3

and bulla. All have a decayed and chalky appearance. They were probably obtained in the neighborhood, and obviously destined for ornamental purposes. This may be inferred from the fact that a number of the melampus shells are pierced with one hole in the lower part, (Fig. 3, natural size, which was sufficient for stringing them, as the connecting thread could easily be passed through the natural aperture of the shell. On close examination I found that these shells had been reduced, by grinding, to greater thinness at the place of perforation, in order to facilitate the process of piercing.

The boulders, which formed a part of the deposit, were probably designated for the manufacture of implements. A piece of one of the boulders was sent to me for examination. It is a compact diorite, the material of which many ground articles of the North American Indians, such as tomahawks, chisels, pestles, &c., are made.

It would be useless to speculate on the antiquity of the objects thus accidentally discovered, for there are no indications for determining, even approximately, the period when they were buried. It is far easier to account for the motives which induced the owners of the tools and the other objects to dispose of them in the manner described. Their object was, in all probability, to hide them. Perhaps they left the place with a view to return and to take possession again of their concealed property, but were prevented from carrying out their intention. Or, they may have buried them in time of war, when they were killed, driven away, or led into captivity; and their "hidden treasure" lay undisturbed in the ground, perhaps for centuries, until the spade of the Irish laborer brought it to light again. There is no room whatever for the supposition that this deposit constituted one of those religious offerings by which the ancient inhabitants of the Mississippi valley believed they could gratify or propitiate the powers that ruled their destinies.

Similar deposits of flint articles have repeatedly been discovered in the United States,* and Messrs. Squier and Davis mention several instances of this kind in their work entitled "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." The most extensive accumulation described by them occurred in one of the so-called sacrificial mounds of "Clark's Work," on North Fork of Paint creek, Ross county, Ohio. This mound contained, instead of the altar usually found in this class of earth-structures, an enormous number of flint disks standing on their edges, and arranged in two layers one above the other, at the bottom of the mound. The whole extent of these layers has not been ascertained; but an excavation six feet long and four broad disclosed upwards of six hundred of those disks, rudely blocked out of a superior kind of grayish striped flint. I had occasion to examine the specimens formerly in the collection of Dr. Davis, and have now a number of them in my own collection, which were sent to me from Ohio. They are either roundish, oval, or heart-shaped, and of various sizes, but on an average six inches long, four inches wide, and from three-quarters of an inch to an inch in thickness. They weigh not far from two pounds each. These flint disks are believed to have been buried as a religious offering, and the peculiar structure of the mound which inclosed themt rather favors this view. The disks, however, represent no finished implements, but merely flat pieces, rudely chipped around their edges, and destined, in all probability, to be wrought into more symmetrical forms. Thus it would rather seem that the contents of this mound constituted a kind of depot or magazine, from which supplies of flint could be drawn whenever there was a want of that material. Many of the disks under notice bear a striking resemblance to the flint "hatchets" discovered by Boucher de Perthes and Dr. Rigollot in the diluvial gravels of the valley of the Somme,

* Also in Europe. Deposits of flint arrow-heads, for instance, were found in Scotland.— Logan, "The Scottish Gael." Lond., 1831., Vol. I, p. 339.

† Ancient Monuments, &c, p. 158; drawings of the disks on p. 214.

in northern France. The similarity in form, however, is the only analogy that can be claimed for the rude flint articles of both continents, considering that they occurred under totally different circumstances. The drift implements of Europe represent the most primitive attempts of man in the art of working stone, while the Ohio disks are the unfinished specimens of a race that constructed earthworks of amazing size, and was already highly skilled in the manufacture of weapons and tools of flint.

Yet I little doubt but that implements analogous in shape as well as in associations to those of the drift of Europe, will be found also in America; for indications of the high antiquity of man on the latter continent are not wanting, and the similarity in the early condition of the human race in various parts of the globe becomes more and more manifest by the results of archæological investigation.

4

Another occurrence of flint disks is recorded in a notice by Dr. Hoy, published in Lapham's "Antiquities of Wisconsin," one of the Smithsonian volumes: "Some workmen, in digging a ditch through a peat swamp near Racine, found a deposit of disks of hornstone, about 30 in number. They were immediately on the clay, at the bottom of the peat, about two and a half feet below the surface. Some of the disks were quite regular; they vary from half a pound to a pound in weight." A few of these are preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

About 1860, while I lived in St. Louis, a quantity of rudely-shaped flint articles of similar character were discovered close together on the bank of the Mississippi, between St. Louis and Carondelet. It is probable that the falling down of a part of the bank had exposed them to sight. I could not ascertain their number, but saw about eight of them, of which I obtained three. They are nearly all of the same size, oval in shape, and consist of whitish flint. Fig. 4 represents one of my specimens in natural size. The original is seveneighths of an inch thick in the middle part. It is evident that they aro not implements in a state of compleion, but roughly-edged fragments, which were destined to be made into

arrow and spear-heads at some future time. Their present convenient shape was doubtless given them for the sake of easier transportation and for saving space. It is believed that flint can be chipped more readily after having been exposed for some time to the humid influence of the earth, and this may partly account for the practice of the aborigines of burying their supplies of flint in suitable places.

Implements very similar in shape to the Ohio disks were also found in the caves of Dordogne, especially that of Le Moustier. They are described and figured in the splendid work by Lartet and Christy, entitled " Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ."

Returning to my former subject, I will observe that the occurrence of Indian flint tools which served for agricultural purposes is not more surprising than that of other stone implements indicating less peaceable pursuits; for it is known that many of the aboriginal tribes of North America raised maize and other nutritious plants before this continent was settled by Europeans. The production of maize, indeed, must have been considerable. Mr. Gallatin has taken some pains to ascertain the area, east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of Mexico, over which cultivation extended. It was bounded on the east by the Atlantic; on the south by the Gulf of Mexico; on the west by the Mississippi, or, more properly, by the prairies. Towards the north the limits varied according to the climate; but near the Atlantic the northern boundary of agriculture lay in the region of the rivers Kennebec and Penobscot. North of the Great Lakes agriculture was only found among the Hurons and some kindred tribes. The Ojibways, on the south of Lake Superior, and their neighbors, the Menomonies, it appears, depended for vegetable food principally on the wild rice or wild oats, called folle avoine by the French. The Iroquois tribes raised large quantities of Indian corn. In the year 1687, a corps under the command of the Marquis de Nonville made an invasion into the country of the Senecas, during which all their supplies of maize were either burned or otherwise spoiled, and the quantity thus destroyed is said to have amounted to 400,000 minots, or 1,200,000 bushels. Though this estimate may be somewhat exaggerated, it nevertheless shows that these tribes paid much attention to the cultivation of

maize.

The nations who inhabited the large territories formerly called Florida and Louisiana, probably obtained their food mostly from the vegetable kingdom. They cultivated chiefly maize, beans, peas, pumpkins, melons, and sweet potatoes. Maize, however, was their principal produce. In the accounts of De Soto's expedition, not only frequent allusion is made to the extensive maize fields of the natives, but it may also be gathered from these relations that the army of De Soto would have starved without the supplies of Indian corn obtained from the inhabitants. These people laid up stores of that useful cereal, and among other facts it is mentioned that one of De Soto's officers found in one house alone, five hundred measures of maize ground to meal, besides a large quantity in grain.§ But those southern tribes met by De Soto and his followers in the sixteenth century were the most advanced among the North American aborigines. No longer in the pure hunter state, but attached to the soil, they lived in large villages, consisting of dwellings more commodious than those of the ruder tribes, and paid generally more attention to the comforts of life than the latter.

Adair, who spent during the last century many years as a trader in the district under notice, mentions that the French of West Florida and the English colonists obtained from the Indians different sorts of beans and peas, with which they were before entirely unacquainted. They raised also a small kind of tobacco, differing from that in use among the French and English settlers. The women, he says, planted pumpkins and different species of melons in separate fields, at a considerable distance from the towns. It is even probable that the former inhabitants cultivated fruit trees. Bartram, at least, found in Georgia and Alabama, on the sites of ancient Indian settlements, various kinds of trees, such as

* Some of the facts mentioned in the following remarks were already given in my previous article, published in the Smithsonian report for 1863; I repeat them here, for the sake of greater completeness, in connection with some additional details bearing upon the same subject. For descriptions of the remarkable " garden-beds" of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, which indicate an ancient cultivation, I must refer to Schoolcraft, Lapham, and others.

+ Gallatin, Archæologia Americana, Vol. II, p. 149.

Documentary History of New York, Vol. I, p. 238.

$ Garcilasso de la Vega, Conquête de la Floride. Leyden, 1731, Vol. I, p. 250. Adair, History of the American Indians. London, 1775, p. 408.

the persimmon, honey-locust, Chickasaw plum, mulberry, black walnut, and shell-barked hickory, which, he thinks, " were cultivated by the ancients on account of their fruit, as being wholesome and nourishing food."*

The Floridians, it is stated, employed at De Soto's time prisoners of war for working the fields, and in order to prevent their escape they partly maimed them by cutting the tendons of the leg above the heel or the instep. It appears, however, that among most semi-agricultural tribes of North America field labor was imposed upon the women; while the men, when not engaged in hunting or war expeditions, abandoned themselves to that listless repose in which barbarians generally love to indulge.

* Bartram's Travels. Dublin, 1793, p. 38.

† Garcilasso de la Vega, Conquête de la Floride, Vol. I, p. 286, and Vol. I, p. 389.

66

NOTICE OF THE BLACKMORE MUSEUM, SALISBURY, ENGLAND.

OPENED SEPTEMBER THE 5TH, 1867.

Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments."-Sir THOMAS BROWNE.

The Blackmore Museum was founded at Salisbury, by Mr. William Blackmore, of Liverpool and London, in 1864. The public are admitted free upon days appointed by the committee of the Salisbury and South Wilts Museum, who have been constituted the governing body by Mr. Blackmore, subject, however, to the annual consent of the trustees, who are the founder, his brother, Dr. Blackmore, and his brother-in-law, Mr. E. T. Stevens.

GENERAL REMARKS.

The collection mainly consists of specimens belonging to the stone age of different countries.

It has been well remarked that "these implements of stone are to be regarded as indicating a grade of civilization, rather than any definite antiquity." One object of the founder of the Blackmore Museum accordingly has been, an attempt to illustrate the use and application of the rude weapons, implements, and ornaments of antiquity, by exhibiting, side by side with them, similar specimens in use among existing races of mankind.

The general result of this arrangement is, that a striking resemblance can be observed in the modes by which the simple wants of a common nature have been supplied among people widely severed from each other in point of time, no less than by geographical distribution.

Although this may be the first impression conveyed by a glance at the Blackmore and similar collections, more careful examination will show that special types (and in some instances special objects) occur in particular districts, and that frequently typical points of difference exist between groups of objects assigned to the same period and people, and obtained from spots almost close to each other. Thus in the case of two localities near Salisbury, there is a difference in type between the group of flint implements found in the drift-gravel at Bemerton and the group found in the drift-gravel at Milford Hill.

Taken as a whole, however, the flint implements of the drift have well-marked characteristics; nevertheless, in the Blackmore collection certain specimens from an American tumulus agree very closely with the usual drift types. Very driftlike implements have also been found in certain bone-caves, yet in each case the attention is chiefly arrested by the aberrant character of the specimens.

66

There is a class of flint implements known as scrapers," one variety of which, usually large, thick-backed, and with a broad scraping edge, is found in the drift; it occurs again in cave deposits, as for instance in Le Moustier, Dordogne, and also with slight modification among ordinary surface specimens, although it ceases then to be a typical form. On the other hand, the type of "scraper" so abundant on the surface occurs, although rarely. in the drift.