I 



ARROWPOINTS, SPEARHEADS, AND KNIVES. 1)77 



In the yciir 18fi0 a similar deposit of hornstoiie was discovert-d in this vicinity, in 

 the town of Frederickville, Schuyler County, on the west side of the Illinois Kiver. 

 This locality was a favorite abiding place of the Iiulians and the center of a dense 

 l>opulation. Relics of their work are still found in abundance throughout this 

 region. A small ravine near the foot of a blurt", one day after a heavy rain, caved 

 in on one side, and the displacement of a large quantity of earth in conse(|uence 

 exposed to view a few strange-looking tlints. They had been l>urie<l about 5 feet 

 below the surface of the hillside, laid together on edge, side by side in long rows, 

 forming a single layer of unknown extent. The discovery of such novel objects 

 attracted some of the villagers to the place, who dug out a1)0ut 3,500 of the nui(|Uo 

 implements, and, their cnriosity satisfied, abandoned the work withoiit reaching the 

 limits of the deposit. » * » Xhe stone of which these disks are made is a dark, 

 glossy hornstone, uudistingnishable from the disks of the sacrilicial mound in 

 Ohio.' 



Carroll Counti/. — In the town of York, on section 7, is iv deposit of flint chippings. 

 On the top of a high sand ridge, for a space of a mile long and half a mile wide, llint 

 chippings are exposed. In some jilaces they occur in masses of a peck or half a 

 bushel; in other places they whiten the ground for yards. The material is a cream- 

 colored chert, breaking with a smooth conchoidal fracture. It was all brought there, 

 as no stone is found in situ in the whole ridge. Here was a great manufactory of 

 arrowpoints and other Hint implements. Pieces of arrowpoints and fragments of the 

 tlint in all stages of manufacture strew the ground. Perfect arrowpoints are some- 

 times found in clusters. Twenty-six were recently picked up in one nest — rough, 

 but well-nigh finished. - 



Cass Conntij. — "In the spring of 1880, Mr. George W. Davis, farmer in Monroe pre- 

 cinct, Cass County, Illinois, 10 miles east of the Illinois River, while plowing, 

 observed a few sharp-pointed tlints, and found that they formed part of a deposit 

 of 32 small implements which had been carefully placed in the ground on edge, 

 side by side, with their points toward the north. They seem to have been buried. 

 With one exception they are of a cherty, muddy-looking siliceous stone, of a 

 grayish color streaked with white; a flinty formation occurring in all lead-bearing 

 strata of Illinois, and identical with the cherty nodules and seams in the subcarbon- 

 iferons outcrops of the upper Mississippi and southwestern Missouri. They had been 

 buried new, showing no marks of use, and their jiecnliar style of workmanshi]) and 

 similarity of design leave little doubt that they are the j^roduct of the same artisan. 

 The exceiitional one in the dejiosit is a well-proportioned and perfect spearhead 

 nearly 3 inches in length, neatly chipped, of opaque milk-white flint, strongly con- 

 trasting in material, shape, and tinish with the others, and evidently manufnctured 

 by some other hand, perhaps in a difl'erent and remote workshop. Fourteen of the 

 lot are laurel-leaf or lanceolate ]»attern, pointed at one end and rounded at th(> other, 

 with edges equally curved from base to point, averaging three-eighths of an inch in 

 thickness in the middle and evenly chipped to a cutting edge all around. They are 

 nniforni in shape, but difler in size; the smallest measuring 2J inches in length by 

 1^ inches in width at the centcjr; and the largest one H inches long and nearly 2 

 inches wide. They are of a type common in all parts of the Mississippi Valley, and 

 are supposed to have l)een used as knives or ordinary cutting tools. The remaining 

 18 are shaped alike, difler in size, but are of the same average thickness. They, 

 too, are sharp-pointed at one end, but in outline from base to point their sides are 

 unequally convex, one being slightly curved and the other curved but little from a 

 straight line, giving them an iinga.inly and lopsidetl form. Their broad ends, origi- 

 nally rounded, probably like the first 14, have been chipped away on each side for a 

 half or three-fourths of an inch from the extremity, forming a broad, rudimentary 

 shank. (See Chap. IX, p. 948:) 



' J. F. Snyder, Smithsonian Report, 187G, p. 437. 

 -■lames Shaw, Smithsonian h'eport, 1877, pp. 256,257. 

 NAT MUS 1)7 02 



