtless represented an offering of some kind. They are all of the same workmanship and represent as high an art in flint-chipping as is to be found anywhere in the world.
In many portions of the United States deposits of flint implements have been found. These were called caches from the obvious fact that they were buried temporarily, and that in time the owners would seek them again. Numbers of finds of caches reported during the past thirty years are cited in the Bibliography, under “Caches” and also “Discs.” Although many caches have been reported, there must have been an unknown number discovered by farmers and laborers of which no record was ever kept. One of the most important was a report by Dr. J. F. Snyder, of Virginia, Illinois, and described at length in the Archæologist (October, 1893). The largest deposit was in mound number 22 of the Hopewell group, and from this we took out 7532 flint discs about six inches in diameter and a half inch thick, when we explored the group, in 1891–2. These are now on exhibit in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. (See Fig. 42.) Squier and Davis had taken out about six hundred in 1845, and prior to our official count, we gave to Mr. Hopewell and others about fifty, so that the grand total was nearly eighty-five hundred. In the case of the Hopewell deposit these discs represented a storage of raw material. The discs were not placed in that mound as an offering. There were no burials and no altars.
Fig. 200. (S. 2–3.) Three splendid drills from the Andover collection. From Ohio. Particular attention is directed to the one to the right with the shoulders projecting horizontally. In the central one the shoulders are curved upwards, a more common form than with the shoulders horizontal.
Many years later I discovered the quarries on Little River, Tennessee, eighteen miles south of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, whence, I am persuaded, this flint was obtained. It was of the nodular variety, gray-blue in character, and could be easily worked. The quarry showed signs of extensive working.