The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2

by Warren K. Moorehead

Examples of sculptures in stone, carving of shell, effigies in copper, ceramic art in the Cliff-Dweller country are in our leading museums. I would recommend readers to go to these museums and compare that real art with the wretched examples in vogue among the Indians at the present time.

I have said so much regarding ancient arts in various places in this book that now I wish to speak more particularly regarding certain tribes of Indians, among whom I spent the spring and summer of the year 1909, and contrast their art with stone-age art.

In March, 1909, I was sent by the Department of the Interior to investigate the condition of the Ojibwa Indians. I returned several weeks later and was again sent out the first of July and remained on the White Earth Reservation until in October. Because our work was to establish who were the full bloods, we came in contact with all the Indians of the Ojibwa tribe who claim to have no white or negro blood in their veins.

Among our eighteen or twenty witnesses, who were chiefs and persons ranging from seventy to eighty-five years of age, and who were familiar with the history of the Ojibwa, with the parents and grandparents of those whom we established to be full bloods, were several members of the grand medicine society, the Midiwewin. These persons were frequently examined by me through our interpreters—all of whom were the most competent we were able to procure and the best on the reservation—as to the past history of the Ojibwa tribe. The old record-keeper, commonly called Daydodge, but whose real name is Bay-bah-dwung-gay-aush, aged eighty-two, had a remarkable memory. To him had been related all the Hiawatha traditions by the Indians, and he was able to carry back history about one hundred and twenty years. This man told me that there were few, if any, stone implements in use among his people when he was a boy, and he did not think that stone objects were in use to any extent when his grandparents were children. He said that occasionally a woman hafted a stone celt and used it in scraping or cutting, that some stone mallets were to be found when his grandparents were young, but he thought that the French and English traders’ goods had displaced all stone articles in use among the Ojibwa.

CHAPTER XXXVII
CONCLUSIONS

THE ANCIENT CULTURE-GROUPS

As Major Powell found many linguistic stocks in North America in recent times, so we find quite as many cultures in ancient times. But the language of these people being unknown to us, we must study them through their implements. Some of these are widespread, while others are local. Consider, for instance, the saddle-shaped or bird-shaped stones, of which numbers are illustrated in chapter XXV. These, after great study, one must conclude originated in a certain tribe long ago. It is not proper to call them Iroquois, or Delaware; if they existed in historic times one might be more correct in stating that the Eries, or the Snake People, referred to by the Delawares in their Lenni-Lenape tradition, made and used them. Certainly they are not Iroquoian in character. Their very distribution would indicate that they are a product of Northern people of stone-age culture. As against this the bicave and discoidal stone is of central South culture and not of New England, the North, or West. Under other chapters I have presented some conclusions, and these will not be repeated here. Axes, flint implements, copper (by Mr. Brown), and several other divisions of artifacts have been already separated into their culture-groups. At the present writing there are so many new types on exhibition in public and private collections which formerly were considered products of individual fancy, that it is quite difficult for one to determine the number and extent of the prehistoric cultures in the United States.

However, one must make a beginning. In presenting what appears to me to establish various local cultures, I am quite aware that future observers—when the knowledge of this intricate subject is more widespread—may add or detract from my observations. The cultures mentioned, therefore, must be considered in the nature of pioneer observations, subject to development or change as archæologic knowledge expands and becomes more perfect.

In New Brunswick and Maine and about the mouth of the St. Lawrence there are the ever-present flint implements and chipped objects, and also numbers of slate points, which may be either problematical forms or winged spear-points and arrow-heads. Many of the slate points found by Mr. C. C. Willoughby in graves at Oldtown, Maine, appear to me to be too long and slender to have made effective weapons. Yet they may have served as such. The adze and gouge and the adze-blade celt are numerous in New England. I have commented on the types of chipped objects and how they differ in various sections of the country, so that it is not necessary to re-enter upon a lengthy dissertation on this question.

In New England proper, the region east of the Hudson River, the slate points are not common, and gradually disappear west of the Connecticut Valley. But the adze and the gouge and the long roller pestle abound in numbers. There are also strange effigies of whale, and rude effigies so rough that one does not know what the maker intended to represent. Plummet-shaped stones are also common. But the slate gorget and ornament, and the bell-shaped pestle, the discoidal and bicave, and many other forms, are almost wanting. The pipes are not common and far inferior to those of the Ohio Valley and Middle South and the South. New England, then, may be divided into two culture-groups, that east of the Merrimack River and that lying between the Merrimack and the Hudson. These are related to each other, but differences may be observed.