NORTH AMERICAN STONE IMPLEMENTS. 403 



meus from Fayetteville, whicli is twenty millimeters thick in the middle. 

 The slight irregularities observable in the circuml'ereiice are owiug to 

 later accidental fractures. In this specimen, as in the others from the 

 same find, the edge is produced by small, carefully-measured blows. 

 The edges of my specimens from iWetteville, moreover, exhibit traces of 

 wear,, being rubbed off to a small degree, and this circumstance, in con- 

 nection with their shape, induces me to believe that they were used as 

 scraping or smoothing implements. The aborigines, it is well known, hol- 

 lowed their canoes and wooden mortars with the assistance of fire, and 

 the implements just described, were, as I presume, employed for removing 

 the charred portions of the wood. They are well adapted to the grasp 

 of the hand, and, indeed, of the most convenient form and size to serve 

 in that operation. Probably they were likewise used in cleaning hides, 

 and for other purposes. The tools of Fayetteville, however, are m.uch 

 more handy than those of Clark's Yvork. 



The fact that implements made of the hornstone of Flint Ridge are 

 found in Illinois — a distance of about four hundred miles intervening — 

 is of particular interest, as it shows that the material was quarried for 

 exportation to remote parts of the countr3\ It doubtless formed an ar- 

 ticle of tratiflc among the natives, like copper, sea-shells, and other nat- 

 ural productions which they applied to the exigencies of common life 

 or used for personal adornment. 



Concerning Korth American flint implements of the European drift 

 type in general, Mr. Stevens expresses himself thus : " The legitimate 

 conclusion at which we may at i^resent arrive, is that implements, in form 

 resembling some, of the European palaeolithic types, were made by the 

 aborigines of America at a comparatively late period, and that the peo- 

 ple usually termed the ' mound-builders,' were, probably, the makers of 

 these implements." (p. 443.) 



There is no sufficient ground, I think, for attributing these implements 

 exclusively to the mound-builders, considering that they occur on the 

 surface, and in deposits below it, in regions where the people designated 

 as the mound-builders are not supposed to have left their traces. In 

 the States of New York and oSTew Jersey, for instance, such articles 

 repeatedly have been met. I will only refer to the leaf-shaped imple- 

 ments in possession of Mr. Cowing, which were found in New York, and 

 are the finest specimens of that kind ever brought to my notice. That 

 the people who erected the mounds made and used tools resembling the 

 palaeolithic types of Europe, is proved by the occurrence of those tools 

 in the mounds; but it follows by no means that they are to be consid- 

 ered as the sole makers of that class of implements. Supposing that 

 the mound-builders really were a people superior in their attainments 

 to the aborigines found in possession of the country by the whites, it is 

 certainly very difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the manu- 

 factures of the ancient and those of the more recent indigenous inhabi- 

 tants of North America. The mound-builders — to preserve the adopted 



