WAMPANOAG INDIANS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 895 



an unintentional sort on the part of the natives. The Indians appear 

 to have expended unstinted labor, with considerable skill, in fashioning 

 their implements, weapons, and ornaments of stone, but none whatever 

 in preserving their history. Therefore the methods employed in tracing 

 out the settlements of Indians in these places must be, or were for me, 

 like those of a person discovering the camps of a very early prehistoric 

 race. It is really surprising how little beside the remains usually found 

 at prehistoric settlements can now bo found on the sites of several of 

 the largest Indian towns on Cape Cod, such as those at Wellfleet, prob- 

 ably the seat of Mr. Treat's labors among the praying Indians. 



After a careful examination of the site of one of these settlements 

 near Drummer Pond, in South Wellfleet, which was evidently once of 

 considerable importance, I was able to find only a few bricks, which 

 had formed fire-places; a few bits of iron nearly rusted away; frag- 

 ments of coal, and glass bottles, and a goodly number of broken clay 

 pipes and pipe-stems of the ordinary Irishman's style. Besides these, 

 and to my eyes much more conspicuous, were the common indications 

 of an Indian town, the shell heaps, bones of animals and fishes, with 

 numberless chippings of quartz, porphyry, jasper, &c, made by the In- 

 dians in fashioning their arrow-heads. Perfect arrow-heads were not 

 common, but the desert expanse of coarse sand and gravel surround- 

 ing the town was one of the best of places to find arrow-heads unless 

 they had already been picked up. Along the coast, shell heaps are the 

 most striking evidence that we have of prehistoric tribes. Shell heaps 

 are found in almost all parts of the world upon the sea coast, and their 

 size and contents indicate a more or less prolonged halt or settlement 

 there of a family or tribe. Some only mark stopping places on a jour- 

 ney; others were the sites of villages long inhabited by the natives, but 

 most of them, in the opinion of Professor Putnam, were places to which 

 the Indians were in the habit of resorting from the interior to get sup- 

 plies of mollusks, which they opened, smoked or dried, and laid up for 

 winter use. Shell heaps are refuse heaps, the name given those on the 

 Danish islands being Kjoekkenmoeddings, and the most common things 

 found in them are of course like the most common indestructible refuse 

 thrown from modern kitchens. Shells, and bones broken to extract the 

 marrow, make up the great mass of the heaps, but there can usually be 

 found with them, or near by, a few implements, weapons, ornaments, 

 broken pottery, and even human bones, which may have fallen here by 

 chance. Implements of stone and bone, for crushing open the edges 

 of the shells and extracting the meat, are the relics properly belouging 

 here, and it is very unusual in examining a large shell heap not to find 

 at least several of these stones. Near or upon these shell heaps may 

 usually be found black spots frequently surrounded by blackened 

 stones, where the natives were in the habit of making tbeir fires and 

 cooking their food. Pieces of charcoal, even, may sometimes be found 

 in the midst of these black heaps of ashes, and I have several times 



