564 MISCELLANEOUS PAPEES RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



In this view it is important that all discoveries of the remains, either 

 of the works or the skeletons, of the aborigines, it matters not how in- 

 significant, apparently, or how similar in kind they may be, should be 

 carefully noted and accurately recorded, as each may possibly increase 

 in some particular our knowledge of the primitive American trib€'S, or 

 serve to confirm anew some fact of their history already known. Every 

 stone implement, shell or bone ornament, and earthen vessel recovered, 

 is a silent revelation of the past; and from this accumulated material 

 the restoration of ancient life upon this continent is becoming annually 

 more and more distinct. 



It is well known to have been the custom of pre-Columbian Indians, 

 as of their descendants in later times, to hide in the ground, for security 

 until again wanted, stores of surplus provisions, and such implements 

 and other articles as were not immediately needed or easy of transpor- 

 tation. Many of these buried stores of perishable materials, forgotten, 

 or from other causes never recovered by their owners, soon totally dis- 

 appeared; but others, consisting of objects wrought in stone, bone, and 

 shell, are yet occasionally discovered in all parts of our country previ- 

 ously inhabited by the red race. These deposits are all full of interest, 

 and some are wonderful for the surprising numbers, or weird beauty of 

 design, or marvellous forms of the strange things they comprise. 



Within the limits of this county two small subterranean long-hidden 

 stores of flint implements have been recovered by the plow during the 

 last two years. In the alluvial soil of Central Illinois, so destitute of 

 surface rock, a stone of any kind turned up by the i)low is of so rare 

 occurrence as to at once attract the attention of any plowman, but un- 

 fortunately many valuable specimens so found excite but momentary 

 notice and are again lost. 



In the spring of 1880, Mr. George W. Davis, an intelligent farmer 

 residing in Monroe precinct, 10 miles east of the Illinois River, when 

 plowing one day in a field that, until a few years ago, had been cov- 

 ered with a heavy growth of timber, observed in the furrow his plow had 

 just made a few sharp pointed flints, and stopping his team to secure 

 them, he found on examination that they formed part of a deposit con- 

 sisting of thirty-two 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 near the foot of a large oak tree long 

 since prostrated and decayed. Tbis spot was on the crest of the ridge 

 bounding the valley of Clear Creek on the south, and half a mile dis- 

 tant from a corresponding elevation on the north of the little stream, 

 known locally as "Indian Hill," so called because the skeletons of sev- 

 eral (supi)osed) Indians with stone implements, bone awls, glass beads, 

 &c., were some years ago disinterred there in the process of grading a 

 public road. 



The thirty-two ira])lements were presented to me by Mr. Davis. 

 With one exception they are ma<le of a cherty, muddy-looking siliceous 



