IMPLEMENTS OF STONE. 213 



ings, are delicately wrought, and from the richest materials within the reach of 

 their makers. From one of the mounds in tliat, by this time, familiar locality, 

 Mound City, (see page 149,) were taken a number of beautiful ones of transparent 

 or hyaline quartz, which, from the brilliant play of colors upon their fractured 

 surfaces, are real gems. It is not likely that these, and some others of like delicate 

 material, were used for ordinary purposes, but rather for display and ornament.* 

 From the same mound were also taken one or two arrow-points of ohsidinn. 



Arrow-points, differing from each other only in the variety of stone of which 

 they are composed, are discovered in all quarters of the globe. They have been 

 found in the Scythian tumuli of Siberia, in the tombs of Egypt,! upon the plains 

 of Gi'eece,^: and in the rude monuments of ancient Scandinavia. But whether 

 obtained from Asia, from Europe, Africa, or America, they are almost identical in 

 form and workmanship, and might readily be mistaken for the productions of the 

 same people. Their prevalence seems to mark that stage of man's progress which 

 the antiquaries of the north of Europe have denominated the " stone age," and 

 which was followed by the " age of bronze," and the " age of iron." The manu- 

 facture of these arrow-points involves no inconsiderable degree of skill, as will be 

 very apparent to any one who has the curiosity to attempt an imitation from the 

 raw material. It has hence been inferred that it was anciently an art, like that of 

 the potter, assigned to a class of armorers or makers of arrow-heads, whose skill 

 was the result of long experience in the manufacture. 



Arrow and lance heads, and cutting implements of the numerous varieties of 

 quartz, embracing every shade of color and degree of transparency, from the dull 

 blue of the ordinary hornstone to the brilliant opalescence of the chalcedonic 

 varieties, are frequent in the mounds. Some are worked with great skill from pure, 

 limpid crystals of quartz, others from crystals of manganesan garnet, and others still 

 from obsidian (the itzli of the Mexicans, and galUnazo stone of the Peruvians). It is 

 a singular fact, however, that few weapons of stone or other materials are discov- 

 ered in the sepulchral mounds ; most of the remains found with the skeletons are such 

 evidently as were deemed ornamental, or recognised as badges of distinction. Some 

 of the altar or sacrificial mounds, on the other hand, have the deposits within them 

 almost entirely made up of finished arrow and spear points, intermixed with masses of 

 the unmanufactured material. From one altar were taken several bushels of finely 

 worked lance-heads of milky quartz, nearly all of which had been broken up by the 

 action of fire. (See page 149.) In another mound, an excavation six feet long and four 

 broad disclosed upwards of six hundred spear-heads or discs of hornstone, rudely 



* Lawson, in his account of the Carolina Indians, published in 1709, mentions having seen at an 

 Indian town " very long arrows, headed with pieces of glass, which they had broken from bottles. They 

 were shaped neatly, like the head of a dart, but the way they did it I can't tell " (p. 58). It is probable 

 that these arrows were pointed with obsidian or quartz, which would be very liable to be mistaken for glass. 

 Fremont {Second Expedition, p. 267) observed some Indians, of unusually fearless character, on the Rio 

 de los Angelas of Upper California, who possessed arrows " baibed with a very clear, translucent stone, a 

 species of opal, nearly as hard as a diamdiid 



f Wilkinson's Egypt, vol. iii. p. 261. J Clarke's Travels, vol. iii. p. 22. 



