3G6 ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



Icenmoedding at Keyport, Kew Jersey, described by me in tlie Smitbson- 

 ian Eeport for 1804, evidently was one of tbe places where flint imple- 

 ments were made by the natives. I not only saw there among the shell- 

 heaps countless chips of flint, but found also a number of unfinished 

 arrowheads, which had been thrown aside on account of a wrong crack 

 or some other defect in the stone. Tbe necessary material was here fur- 

 nished on the spot, in the shape of innumerable water-worn pebbles of 

 silicious character, which lie intermixed with the shells. Among the un- 

 finished arrowheads picked up by me at this place there are some which 

 exhibit a part of the smooth water-worn surface of the pebble from 

 which they were made. 



In the middle part of the Mississippi valley, where I lived many 

 years, and had occasion to make various observations, the Indians were 

 amply provided by nature with the material employed in the fabrication 

 of spear and ai-rowheads. The prevailing rock of those regions is a 

 limestone in which several of the varieties of the quartz family are 

 found, either in layers or in irregular concretions. In the bluff forma- 

 tions of the "American Bottom" in Illinois, for instance, I have traced 

 myself layers of hornstone, chalcedony, &c., for the distance of miles. 

 In the districts under notice, moreover, the surface is covered here and 

 there with many silicious pebbles and boulders, which furnished an 

 inexhaustible supply of available material. 



An im])ortant locality to which the aborigines resorted, perhaps from 

 great distances, for quarrying flint, is in Ohio, on the line of a calcareo- 

 silicious deposit, called "Flint liidge," which extends through Muskin- 

 gum and Licking Counties of that State. "The compact silicious mate- 

 rial of which this ridge is made up,'' says Dr. Eildreth, " seems to have 

 attracted the notice of the aborigines, who have manufactured it largely 

 into arrow and spearheads, if we may be allowed to judge from the 

 numerous circular excavations which have been made in raining the 

 rock, and the piles of chipped quartz lying on th€ surface. How exten- 

 sively it has been worked for these purposes, may be imagined from the 

 countless number of the pits, experience having taught them that the 

 rock recently dug from the earth could be split with more freedom 

 than that wliich had lain exposed to the weather. These excavations 

 ar-e found the whole length of the outcrop, but more abundantly at 

 ' Flint Ridge,' Avhere it is most compact and diversified with rich 

 colors."* 



The Indian working-places of which I spoke are not always met in 

 the neighborhood of those spots where flint was quarried or otherwise 

 abundant, but also sometimes at considerable distances from the latter, 

 in which cases they are, of course, of comparatively small extent. 

 Their existence, however, proves that the material was transported from 

 place to place, and thus assumed the character of a ware. Colonel 



*Hildreth, in Mather's First Annual Report on the Geological Survey of the State 

 of Ohio, Columbus. 1838, p. 31. 



