Stone axes and adzes, often called “celts.” These are usually made of amphibole and hornblende, related minerals, one a light-green and the latter dark-green in color, and both being hard, tenacious, and durable. Occasionally, however, celts of gneissoid material are found. In nearly all cases these wedge-shaped axes or celts have good form and are highly polished. No doubt they were sometimes used as spades or digging-tools.
Well-made gouges, of the same minerals as those in the “celts,” also occur in many localities.
Pipes of sandstone, limestone, and quartzite. Usually these exhibit good workmanship. Examples from Ontario are not wanting in which the bowl alone consists of stone, each having a horizontal opening for the insertion of a bone or wooden stem. Some have a perforation at the bottom bored diagonally, probably for the suspension of an ornament. Occasionally one is found having stem and bowl in one piece, and these are chiefly made from a comparatively hard variety of steatite or soapstone. Such are more frequently found northwards toward Hudson Bay, and they may perhaps be referred to the Eskimo, as steatite is used by this people in the manufacture of pipes as well as of culinary utensils. A pipe made from Mexican or Utah onyx, and having a human face-mask carved upon it, has been found in southwestern Ontario.
Gorgets. These are of many kinds as to their form and also the stone from which they are made. Circular, oval, cylindrical, tubular, and elongate flattened forms occur. The last-named are often nearly rectangular, flat, polished pieces of stone, perforated by one, two, or three holes. These are sometimes known as banner-stones. The smaller ones may have been used as ornaments in the head-dress, a cord of the hair of the head being fastened through one of the perforations, and feathers inserted in the others. The banner-stone with a single central perforation is somewhat rare, those with two or three perforations being more numerous. Banner-stones of reddish hematitic slate have recently been found here; but striped Huronian slate from the rocks of northern Ontario is the usual material from which they have been fashioned.
Amulets, charms, or ceremonial stones. These are bird-like or animal-like in shape, or rather they have the form of some imaginary animal partly avian and partly mammalian. There are holes bored diagonally through portions of the lower side, apparently for suspension of these stones by strings. Amulets are usually three or four inches long. Most of them are regularly formed and beautifully polished. The material is Huronian slate. But one recently obtained by the writer is of limestone, and has a length of nineteen inches, a height of six inches, and a thickness of five inches. The holes are large and extend from side to side in the upper part of what represents the neck and back of the bird.
Copper artifacts are not uncommon in Ontario and some other eastern localities, although they are not at all plentiful. The material is native copper from Michigan in the vicinity of Lake Superior. Occasionally native silver occurs in spots throughout the article. Well-formed celts or axes, and spears are found. Knives and beads also occur. The copper celt often has a flat side and a sloping raised side, the latter consisting of two flat faces sloping laterally from a central longitudinal elevation. Both sides of the spear slope toward the edge in a similar manner; there is a tang for insertion into a wooden or other handle, and there are usually two lateral projections at the base of the blade. The beads are of two kinds, namely, small, circular beads rudely fashioned, yet in shape somewhat like the ordinary modern beads of white people; and the long, thin leaf of copper loosely rolled, to constitute a small tube through which the string had to pass.
Pottery or earthenware objects. The pottery of this region is greatly broken. It consists principally of sherds or fragments of vessels of different sizes and designs. There are, however, a few perfect vessels of pottery, and there are many unbroken pottery tobacco-pipes here. The forms of the pipes and their decorative designs are numerous. Some of these are shown in Fig. 434, Toronto University collection.
With regard to the date of the aforesaid objects of man’s handiwork, it may here be stated that none of them are very recent, and that only the simpler forms, such as some of the arrow-heads, scrapers, and skewers, were made within the last four or five hundred years. There can be little doubt that most of them were made many centuries ago; although, of course, many of them may have been used in more recent times by the aboriginal successors of their manufacturers.
THE PLAINS OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL CANADA
In the region of the great plains between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains the prehistoric artifacts differ greatly from those of eastern Canada. Here are many earthworks of the ancient mound-builders, some of which have yielded characteristic mound products, differing considerably from the stone-age relics of the East; and in this region also are found large numbers of grooved hammers and mauls rarely found in Ontario and Quebec. In Ontario the stone “celt” or wedge is very common; but in Manitoba, with the exception of the extreme eastern part of the province, the celt is practically absent. With its decline and disappearance farther west, and especially towards the borders of Saskatchewan, the grooved hammers appear in great numbers, and in a great variety of forms and sizes. Stone discs and grooved axes likewise occur on the plains. Another stone tool absent from Manitoba is the amphibole gouge, of which well-formed, beautiful specimens occur in Ontario and farther east.