ANCHOR STONES. 



By B, F. Snyder, M. D., of Virginia, Cass County, Illinois. 



In the study of American antiquities we meet with many objects of 

 prehistoric art that baffle our comprehension, for* the reason that we 

 are ignorant of many of the methods of life and the superstitious ob- 

 servances and religious rites of the ancient people who wrought them. 

 Of this class the so-called "plummets," "discoidal stones," "gorgets," 

 "amulets," and "banner stones "are mysteries to us, because their 

 original purpose is unknown, our civilization admitting of no use or 

 necessity for them. The names we have assigned to them are some- 

 times misleading, and even the uses to which recent Indians have applied 

 them can not be relied upon as correctly indicating their true design. 

 Thus, Adair, Lawson, Timberlake, and others have described the game 

 of Chunglce which they saw played by the Mandans, and by the Cherokees, 

 Creeks, and other Southern Indians, with discoidal stones; but neither 

 they nor any other white persons have ever seen an Indian 7nanufactur- 

 «i^ a discoidal stone; and because recent Indians utilized them in their 

 games, it is by no meaas conclusive that they may not have found them 

 already made, as we do, or that they were not as ignorant of the spe- 

 cific service for which their remote ancestors made them as we are. 



But, on the other hand, it is reasonably certain that many of the ways 

 and means of obtaining subsistence employed by the earlier aborigines 

 were identical with those practiced by the Indians here who first met 

 the invasion of Europeans and sullenly receded before it. In securing 

 food by hunting and fishing all primitive people, the world over, yet 

 unacquainted with the use of metals, resorted to very much the same 

 arts and appliances. The bow and stone-pointed arrows and spears, 

 bone fish-hooks and harpoons, rude traps, nets, and seines were the in- 

 ventions and contrivances alike of peoples widely separated and un- 

 known to each other. To savages who had i)rogressed so far as to 

 venture upon the water, on rafts or in canoes for catching fish, the neces- 

 sity of remaining stationary while so engaged would soon become ap- 

 parent, and the means for accomplishing this would naturally snggest 

 the employment of some heavy substance resting on the bottom of the 

 lake or stream as an anchor. A stone would the most readily and con- 

 veniently supply this want, and almost anywhere along the shores of 



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