234 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



western corner of the State, and Mr. Sawyer's drawings, made at the 

 time they were excavated, does not reveal harpoons; but two varieties 

 of throwing sticks were dug up. Gushing found no barbed heads. It 

 was a great surprise to iind the atlatl or spear and harpoon thrower in 

 Florida. In 1895, when Gushing first heard of the wonderful remains 

 at San Marco, Von den Steinen had just revealed the finding of the 

 same implement in the Mato Grosso, Lumholtz and Seler announced 

 its existence in northern Mexico, and the author discovered it in the 

 clifi' dwellings of the Verde. Giishing's are the central finger-hole 

 t3'pe and the two-holed type for the fore and the middle finger. As 

 the Gulf Stream sweeps past the Orinoco mouth, across the Garibbean 

 sea to Yucatan, and thence in a narrower and swifter current past 

 Florida Keys, one is not surprised to find a Mexican weapon there. 



Mr. H. A. Ernst says: ''The Seminole Indians of the Everglades 

 now use white man's hooks, but adhere to the old-fashioned harpoon, 

 which is used in catching fish and terrapin." The reader will find 

 abundant evidence of the use of barbed harpoons in the Southern 

 Straits in quotations from Adair, Barker, Bartram, de Bry, and Hen- 

 nepin. Adair accompanied the Indians killing sturgeons in SaA^annah 

 River with green swamp harpoons. These are long, sharp-pointed 

 green canes, well bearded and hardened in the fire. When they dis- 

 covered a fish they thrust into its body one of the harpoons. "As the 

 fish would immediately strike deep, its strength was soon expended in 

 violent struggles against the buoyant force of the green dart. As 

 soon as the top end of the dart appeared again on the surface of the 

 water, we made up to the fish, renewed the attack, and in like manner 

 continued until we had secured our game."^ These southern harpoons 

 were of the very lowest grade, if they were worthy of the name at all. 

 The motives for devising a highly organized type did not exist. 



In Rau's Prehistoric Fishing, l)arbed harpoon heads are figured. 

 These were taken from mounds, shell heaps, and other remains, from 

 Maine to Michigan. They all belong to the barbed variety, and are of 

 the simplest kind. Three types might be said to exist in Dr. Wilson's 

 collection in the National Museum, the sagittate, in which the barbs 

 are equal on the two sides of the point; the forms with multiple barbs 

 of the same number on either side; those having an uneven number of 

 ))arbs on the two sides, usuallj^ two on one edge and three on the other, 

 and those with any number of barbs on one side, as on the north Pacific 

 coast. At the tang end ])arbed harpoons are divided into two classes 

 by means of the connecting line which joins the head to the shaft, 

 namely, the notched tang and the pierced tang. These again are fur- 

 ther sul)divided, for the notch may l)e only a scratching or roughening 

 of the surface or a bulb, and the piercing may ])e only a small hole or 



'C. C. Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, New York, 1873, Chapter xiv. 



