Chapter VI (2)

In 1874, Dr. Samuel Aughey made known the existence in Nebraska of “hundreds of miles of similar lacustrine deposits, almost level or gently rolling.”[1512] To these the name of “loess” has also been given, as well as to the mud deposits derived from the northern drift. Aughey states that these beds are perfectly homogeneous throughout, and of almost uniform color, ranging in thickness from five to one hundred and fifty feet. Generally they lie above a true drift formation derived from glaciers in the Black Hills, and represent “the final retreat of the glaciers, and that era of depression of the surface of the State when the greater part of it constituted a great fresh-water lake, into which the Missouri, the Platte, and the Republican rivers poured their waters.” The Missouri and its tributaries, flowing for more than one thousand miles through these deposits, gradually filled up this great lake with sediment. The rising of the land by degrees converted the lake-bottom into marshes, through which the rivers began to cut new channels, and to form the bluffs which now bound them. “The Missouri, during the closing centuries of the lacustrine age, must have been from five to thirty miles in breadth, forming a stream which for size and majesty rivalled the Amazon.” Many remains of mastodons and elephants are found in this so-called loess, as well as those of the animals now living in that region, together with the fresh-water and land shells peculiar to it. In it Aughey has also discovered an arrow-point and a spear-head, of which he gives well-executed figures. Both are excellent examples of those well-chipped implements which are regarded as typical of the Neolithic age or the age of polished stone, and are absolutely different from the palæolithic implements of which we have hitherto spoken. They were both found in railroad cuttings on the Iowa side of the Missouri River, and within three miles of it. The first lay at a depth of fifteen feet below the top of the deposit. Of the second he says it was “twenty feet below the top of the loess, and at least six inches from the edge of the cut, so that it could not have slid into that place.... Thirteen inches above the point where it was found, and within three inches of being on a line with it, in undisturbed loess, there was a lumbar vertebra of an elephant.”[1513]

This intermingling in these deposits of the bones of extinct and living animals appears to have been brought about by the shifting of the beds of the vast rivers he has described, which have been flowing for ages through the slight and easily moved material. It seems to be analogous to what has taken place in recent times in the valley of the Mississippi and in its delta. The finding, therefore, of arrow-heads of recent Indian type, even _in place_ under twenty feet of loess and below a fossil elephant-bone, cannot be considered as affording any stronger proof of the antiquity of man than the oft-cited instances of the discovery of basket-work and pottery underneath similar fossils at Petite Anse Island in Louisiana, or of pottery and mastodon-bones on the banks of the Ashley River in South Carolina. No such discovery can be considered of consequence as bearing upon the question of palæolithic man.

The late Thomas Belt wrote to Professor Putnam, in 1878, that he had discovered “a small human skull in an undisturbed loess in a railway cutting about two miles from Denver (Colorado). All the plains are covered with a drift deposit of granitic and quartzose pebbles overlaid by a sandy and calcareous loam closely resembling the diluvial clay and the loess of Europe. It was in the upper part of the drift series that I found the skull. Just the tip of it was visible in the cutting about three and one half feet below the surface.”[1514] Not long after this Mr. Belt died, and we are without further information in regard to the locality. It would seem, however, that the loess in which the skull occurred belongs to the latest in the lacustrine series, and consequently does not imply any very great antiquity for it.

Found in the Lahontan sediments,—from a cut in Russell’s _Lake Lahontan_, monograph xi. of Powell’s _U. S. Geological Survey_, p. 247.]

In 1882 Mr. W. J. McGee, of the U. S. Geological Survey, obtained from the upper lacustral clays of the basin of the ancient Lake Lahontan, where they are exposed in the walls of Walker River Cañon, a spear-head, made of obsidian, beautifully chipped, and perfectly resembling those found on the surface throughout the southwest. “It was discovered projecting point outwards from a vertical scarp of lacustral clays twenty-five feet below the top of the section, at a locality where there were no signs of recent disturbance.”[1515] This is said to have been “associated in such a manner with the bones of an elephant or mastodon as to leave no doubt of their having been buried at approximately the same time.” But we are also told that these lakes are of very recent date, and that they have “left the very latest of all the complete geological records to be observed in the Great Basin.”[1516] The fossil shells obtained from these deposits all belong to living species; while the mammalian remains, which have been found in only very limited numbers, and all, with a single exception, in the upper beds, “are the same as occur elsewhere in tertiary or quaternary strata.” Mr. McGee says: “If the obsidian implement ... was really _in situ_ (as all appearances indicated), it must have been dropped in a shallow and quiet bay of the saline and alkaline Lake Lahontan, and gradually buried beneath its fine mechanical deposits and chemical precipitates.”[1517]

In Mr. Russell’s opinion, this single implement, although supported by no other finds of a similar character, is sufficient to prove that “man inhabited this continent during the last great rise of the former lake.” But if this last great rise occurred in recent times, the presence of the bones of tertiary mammals in the upper beds shows that great natural forces must have been in operation at that time to have washed these out of their original place of deposit. The principal organic remains found, we are told, are those of living shells, and the intermingling of these with the bones of tertiary mammals could scarcely have taken place in “shallow and quiet bays.” To the writer this discovery seems rather to prove that an Indian spear-head was in some manner washed down and buried in the clays of the Walker River Cañon than that man was the contemporary there of the tertiary or quaternary mammalia. This fairly seems to be a case where, in the language of Dr. Brinton, “Archæology may at times correct Geology.”[1518]

It is almost paralleled by the discovery made by Mr. P. A. Scott, in Kansas, of a broken knife or lance-head, measuring in its present condition two inches and one eighth in length. Sir Daniel Wilson, who reports it, says: “The spot where the discovery was made is in the Blue Range of the Rocky Mountains, in an alluvial bottom, and distant several hundred feet from a small stream called Clear Creek. A shaft was sunk, passing through four feet of rich, black soil, and below this through upward of ten feet of gravel, reddish clay, and rounded quartz. Here the flint was found.... The actual object corresponds more to the small and slighter productions of the modern Indian tool-maker than to the rude and massive drift implement.” But this most careful and conscientious observer goes on to remark, “Under any circumstances it would be rash to build up comprehensive theories on a solitary case like this.”[1519]

If the discovery by Mr. McGee of this spear-head be insisted upon as establishing that man inhabited this continent during the last great rise of the lake, it would be easier to believe that that event occurred in recent and not in quaternary times, than to admit that the distinction between palæolithic and neolithic implements, established by so many discoveries in this country and in Europe, is thereby utterly overthrown.

The only alternative left is to believe that neolithic man was the contemporary of the tertiary mammals. To this conclusion we are asked to come by Professor Josiah D. Whitney, on account of the discovery of the remains of man and of his works in the auriferous gravels of California. The famous “Calaveras skull” is figured upon another page of this volume, where the circumstances attending its discovery are briefly referred to.[1520] It is astonishing to see how frail is the foundation upon which such a surprising superstructure has been raised, as it is found set forth in detail in the section entitled _Human remains and works of art of the gravel series_, in the third chapter of Professor Whitney’s memoir on _The auriferous gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California_.[1521] All is hearsay testimony, and entirely uncontrolled by any such careful scrutiny as marks the work of the British Association in the explorations carried on for fifteen years at Kent’s Hole, near Torquay. There can be no question that human bones and human implements have often been discovered in these gravels, but according to the accounts as given these are mingled in them in inextricable confusion. What is the character of these objects of human workmanship? So far are they from being, as Professor Whitney describes them, “always the same kind of implements, ... namely, the coarsest and the least finished which one would suppose could be made and still be implements.” One account speaks of “a spear or lance head of obsidian, five inches long and one and a half broad, quite regularly formed.” Others mention “spear and arrow heads made of obsidian;” or “certain discoidal stones from three to four inches in diameter, and about an inch and a half thick, concave on both sides, with perforated centre.” Still another witness speaks of “a large stone bead, made perhaps of alabaster, about one and a half inches long and about one and one fourth inches in diameter, with a hole through it one fourth of an inch in size.” We are also told of a “stone hatchet of a triangular shape, with a hole through it for a handle, near the middle. Its size was four inches across the edge, and length about six inches.” So also oval stones with continuous “grooves cut around them,” and “grooved oval disks,” are more than once mentioned. We think these quotations will be sufficient to convince the archæologist that here is no question of palæolithic implements, but that we have to do simply with the common Indian objects found on the surface all over our country. Besides the rude cuts in Bancroft,[1522] I know of only one example of these California discoveries which has been figured. This is the “beautiful relic” described by Mr. J. W. Foster, of which he says: “When we consider its symmetry of form ... and the delicate drilling of the hole through a material so liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of the lapidary’s skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone age of either continent.”[1523] Mr. Foster doubtfully suggests that this object was “used as a plummet for the purpose of determining the perpendicular to the horizon.” It has been shown, however, by Mr. W. H. Henshaw, that among the Indians of Southern California similar objects have long been used by their medicine-men as “medicine or sorcery stones.”[1524] Whichever may be held to be the true explanation of its use, either is more likely to be a characteristic of the Indian race than of primitive man.

But the objects whose presence in the gravels is most repeatedly spoken of are stone mortars, which Professor Whitney supposes were “used by the race inhabiting this region in prehistoric times ... for providing food.” One of these is stated to have been “found standing upright, and the pestle was in it, in its proper place, apparently just as it had been left by the owner.” It was taken out of a shaft, according to the testimony, twelve feet underneath undisturbed strata. This was certainly a very marvellous thing to have happened if all the objects found in the gravels are supposed to have been brought there by the action of floods of water. But it is a very simple matter, if the supposition of Mr. Southall be correct, who thinks that “these mortars have been left in these positions by the ancient inhabitants in their search for _gold_.”[1525] The Spaniards found gold in abundance in Mexico, and the locality from which it came is believed by Mr. Southall to be indicated by a discovery made in 1849 by some gold-diggers at one of the mountain diggings called Murphy’s, in the region in which Professor Whitney’s discoveries have taken place. In examining a high barren district of mountain, they were surprised to come upon the abandoned site of an ancient mine. At the bottom of a shaft two hundred and ten feet deep a human skeleton was found, with an altar for worship and other evidences of ancient labor by the aborigines.[1526] Mr. Southall believes that these mortars were used “for crushing the cemented gravel of the auriferous beds.” Some corroboration is afforded for this suggestion by the fact that stone mortars of a like character are found in the ancient gold mines, worked by the early Egyptian monarchs, in the Gebel Allakee Mountains near the Red Sea, which were used in pulverizing the gold-bearing quartz.

As to the authenticity of the “Calaveras skull,”

“Great contest followed and much learned dust.”

The probabilities seem in favor of its being a genuine human fossil, and the question recurs as to its character and the presumable age of the deposits from which it came. The latest geologist who has studied the locality, so far as the writer is aware, says of these deposits: “Even before visiting California I had suspected these old river gravels might be contemporaneous with the glacial epoch, and I still think this possible. This area was not glaciated, and these old gravels, hundreds of feet in thickness, may very well represent that great interval of time occupied in other regions by the glacial periods.”[1527] In discussing this question from the point of view of the character of the fossil animal remains contained in the gravels, we must continually bear in mind what Professor E. D. Cope says of the _Mesozoic and Cænozoic of North America_: “The faunæ of these periods have not yet been discriminated.... Many questions of the exact contemporaneity of these different beds are as yet unsettled.”[1528] Professor Cope has previously pointed out how marked a difference there is between the quaternary fauna of North America and that of Europe; we have no Hippopotamus or Rhinoceros Tichorinus, and they no Megatherium, Megalonyx, and other species. Under the varying conditions of animal existence thus implied, to assail established ideas upon the sequence in man’s development, or to maintain that he has had a long career on the Pacific slope of our continent before he had made his appearance in Western Europe, seems to the writer to be an attempt to explain “_ignotum per ignotius_.”

What is really to be understood by the assumption that man existed in tertiary times? So profound a palæontologist as Professor William Boyd Dawkins thinks “it is impossible to believe that man should have been an exception to the law of change. In the Pliocene age we cannot expect to find traces of man upon the earth. The living placental mammals had only then begun to appear, and seeing that the higher animals have invariably appeared in the rocks according to their place in the zoölogical scale, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, placental mammals, it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the highest of all should then have been upon the earth.”[1529] When, therefore, some of the geologists of our country support Professor Whitney’s claim that these discoveries of human fossils have actually proved man’s existence in the Pliocene period, by arguments mainly based upon the effects of erosion and the immense periods of time which these imply, or favor his inference from the animal fossils contained in these deposits that there has been “a total change in the fauna and flora of the region,” and that “the fauna of the gravel deposits is almost exclusively made up of extinct species,” we may well insist, with Dawkins, that the human remains should not be regarded as standing upon a different basis from those of the horse, since both occur under similar conditions. Dr. Leidy reports the finding of remains of four different species of fossil _Equus_. But among them “we may note the skull of a mustang, identical with that of Mexico and California, which could not have been buried in the gravels of Sierra County before the time of the Spanish Conquest, when the living race of horses was introduced.” Professor Jeffries Wyman says of the Calaveras skull: “Any conclusions based upon a single skull are liable to prove erroneous, unless we have sufficient grounds for the belief that such a skull is a representative one of the race to which it belongs.... We have no sufficient reason for assuming in the present instance that the skull is a representative one.... The skull presents no signs of having belonged to an inferior race. In its breadth it agrees with the other crania from California, except those of the Diggers, but surpasses them in the other particulars in which comparisons have been made.”[1530] As, therefore, what appear to be the skulls of a California Indian and that of a Mexican mustang have been found to occur in the same deposits, this circumstance, instead of proving that man was an inhabitant of pliocene America, would seem to the writer to imply either that these deposits are comparatively recent, or that the fossil bones found in them are so commingled that arguments based upon purely palæontological considerations can be regarded as entitled to very little weight.

But although some American palæontologists are inclined to argue that these deposits belong to the Pliocene, on account of the character of the vertebrate fossils found in them, it must not be forgotten that geologists generally prefer to refer them to the Pleistocene. They believe that even the superimposition of lava beds upon the gravels does not establish a very high antiquity for them, and question whether the time that has elapsed since the outflow of the lava, as measured by the amount of erosion that has taken place in the gravels, is to be regarded as much greater than can properly be assigned to the Pleistocene period elsewhere. Professor Whitney himself admits the difficulty of distinguishing whether “deposits have been accumulated in the place where we find them previous to the cessation of the period of volcanic activity. The gravels which have not been protected by a capping of basalt, or only thinly or not at all covered by erupted materials, may in some places have been overlain by recent deposits in such a way that the line between volcanic and post-volcanic cannot be distinctly drawn.... It must not unfrequently have happened that fossils have been washed out of the less coherent detrital beds belonging to the volcanic series, carried far from their original resting-place, and deposited in such a position that they seem to belong to the present epoch.”[1531] In one of the reports of Hayden’s survey can be seen a plate representing “Modern Lake Deposits capped with Basalt.”[1532] There is sufficient ground for believing that the volcanic activity of the regions of the Sierras has continued down to very recent times, geologically speaking, and that there is no such great difference of age between the lava-cappings and the other beds as Professor Whitney supposes. Hayden thinks “the main portion of the volcanic material of the West has been thrown out at a comparatively modern date.”[1533] Undoubtedly the amount of erosion that has taken place in these river gravels implies a great lapse of time, but so do the other facts of physical geography which have been employed as chronometers by which to measure the time since the close of the quaternary period. To carry this erosion back to the tertiary times, and to assign man his place in the world then on that ground, in face of the arguments to the contrary drawn from archæology, palæontology, and geology, in view of the essential weakness of the testimony upon which the arguments in its favor are based, would seem to be a most hazardous assumption. It is only equalled by the statement that “the discoveries made in Europe, which have already obtained general credence, carry man close to the verge of the tertiary; if not, indeed, a little the other side of the line.”[1534] In the writer’s opinion, this is the belief of only a small number of the most extreme evolutionists in Europe, while the great body of cautious and critical observers think that it has not been proved, and a few are willing to hold their judgment in suspense.

Professor Whitney’s conclusions, however, are supported by Mr. Wallace in the article quoted at the beginning of this chapter, in his character as an evolutionist of the most advanced school. He says: “Believing that the whole bearing of the comparative anatomy of man and of the anthropoid apes, together with the absence of indications of any essential change in his structure during the quaternary period, lead to the conclusion that he _must_ have existed, as man, in pliocene times, and that the intermediate forms connecting him with the higher apes probably lived during the early pliocene or the miocene period, it is urged that all such discoveries ... are in themselves probable and such as we have a right to expect.”[1535] In such a frame of mind it is very easy for him to wave aside every objection raised by the archæologist to the character of the evidence brought forward to sustain the alleged discoveries. To the objection that the objects accompanying the human remains, for which such a great antiquity is claimed, are too similar to those of comparatively recent times, he has a ready answer: “The same may be said of the most ancient bow and spear-heads and those made by modern Indians. The use of the articles has in both cases been continuous, and the objects themselves are so necessary and so comparatively simple that there is no room for any great modification of form.” The writer can only state here that no archæologist holds this opinion, and will refer for a detailed statement of his reasons for the contrary view to an article by him upon _The Bow and Arrow unknown to Palæolithic Man_.[1536]

It is not easy to believe that so vast a difference in age can be attributed to the deposits upon the opposite sides of the chain of the Sierra Nevada, as would follow if we are to hold that the auriferous gravels belong to the tertiary, while the Lahontan deposits belong to the quaternary period. Far more reasonable does it seem to suppose that they both fall within the two divisions into which we have seen that the pleistocene has been divided. To the writer it appears, from what study he has made of the evidences alleged of man’s existence in North America in early times, that proof is wanting that he made his appearance here earlier than in interglacial times. Dr. Abbott’s discoveries seem to be worthy of all the importance which has been assigned to them, and the more so from the fact that they are in accord with similar discoveries made in the Old World. The evidence adduced appears to be altogether too fragmentary and strained to warrant the conclusion that has been drawn that there is no proper correlation between the geological calendars of the two hemispheres.

Besides the numerous palæolithic implements which the Trenton gravels have yielded, there have been found in them three human crania, more or less complete, and portions of others.[1537] Professor Putnam is inclined to the opinion that these may be veritable remains of the makers of the palæolithic implements. But it is difficult to conceive how such fragile objects as human skulls, in this period and at this locality, could have survived the destructive forces to which they must have been subjected. We must recollect that the bones of man are very seldom met with in the river gravels of the Old World, and such crania as are accepted as belonging to these deposits are dolichocephalic, and not, like these, brachycephalic.[1538] The circumstances under which these three have been found are not reported with sufficient detail to enable us to account satisfactorily for their presence, nor can we admit that the fact that they “are not of the Delaware Indian type” affords any adequate criterion for our judgment. It is well established that “in America we find extreme brachycephaly, as well among the prehistoric as among the historic peoples from British America to Patagonia. At the same time, dolichocephaly is found, besides among the Eskimos, throughout the American Indian tribes from north to south; but it cannot be considered an American craniologic characteristic.”[1539] The various forms of skulls, moreover, are found to be so intermingled that they have been compared to “what might be looked for in a collection made from the potter’s field of London or New York.”[1540] The problem is still further complicated by the widespread custom among the American tribes of altering the natural shape of the skull, sometimes by flattening it, sometimes by making it as round as possible.[1541] Taking all these matters into consideration, we are compelled to regard craniology by itself as an insufficient guide.

We have now passed in review such evidences of man’s early existence in North America as seem to be sufficiently substantiated by satisfactory proof, and have intentionally left out of consideration many former examples, which were accustomed to be cited before the science of prehistoric archæology had formulated her laws and established her general conclusions, as well as some more recent ones in which the evidence seems to be weak.

It only remains for the writer to express his own conclusions on the question. But first let him draw attention to the state of public opinion upon this subject as it is well expressed by an English writer: “The evidence for the existence of palæolithic man in America has been more fiercely contested even than in Europe, and the problem there is certainly more complicated. In Europe we can test the age of the remains not merely by their actual character, but also by the presence or absence of associated domestic animals. In America this test is absent, for there were virtually no domestic animals save the dog known to the pre-European inhabitants. We are therefore remitted to less direct evidence, namely, the provenance of the remains from beds of distinctly Pleistocene age, the fabric of the remains, and their association with animals, we have reason to believe, become extinct at the termination of that period.”[1542]

As an example of the spirit in which this “fierce contest” is waged in America, it will be sufficient to quote a few passages from a work by one of her most eminent men of science. He is speaking of “what seems to be a village site in Europe, of far greater antiquity than the Swiss lake-villages, and which may be a veritable ‘Palæolithic’ antediluvian town. It occurs at Solutré, near Mâcon, in eastern France, and has given rise to much discussion and controversy, as described by Messrs. De Ferry and Arcelin.... It destroys utterly the pretension that the men of the mammoth age were an inferior race, or ruder than their successors in the later stone age.... Lastly, many of the flint weapons of Solutré are of the palæolithic type characteristic of the river gravels, ... while other implements and weapons are as well worked as those of the later stone age. Thus this singular deposit connects these two so-called ages, and fuses them into one.”[1543] The only comment the writer will make upon this statement is to say that he has twice visited the station at Solutré in company with M. Arcelin; that he has examined the collection of the late M. De Ferry at his house; and that he has before him the work which is supposed to be quoted from,[1544] and he accordingly feels warranted in asserting with confidence that not one “flint implement of the palæolithic type characteristic of the river gravels” was ever found at Solutré. A note appended to Sir J. W. Dawson’s rash statement adds: “Recent discoveries by M. Prunières, in caves at Beaumes Chaudes, seem to show that the older cave-men were in contact with more advanced tribes, as arrow-heads of the so-called neolithic type are found sticking in their bones, or associated with them. This would form another evidence of the little value to be attached to the distinction of the two ages of stone.” The writer has already indicated his conviction that palæolithic man had not advanced sufficiently to invent the bow and arrow, and he wishes to add here that “arrow-heads of the so-called neolithic type” continued to be ordinary weapons employed during the Age of Bronze. He is only surprised that Dr. Prunières’ discoveries are not quoted to prove that there is no distinction between the Age of Stone and the Age of Bronze.

Tested by the canons of prehistoric archæology, superposition, association, and style, in the judgment of the writer the fact of the existence of palæolithic man upon this continent, and the distinction between the rude palæolithic implement and the skilfully chipped obsidian objects which belong to what is called in Europe the Solutré type (a development of the later period in the early stone age, which cannot be overlooked in discussing the question of the antiquity of man), are truths as firmly established as any taught by modern science. The small minority who refuse to admit the last stated proposition are laggards in her march, and the few doubters who still question the genuineness of the palæolithic implements from the Trenton gravels are not entitled by their knowledge of the processes of manufacturing stone implements to have much weight attached to their opinions.

Regarding, then, the existence of palæolithic man as established by the finding of four hundred of his relics in the Delaware valley near Trenton, we have next to inquire whether there is evidence that in that region man made any progress towards the neolithic condition. For an answer to this question we have only to study the immense collection of objects gathered by Dr. Abbott, and now deposited in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. This seems to warrant a conclusion exactly the opposite to Professor Whitney’s, who states that “so far as California is concerned ... the implements, tools, and works of art obtained are throughout in harmony with each other, all being the simplest and least artistic of which it is possible to conceive;” and his further statement that the “rude tools required but little more skill than is indicated by the chipped obsidian implements which are now, and have been from all time, in use among the aborigines of this continent.”[1545]

We have already seen that Professor Whitney’s inferences about the relics of man occurring in the gravels of California are not at all justified by the facts relating to their discovery as reported by him; and as he offers no proof of his other assertion that “chipped obsidian implements have been _for all time_ in use among the aborigines of this continent,” we will venture to question its accuracy, even should he argue that his loose statement was intended to apply only to the aborigines of California. Consequently we are somewhat at a loss to understand why Dr. Abbott should feel called upon to refute his conclusions. He does this, however, successfully in his _Primitive Industry_, which is so largely based upon this great collection as to answer satisfactorily as a catalogue for it. In his own words, “the careful and systematic examination of the surface geology of New Jersey, of itself, it is believed, shows as abundant and unmistakable evidence of the transition from a true palæolithic to a neolithic condition as is exhibited in the traces of human handiwork found in the valley of any European river.”[1546] The arguments upon which this conclusion is based are drawn from each of the three canons of prehistoric archæology. A certain class of objects, superior in form and finish to the rude palæolithic implement, but decidedly inferior in every respect to the common types of Indian manufacture, with which collectors of such objects all over our country are perfectly familiar, is found occurring _principally_ in deposits which occupy a position intermediate between the drift gravels, from which come the palæolithic implements, and the cultivable surface-soil, in which the former implements of the Indians are constantly brought to light by the ordinary operations of agriculture. In other instances, where these peculiar objects are found on or near the surface, not only do they not always occur there in association with the common Indian relics, but the material of which they are made, argillite, is the same as that out of which all the four hundred palæolithic implements are fabricated, with the exception of “two of quartz, one of quartzite, and one made from a black chert pebble.”[1547] This peculiar material occurs _in place_ only a few miles north of Trenton, and as the ice-sheet withdrew it afforded “the first available mineral for effective implements other than pebbles, and these were largely covered with water, and not so readily obtained as at present; while the dry land of that day, the Columbia gravel, contained almost exclusively in this region small quartzite pebbles an inch or two in length.”[1548] The objects thus referred to exhibit only a few simple types. There is a rudely chipped spear-head, about three or four inches in length and from one to two in breadth, characterized by the same kind of decomposition of the surface which is seen upon the palæolithic implements. These occur in large numbers; “as many as a thousand have been found in an area of fifty acres.... A peculiarity ... is their frequent occurrence ... at a depth that suggests that they were lost when the face of the country was different from what it now is.”[1549] An implement is often found which was probably used as a knife, also very rudely chipped, and shaped somewhat like a spear-head, but never having a sharp point. The argillite, of which these are made, “is very hard and susceptible of being brought to a very sharp edge,” but they are now all much decomposed upon the surface, and “are frequently brought to light through land-slides and the uprooting of trees from depths greater than it is usual to find jasper implements”[1550] of the Indians.

The most common object of all, however, and one that occurs in very large numbers, is a slender argillite spear-point, about three inches in length, of nearly uniform size, and having little or no finish at the base. These are found at various depths up to five feet, principally in the alluvial mud that has accumulated upon the meadows skirting the Delaware River, that are liable to be overflowed occasionally by the tide. From this circumstance, in addition to their shape, Dr. Abbott has conjectured that they were used as fish-spears.[1551] “This deposit of mud is of a deep blue-black color, stiff in consistency, and almost wholly free from pebbles. It is composed of decomposed vegetable matter and a large percentage of very fine sand. It varies in depth from four to twenty feet, and rests on an old gravel of an origin antedating the river gravels that contain palæolithic implements. This mud is the geological formation next succeeding the palæolithic implement-bearing gravels.... A careful survey of this mud deposit, made at several distant points, leads to the conclusion that its formation dates from the exposure of the older gravel upon which it rests, through the gradual lessening of the bulk of the river, until it occupied only its present channel.... The indications are that the present volume and channel of the river have been essentially as they now are for a very long period; and the character of the deposit is such that its accumulation, if principally from decomposition of vegetable matter, must necessarily be very gradual. Since its accumulation to a depth sufficient to sustain tree growth, forests have grown, decayed, and been replaced by a growth of other timber. While so recent in origin that it seems scarcely to warrant the attention of the geologist, its years of growth are nevertheless to be numbered by centuries, and the traces of man found at all depths through it hint of a distant, shadowy past that is difficult to realize.

“The same objection, it may be, will be urged in this instance as in others where the comparative antiquity of man is based upon the depth at which stone implements are found,—that all these traces have been left upon the present surface of the ground, and subsequently have gotten, by unexplained means, to the various depths at which they now occur. It is, indeed, difficult to realize how some of these argillite spear-points have finally sunk through a compact peaty mass until they have reached the very base of the deposit. For those who urge that this sinking process explains the occurrence of implements at great depths, it remains to demonstrate that the people who made these argillite fish-spears either made only these, or were careful to take no other evidences of their handicraft with them when they wandered about these meadows; for certainly nothing else appears to have shared the fate of sinking deeply into the mud. In fact, the objection mentioned is met in this case, as in that of the palæolithic implements, that if these fish-spears are of the same age and origin as the ordinary Indian relics of the surface, then all alike should be found at great depths. This, we know, is not the case. Furthermore, the character of the deposit is not that of a loose mud or quicksand, but more like that of peat. It has a close texture, is tough and unyielding to a degree, and offers decided resistance to the sinking of comparatively light objects deeply into it. This is, of course, lessened when the deposit is subject to tidal overflows, and in the immediate vicinity of springs, which, bubbling through it, have caused a deposit of quicksand. While here an object sinks instantly out of sight, it is not here that we must judge of the character of the formation as a whole; and over the greater portion of its area we find no evidence of objects disappearing beneath the surface at a more rapid rate than the accumulation of decomposing vegetable matter would explain. Efforts have been made to determine the rate of progress of this growth of mould, but they are not wholly satisfactory; nevertheless the indications are sufficient to warrant our belief that the rate is so gradual as to invest with great archæological interest the characteristic traces of man found in these alluvial deposits.”

Although these argillite spear-points seem _principally_ to occur, as has been stated, in the alluvial mud along the banks of the Delaware, yet they are often found upon the surface, and associated with objects of Indian origin. This circumstance Dr. Abbott attempts to explain by the following considerations: “One marked result of the deforesting of the country and its constant cultivation has been to remove in great part the many inequalities of the surface and to dry up many of the smaller brooks. The hillocks have been worn down, the valleys filled up, and this of course has resulted in bringing to the surface, on the higher ground, the argillite implements which were at considerable depths, and in burying in the valleys the more recent jasper and quartz implements of Indian origin that were left upon the soil when lost or discarded by the red man. In the remnants of forests still remaining, where no such disturbance of the soil has occurred, the relative depths at which argillite and jasper respectively occur indicate the greater age of the former.”[1552]

He recurs to this subject in another place:[1553] “The telling fact with reference to these argillite spear-points is that they are not, in the same sense as jasper arrow-heads, surface-found implements. They occur also, and even more abundantly, beneath the surface-soil. The celebrated Swedish naturalist, Peter Kalm, travelled throughout central and southern New Jersey in 1748-50, and in his description of the country remarks: ‘We find great woods here, but when the trees in them have stood a hundred and fifty or a hundred and eighty years, they are either rotting within or losing their crown, or their wood becomes quite soft, or their roots are no longer able to draw in sufficient nourishment, or they die from some other cause. Therefore, when storms blow, which sometimes happens here, the trees are broken off either just above the roots, or in the middle, or at the summit. Several trees are likewise torn out with their roots by the power of the winds.... In this manner the old trees die away continually, and are succeeded by a younger generation. Those which are thrown down lie on the ground and putrefy, sooner or later, and by that means increase the _black soil_, into which the leaves are likewise finally changed, which drop abundantly in autumn, are blown about by the winds for some time, but are heaped up and lie on both sides of the trees which are fallen down. It requires several years before a tree is entirely reduced to dust.’[1554] This quotation has a direct bearing on that which follows. It is clear that the surface-soil was forming during the occupancy of the country by the Indians. The entire area of the State was covered with a dense forest, which century after century was increasing the _black soil_ to which Kalm refers. If, now, an opportunity occurs to examine a section of virgin soil and underlying strata, as occasionally happens on the bluffs facing the river, the limit in depth of this black soil may be approximately determined. An average derived from several such sections leads me to infer that the depth is not much over one foot, and the proportion of vegetable matter increases as the surface is approached. Of this depth of superficial soil probably not over one half has been derived from decomposition of vegetable growths. While no positive data are determinable in this matter beyond the naked fact that rotting trees increase the bulk of top-soil, one archæological fact that we do derive is that _flint implements_ known as Indian relics belong to this superficial or ‘black soil,’ as Kalm terms it. Abundantly are they found on the surface; more sparingly are they found near the surface; more sparingly still the deeper we go; while at the base of this deposit of soil the _argillite_ implements occur in greatest abundance. Here, then, we have the whole matter in a nut-shell. The two forms were dissociated until by the deforesting of the country and subsequent cultivation of the soil, except in a few instances, they became commingled.”

A further argument in respect to the relation which argillite implements bear to those made of jasper and quartz is derived from the relative proportion in which they occur in localities which are believed to have been occupied first by the users of argillite, and subsequently by the Indians. “Of a series of twenty thousand objects gathered in Mercer County, New Jersey, forty-four hundred were of argillite, and of such rude forms and in such limited varieties as would be expected of the productions of a less cultured people than the Indian of the stone age. Of this series of forty-four hundred, two hundred and thirty-three are well-designed drills or perforators and scrapers; the others being spear-points, fishing-spears, arrow-heads, and knife-like implements.”[1555] This is supplemented by negative evidence drawn from “the character of the sites of arrow-makers’ open-air workshops, or those spots whereon the professional chipper of flint pursued his calling. In the locality where I have pursued my studies several such sites have been discovered and carefully examined. In no one of these workshop sites has there been found any trace of argillite mingled with the flint-chips that form the characteristic feature of such spots. On the other hand, no similar sites have been discovered, to my knowledge, where argillite was used exclusively. The absence of this mineral cannot be explained on the ground that it was difficult to procure, for such is not the case. It constitutes, in fact, a considerable percentage of the pebbles and boulders of the drift from which the Indians gathered their jasper and quartz pebbles for working into implements and weapons. If the absence of argillite from such heaps of selected stones is explained by the assertion that the Indians had recognized the superiority of jasper, then the belief that argillite was used prior to jasper receives tacit assent. If, however, it was the earlier _Indians_ who used argillite, and gradually discarded it for the various forms of flint, then we ought to find workshop sites older than the time of _flint_-chipping, and others where the two minerals are associated. This, as has been stated, has not been done.”[1556]

Professor Putnam has found a confirmation of these views of Dr. Abbott in the contents of a great shell-heap at Keyport, in New Jersey, investigated over thirty years ago by Rev. Samuel Lockwood, and now placed in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. “As the shell-heap at Keyport, once covering a mile or more in length along a narrow strip bordered upon one side by the ocean and on the other by Raritan Bay, is entirely obliterated, it is of importance that the materials obtained from it are now in the museum for comparison with our very extensive collections from the shell-heaps of New England. The fact that at certain places on this narrow strip between the bay and the sea the prevailing implements were of argillite and of great antiquity has a peculiar significance in connection with those from Trenton, and again points to an intermediate period between the palæolithic and the late Indian occupation of New Jersey.”[1557]

To these various arguments the writer wishes to add the statement that to his personal knowledge argillite spear-points, and especially those of the fish-spear type, are occasionally found in other parts of our country besides New Jersey. In his own researches, which have been principally carried on upon the seacoast of New England, he has _never_ found an example of them in the shell-heaps proper, which are universally recognized by archæologists as relics of the Indians. The few which he has found himself, or has obtained from others, have come from meadows by the side of rivers or ponds, where they might very well have been used as fish-spears.

A further confirmation of Dr. Abbott’s opinions in regard to the descendants of palæolithic man is derived from certain discoveries made by Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson in the alluvial deposits at Naaman’s Creek, in Delaware. These were first made known in November, 1887, by a letter to the editor of the American Antiquarian. “In 1870, a fisherman living in the village of Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, gave me some spear and arrow heads flaked from a dense argillite, as well as other rude implements of a prehistoric people, which he had found on some extensive mud flats near the mouth of Naaman’s Creek, a small tributary of the Delaware. The finder stated that while fishing ... he had noticed here and there the ends of logs or stakes protruding from the mud, and that they seemed to him to have been placed in rows.... A visit made a few days afterward to the place ... disclosed the ends of much-decayed stakes or piles protruding here and there above the mud.... On my return from France in 1880 I again visited the spot.... While abroad I studied in spare moments many archæological collections, especially those from the Swiss Lake Dwellings, and visited the various lake stations of Switzerland. The rude dressings of the ends of the piles in some places were evidently made with blunt stone implements, and recalled those I had seen on the ends of the posts in the Delaware River marshes. Since 1880 I have quietly examined the remains, excavating what pile ends remained _in situ_ (preserving a few that did not crumble to pieces), preserving careful notes of the dredging and excavations (at low tides), carried on principally by myself, aided at times by interested friends. The results so far seem to indicate that the ends of the piles imbedded in the mud, judging from the implements and other débris scattered around them, once supported shelters of early man that were erected a few feet above the water,—the upper portion of the piles having disappeared in the long lapse of time that must have ensued since they were placed there. (The flats are covered by four and one half feet of water on the flood tide; on the ebb the marsh is dry, and covered with slimy ooze several feet in depth, varying in different places.) Three different dwellings have been located, all that exist in the flats referred to, after a careful examination within the last four years of nearly every inch of ground carefully laid off and examined in sections. The implements found in two of ‘the supposed river dwelling sites’ are very rude in type, and generally made of dense argillite, not unlike the palæoliths found by my friend Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton gravels. The character of the implements from the other or third supposed river dwelling on the Delaware marshes is better finished objects made of argillite.”[1558]

The greater portion of the objects obtained by Mr. Cresson has been placed in the Peabody Museum, to which he is at present attached as a special assistant; but he has also kindly sent to the writer a small illustrative collection from each site, for his study.

The writer would hesitate to draw the inference from this single discovery that the custom of living in pile-dwellings ever prevailed in North America, although there is evidence that such a practice was not unknown in South America. This is to be found in the account of the voyage of Alonso de Ojeda along the north coast of that country, in the year 1499, in which he was accompanied by Vespucius.[1559] I will quote the language of Washington Irving: “Proceeding along the coast, he arrived at a vast, deep gulf resembling a tranquil lake, entering which he beheld on the eastern side a village whose construction struck him with surprise. It consisted of twenty large houses, shaped like bells, and built on piles driven into the bottom of the lake, which in this part was limpid and of but little depth. Each house was provided with a drawbridge, and with canoes by which the communication was carried on. From these resemblances to the Italian city, Ojeda gave to the bay the name of the Gulf of Venice, and it is called at the present day Venezuela, or Little Venice.”[1560] There is no inherent improbability that such a custom may have prevailed upon the shores of Delaware Bay, and for the same reason that has caused it to be followed elsewhere. “It has been stated that the natives living near Lake Maracaybo, in South America, erect pile dwellings over the lake, to which they resort in order to escape from the mosquitoes which infest the shore. Lord also mentions that the Indians of the Suman prairie, British Columbia, on the subsidence of the annual floods in May and June, build pile dwellings over a lake there, to which they retire to escape from the mosquitoes which at that period infest the prairie in dense clouds, but will not cross the water.”[1561]

But it would be safer, probably, to consider these discoveries of Mr. Cresson’s as marking the site of ancient aboriginal fish-weirs, such as are described by Captain Ribault and other early explorers as made by the natives.[1562] The writer agrees with Professor Putnam in thinking that “the fact that at only one station pottery occurs, and, also, that at this station the stone implements are largely of jasper and quartz, with few of argillite, while at the two other stations many rude stone implements are associated with chipped points of argillite, with few of jasper and other flint-like material, is of great interest.”[1563]