THE STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY. 



By Dk. C. C. Abbott, Trentox, N. J. 



ClIAPTKR I. 

 LOCALITIES. 



The aboriginal inhabitants of New Jersey appear to have bad an eye 

 for the picturesque in landscape-scenery, although facility in procuring 

 food and safety from attack were the objects mainly in view in settling 

 at any point ; still, we find that wherever tbe scenery is commanding, 

 as in the northern mountainous portion of the country at such grand 

 localities as the Delaware Water Gap, we discover there remains in 

 abundance, but as we go inland they are less numerous, as the hills 

 decrease and the rivers dwindle into brooks. Yet so abundant were the 

 Indian villages and numerous these people that almost every brook that 

 harbors a fish has now lying among the pebbles on its bed, or in the turf 

 upon its banks, flinty arrow-points or delicate fish-spears. 



The abundance of the weapons and domestic implements of the 

 aborigines suggests that each village had at least one implement-maker; 

 that the various stone articles were the product of the skill of some 

 one of every community, who was exclusively devoted to the business of 

 making them. Although, when on hunting-expeditions or in battle, the 

 single specimens lost would have the effect to mingle all the " styles " 

 throughout the State ; yet if we compare a suite of arrow-heads, spears, 

 lances, or even axes, from a single locality, with a similar series from a 

 distant section of the State, there will be found with each a peculiarity 

 of its own, an individuality, so to speak, that characterizes the two col- 

 lections. The similarity of stone implements the world over is one that 

 extends to those forms that are simplest, and is not an indication that 

 because the same results have been wrought out by widely-separated 

 tribes there was necessarily a kinship. 



Studying the localities in the State where relics are most numerous, 

 we have been surprised with the frequent exhibition of the implement- 

 makers peculiar tastes, and are convinced tliat widely-differing shapes 

 of wrought stones in some cases have had an identical purpose ; and 

 certainly it would be diflficult to suggest names for each type, they being 

 more numerous than the occupations of a primitive people. 



While weapons in the majority of localities greatly predominate over 

 the domestic or agricultural implements, still, in some sections of the 

 State, the opposite is the case, at least approximately, as evinced by the 

 number of the latter class of relics equaling the former in an average 

 day's search. 



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