ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AJIERICA. 367 



Charles C. Jones, of Brooklyn, vrho has paid particular attention to the 

 former history of his native State Georgia, informed me he had ob- 

 served quantities of silicious stone, surrounded by numerous rejected 

 fragments and unfinished spear and arrowheads of the same material, 

 in districts of that State where far and near no quartz minerals occur 

 in situ. He showed me a number of these incomplete flint objects ob- 

 tained from such places. 



For the fact that stones for arrowheads formed an object of traffic 

 among the natives, even historical evidence is not wanting. I refer to 

 a passage in the relation of Cabeca de Vaca, the tirst European who 

 has given an account of the interior of iSTorth America. The passage 

 in question will be quoted in a subsequent section. 



I am of opinion that flint in a half- worked state, that is, in flatfish 

 pieces roughly chipped around their circumference and presenting 

 irregular heart-shaped, oval, or round outlines, formed an object of ex- 

 change, and as such was transported to places far distant from the sites 

 which furnished the raw material. Those who quarried the flint fash- 

 ioned it in this manner for the sake of saving space and for easier tran- 

 sportation. Smaller or greater quantities of such worked flint frag- 

 ments of homogeneous character are sometimes found in the earth, 

 where the natives had buried them, believing that flint splits more 

 readily when recently taken from tbe ground. These deposits, however, 

 are not always composed of pieces which required further chipping in 

 order to receive their final shape, but also sometimes of finished imple- 

 ments. I have treated of these buried deposits of flint objects in an 

 article published in the Smithsonian Eeport for 18G8, to wliich I refer 

 in order to avoid repetitious.* The agricultural implements of East 

 St. Louis, described in that article, are very skilfully executed 

 manufactures of the aborigines ; the large flint discs, on the contrary, 

 which, as I mentioned, Messrs. Squier and Davis found in great num- 

 ber in a mound of '' Clark's Work"' in Ohio, and the rude flint objects 

 of elongated oval outline from the bank of the Mississippi between 

 St. Louis and Carondelet, present, in all probability, only rudi- 

 mentary forms of implements, and were destined to be finished at a 

 future time. It cannot be doubted that the stone of which the discs 

 of Clark's Work are made was derived from the quarries of Flint 

 Kidge. This fact has been established by careful comparisons. The 

 stone in question is designated as hornstone. It is a beautiful ma- 

 terial, resembling in color and grain certain varieties of the real 

 European flint, and is sometimes marked with darker or lighter con- 

 centric bands, the centre of which is formed by a small nucleus of 

 blue chalcedony. These bands are particularly observable on the sur- 

 faces which have undergone a change of color by exposure. The stone, 

 in general, possesses qualities by which it can be recognized at once, 

 even when met in a wrought state far from its original place of occur- 



* A Deposit of Agricultural Fliut Implements in Southern Illinois, p. 401, 



