ETHNOLOGY. 437 



can form some estimate, in yiew of the fact that they must have been 

 brong^ht from a great distance and fashioned with great toil, of the 

 devotional fervor which induced the sacrifice, or the magnitude of the 

 calamity which that sacrifice was perhaps intended to avert. The fact 

 that this description of stone chips most easily when newly quarried, 

 has induced the suggestion that the disks were deposited here for the 

 purpose of protecting them from the hardening influences of the atmos- 

 phere, and were intended to be withdrawn and manufactured as occa. 

 sion warranted or necessity required. It is incredible, however, that so 

 much care should be taken to fashion the mound and introduce the 

 mysterious sand strata, if it was designed to be disturbed at any subse- 

 quent period. There is little doubt that the deposit was final, and was 

 made in compliance with some religious requirement. An excavation 

 below these layers discovered traces of fire, but too slight to be worthy 

 of more than a passing notice." It may be here noted that the disks in 

 this deposit had never been used. 



In the year 18G0 a similar deposit of hornstone disks was discovered 

 in this vicinity, in the town of Frederickville, in Schuyler County, on 

 the west side of the Illinois River. This locality was a favorite abiding- 

 place of the Indians, and the center of a dense population. Relics of 

 their works are still found in abundance throughout this region. A 

 small ravine near the foot of a bluff, one day, after a heavy rain, caved 

 in on one side, and the displacement of a large quantity of earth in con- 

 sequence exposed to view a few strange-looking flints. They had been 

 buried abont 5 feet below the surfiice of the hillside, laid together on 

 edge, side by side in long rows, forming a single layer of unknown ex- 

 tent. The discovery of such novel objects attracted some of the villa- 

 gers to the place, who dug out about ihirty-five Imndred of the unique 

 implements, and, their curiosity satisfied, abandoned the work without 

 reaching the limits of the deposit. From diligent inquiries of persons 

 ■who were present at the time, I learned that the flints had apparently 

 been i^laced in an excavation made for the purpose at a point of the 

 bluff above the highest water-level, and about two hundred yards from 

 the river-bank. No traces of fire above or below were seen, and no pe- 

 culiar arrangement of the superincumbent earth was noticed, nor was 

 any mound or other mark of any kind discernible over or about the 

 place to designate their hiding-place. It was several years after this 

 occurrence when, in 1871, 1 first heard of it. Several visits to the place 

 were rewar^led with but a few badly mutilated specimens of the disks 

 ■which I obtained from the citizens; the rest of the large number had 

 disappeared. At length I found in the possession of Mrs. Charles Far- 

 well (whose husband owns the premises where the deposit was found) 

 ten of the flints, two of which she kindly gave me. The stone of which 

 these disks are made is a dark, glossy hornstone, undistinguishable from 

 the disks of the sacrificial mound in Ohio, and, like that deposit, these 

 Frederickville flints had been buried without having been used. 



