Obsidian 133 



the bases are rounded. Some are double knives, being pointed at both 

 ends. The work is no better than that of our best artists in flint craft 

 in Ohio, Kentucky, or Tennessee. 



Putnam informed me that the obsidian came from Yellowstone 

 Park, not from New Mexico or California. If such was the case, it must 

 have been brought by canoe at least three thousand miles down the 

 Yellowstone, thence down the Missouri, up the Ohio, and up the Scioto 

 to the Hopewell group. Viewed from our present ease and convenience 

 of travel, this statement carries no significance to the reader. In pre- 

 historic times it was necessary for the Indians to go on foot or in canoes 

 to the localities where obsidian could be obtained, all of which meant a 

 journey of several months duration. They would be compelled to pass 

 through regions occupied by hostile tribes and to delay their journey, in 

 order to obtain food. The objects were not made on the Hopewell site, 

 for no chips have been found there, or anywhere in the Ohio Valley. 

 If these objects were not obtained by means of a journey on the part of 

 the Hopewell people, they must have come in through trade. I do not 

 believe that they were bartered from village to village from the Yellow- 

 stone to the Scioto, else we would have found obsidian implements in 

 mounds of Illinois, Missouri, and elsewhere. Although hundreds of 

 tumuli have been explored, little obsidian has been found outside the 

 State of Ohio, although I understand a little has been found in Illinois 

 mounds. Although great numbers of arrow-points, drills, knives, and 

 spear-heads of obsidian are found in the Northwest, none of the small 

 points occur in the Hopewell group. The offerings were confined to 

 large and rare types, which were for the most part specialized forms. 

 It is rather curious that the smaller points of carnelian, agate, etc., were 

 not brought to the Hopewell site. 



It is surprising that there were so few chipped objects of either Flint 

 Ridge stone or Tennessee chert. Most of the chipped material from 

 the mounds was obsidian and quartz, except the large number of disks 

 from Mound 2, which seem to have come from the quarries on Little 

 River, Tennessee. 1 It does not seem possible that the Indians carried 

 the 8,185 disks overland from Tennessee to the Hopewell group. More 

 likely, they brought them by canoes, which necessitated the following 

 journey — down Little River to the Cumberland, thence to the Ohio 

 River, up the Ohio to the Scioto, then up to Paint Creek to the North 

 Fork of same, and then to the Hopewell group. This is a distance of 

 eight hundred miles. All the flint material made use of by the Hopewell 



'These workings are described in Bulletin of Phillips Academy, Vol. Ill, 

 pp. 126-132; also in the writer's Stone Age of North America, p. 218. 



