162 NEWLY DISCOVERED SHELLHEAP. 



one is a perforator made from deer bone, and others are 

 fish spearheads almost precisely like those from Alaska and 

 the Western Eskimo. The specimens of land snail {Helix 

 alholahris) are very numerons, the animal having undoubt- 

 edly gone under the shells to hibernate, as they were found 

 at the bottom of the heap. It is curious to note the small 

 amount of pottery collected, portions of two pots only 

 having been found. 



But the most interesting part of the collection before us 

 is the box of human l)ones, all collected in one spot and 

 broken up as if for the stew pot in precisely the same man- 

 ner as those of the moose, deer, bird and other bones col- 

 lected in this same heap and now in this case. That 

 cannibalism was practised by the early inhabitants of 

 this region there is no doubt. Wynian has found con- 

 vincing evidence of this in Florida, and history records its 

 occurrence in some parts of this continent in compara- 

 tively recent times. It might not have been cannibalism 

 purely for the love of human llesh, but [)ractised as a sort 

 of religious or superstitious rite. Many tribes believed 

 that to eat the tlesh of a captured brave of the enemy in- 

 corporated his valor with their own, and more than that, 

 it would prevent him from being an enemy in the world 

 be3^ond, for if devoured, was he not then a part of them- 

 selves? This may be the explanation in this instance, and 

 these broken pieces of bones may be the relics of such a 

 feast. 



Regarding the age of these heaps no definite conclu- 

 sions can be drawn. That some extend fiir back into pre- 

 historic times there is no doubt, while others were formed 

 in part after European contact with the Indians, as shown 

 by objects of European make found near the surface on 

 some heaps. It is, how^ever, only by such investigations 

 as these which Mr. Robinson has conducted, that a com- 



