ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. 365 



Having now brieflj' described the most important classes of relics 

 made of the striped slate, I pass over to the i^rincipal point of iuqniry, 

 namely, the extent of their occurrence. I know from personal expe- 

 rience that they are found from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi 

 river, a distance about equal to one-third of the whole breadth of 

 the United States. It is possible that they are scattered over a far 

 greater area. In 1848, when Squier and Davis i)ublished their work, in 

 which aboriginal manufactures were for the first time accurately described, 

 they could not specify the locality from which the oft-mentioned slate 

 was derived. Since that time geological surveys have been made in all 

 States of the Union, and the places of its occurrence are no longer un- 

 known. It appears, I am informed, as the oldest sedimentary forma- 

 tion, in quite considerable masses along the Atlantic coast, and has 

 been observed from Rhode Island to Canada. This slate is not believed 

 to occur in other parts of the Union, and it may be presumed, therefore, 

 that it was brought from the Atlantic coast-districts, either in a rough or 

 already worked condition, to the more western regions of the United 

 States. 



FLINT. 



The real flint {Feuerstein in German) which is found abundantly, in 

 rounded pieces or nodules in the cretaceous formations of the countries 

 bordering on the Baltic, of England, France, &c., and which .has played 

 such an important part in the prehistoric ages of Europe, does not seem 

 to occur within the United States. For this information I am iierson- 

 ally indebted to Professor James D. Dana. On the other hand, many 

 parts of this country are very rich in various kinds of stones of a sili- 

 cious character, which, in consequence of their hardness and conchoidal 

 fracture, were well fitted to replace the missing variety in the produc- 

 tion of chipped implements. The term " flint," therefore, is used here in a 

 rather extensive sense, comprising horustone, jasper, chalcedony, fer- 

 ruginous quartz, sweetwater quartz, milky quartz, serai-opalic stones, 

 &c., and the numerous transitions from one quartzy variety into another, 

 for which the science of mineralogy has no special denominations. The 

 common white quartz, also, I may remark in this place, and the trans- 

 parent rock-crystal, were used for pointing arrows ; and in districts 

 where harder stones were scarce, even slates and greenstones served as 

 substitutes for them in the fabrication of arrow and spearheads. 



As in Europe, so also in the United States, i)laces have been discov- 

 ered where the manufacture of flint implements was carried on. These 

 "open-air workshops" {ateliers en pJein air) are by no means rare in 

 Korth America, and they begin to attract considerable attention since 

 the successful archaeological researches in Europe have stimulated to 

 similar pursuits in this country. As the North American tribes all used 

 the bow, and consequently were in constant need of arrowheads, the 

 manufacture of the latter took place in many localities, especially in 

 such as furnished the stones most proper for that purpose. The KjoeJc- 



