Fig. 201. (S. 1–2.) A fine pointed drill-lance (possibly used in scarifying flesh, or opening sores) at the left; next, a rotary point, almost drill-shaped; and a gracefully curved drill. Collection of S. Van Rensselaer, Newark, New Jersey.
Fig. 202. (S. slightly less than 1–2.) Three fine drills from the collection of S. Van Rensselaer, Newark, New Jersey.
After a thorough investigation I concluded that the ancient people had quarried this flint, worked it down to convenient disc form for distribution, and taking it in canoes down the Little River to the Cumberland, down the Cumberland to the Ohio, up the Ohio to the Scioto, and thence to North Fork of Paint Creek, landed it one half mile from the Hopewell village. The distance by water would be seven or eight hundred miles, as near as I can judge. If the material was not brought in this manner, it must have been obtained by trade, and one can scarcely conceive of over eight thousand discs weighing from one fourth to two thirds of a pound each, being carried overland on the backs of Indians from northwest Tennessee to central Ohio.
In spite of the great quantity of material stored in the Hopewell mound referred to, yet most of the chipped objects on the village-sites of the Hopewell group and in the mounds were made of Flint Ridge material, instead of the nodular flint of the cache. My theory is that the deposit was made in the last years of the occupancy of the Hopewell group, and for that reason the Indians did not make general use of it.
Fig. 203. (S. 1–1.) Peculiar reamer with very broad base. The stem is wanting, the shoulders are squared. This form is rare. E. H. Collins’s collection, Cherokee, Iowa.
Fig. 204. (S. 1–1.), one of those specimens difficult of classification, is from Mr. Gibson’s collection, Schenectady. The turned point is sometimes found in knives, seldom in drills. Quite likely this specimen should appear in the knife-class; yet the point (rare in that it is curved) is not unlike the reamers.