440 DEPOSITS OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS. 



kind I have ever heard of in this State. In all my hunts for Indian 

 relics I have met with no such masses of fliat here ; nor have I seen any 

 place where fragments or "chips" of this stone would .indicate, by their 

 quantity, the site of a workshop that turned out hornstone disks from 

 the crude bowlders. Consequently, I infer that the buried implements 

 of Frederickville and Beardstown were imported ready made, and not 

 manufactured in this region from imported masses of stone. 



Unlike all other stone implements, these have been found only in 

 large deposits, singularly uniform in size, material, shape, and work- 

 manship, and presenting the further remarkable feature of being buried 

 new; thus far not one of them having ever been found isolated or bear- 

 ing marks of use. 



A deposit of flints, somewhat approaching the disks in size and shape, 

 was found a few years ago near Trenton, N. J. Dr. Abbott, who 

 described them in the American Ii^aturalist (vol. iv, 153-5) and pre- 

 viously in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, 

 (18G3, page 278,) styles them " hatchets." His description of them in the 

 Naturalist is as follows : " Prominent in this list stands the magnificent 

 brown jasper specimen, (Fig. 22.) There we have a carefully-chipped 

 hatchet, well edged on all sides, of a nearly perfect oval outline. Its 

 greatest width is 3| inches; greatest length 6 inches, and its greatest 

 thickness scarcely f of an inch. This specimen is one of a hundred and 

 fifty that were discovered in plowing a piece of newly-drained meadow 

 near Trenton, K. J. The one figured is somewhat shorter and broader 

 than the others, which might have been hatchets or lance-heads." 



The description and drawing given by Dr. Abbott in the Naturalist, 

 would answer well for many of my Beardstown disks ; and the similarity 

 of the two sets of implements is strengthened by the parallel fact that 

 none like his have as yet been found isolated. 



The explanation first suggested to account for the astonishing number 

 of flints in the sacrificial mound at Clark's works, was that it constituted 

 merely a magazine of " roughly blocked-out spear-jjoints," convenient to 

 be withdrawn and finished at leisure, and buried, in order to keep the 

 stone damp and the more easy to chip. But this hypothesis fails to 

 account for certain peculiarities of their occurrence. For what purpose 

 they were made, and why buried in such vast numbers and with such 

 care, are points yet undetermined. 



Among these flints, occasionally one is found longer and narrower 

 than the others, and very much resembling in form some of the flint 

 hoes used in the cultivation of maize by the Indians down to the days 

 of the early French missionaries.* It is probably this chance similority 

 which has led Dr. Patrick to regard all the hornstone disks of the three 

 deposits as agricultural tools. If they were designed for agricultural im- 

 plements, or for weapons of war or the chase, or for tools to be used in 

 any of their mechanical arts, it is evident that they had not yet passed 



* Du Pratz " Histoire de la Louisiaue." Paris, 1758. Vol. ii, p. 176. 



