412 



ETHNOLOGY. 



Cut on a recent visit to tlie Pawnee reservation on Loup Fork I discovered 

 tlio remains of an old Pawnee village, apparently of greater antiquity than the 

 others, and the only one about which any stone implements have as yet been 

 found. On and around the site of every cabin of this village I found an abund- 

 ance of broken arrow-heads, chipped flints, some of which must have been 

 brought from a great distance, and a variety of small stones, which had been 

 used as hammers, chissels, &c. I have gathered about half a bushel of the 

 fragments of pottery, aiTow-heads, and chipped flints, some of which I hope to 

 place in the museum of the Smithsonian next winter. No Pawnee Indian now 

 living knows of the time when this village was inhal)ited. Thirty j'cars ago 

 an old chief told a missionary that his tribe dwelt there before his birth, but he 

 knew nothing of the use of the stone arrowheads, though, he said, his people 

 used them before the introduction of iron. 



This discovery is interesting, as it is the first tribe that I have ever been 

 able to find connecting the stone age with the persons in the Missouri valley, 

 I have asked the most intelligent Indians of more than 20 tribes in the valley 

 how far back in the past tlie Indians used stone arrow points, and I have 

 received but one answer. They would point toward heaven and sa}', '' The 

 Great Spirit only knows. We do not." 



At Pine Bluff's, on Cole creek, a branch of the Platte, and on the line of the 

 Union Pacific railroad, there are large quantities of chipped flints and arrow- 

 heads, showing that in former times they wrought them at this locality. 



Mr. S. B. Reed, superintendent of construction Union Pacific railroad, found 

 specimens of pottery abundant, arrow points, and chipped flints on the plains 

 near the Humlwldt mountains. 



The pottery was made of disintegrated granite, as it was full of particles of 

 mica. These remains may possibly be modern, for the Digger Indians, who 

 inhabit this region, a low, degraded people, even now use flint arrow' points, 

 though they use no pottery. There is now no evidence that the Indians of this 

 region ever used any pottery like that found, so that it may be possessed of 

 some antiquity. 



I have collected considerable material in the Omaha, Pawnee, Winnebago, 

 and Otoe languages for the second part of ethnography and philology of the 

 Indian tribes of the Missouri valley, and hope to have the memoir ready for 

 publication in two years. 



DESCRIPTIOX OF A HUMAN SKUII L\ THE COLLECTION OF THE SMITHSO- 

 NIAN INSTITUTION. 



By J. AiTKEN Meigs, M. D. 



This remarkable cranium, "No. 6439 of the Smithsonian collection, was found 

 in June, 1S66, in a fissure of the rock, at Bock Bluff', on the Illinois river, 



