MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 5G7 



southern border of this county, 20 miles east of the Illinois River. Its 

 location was on the brow of the hills overlooking Indian Creek to the 

 south, and in a lield cultivated for the last ten years, but which had 

 been cleared from a dense growth of large forest trees. In this cache 

 were thirty-five elegant implements entirely different in form, material, 

 and finish, from those before described. Their position in the ground 

 was vertical and closely packed together, but otherwise without any 

 peculiar arrangement. Axes and other objects made of copper, buried 

 in the ground long ages ago by their rude owners, are now and then 

 found, in many instances still encased in shreds of coarsely woven fab- 

 rics in which they had been carefully wrapped ; the preservation of the 

 matting or cloth being due to the salts of the decomposing metal. It 

 is i)robable that the articles in all minor deposits, as the two here de- 

 scribed, were also enveloped, when consigned to the safekeeping of the 

 earth, in bark cloth or dressed skins, which, in the absence of antiseptic 

 mineral oxides, have long since decayed without leaving a trace of their 

 presence. 



The thirty-five beautiful flints of this Indian Creek deposit are the 

 perfection of ancient stone-chipping art. In form they are of the broad, 



Fig. 4. 



or lilac-leaf pattern, pointed more or less obtusely at one end and 

 regularly semicircular at the other ; the length but little exceeding the 

 width; scarcely more than three-eighths of an inch thick in the center; 

 they are smoothly chipped to an even sharp edge all around. Thej' 

 vary a little in size and somewhat in proportions, in the greater number 

 the length exceeding the breadth by scarcely a third, while in a few, 

 approaching the lanceolate type, the length is twice that of the width. 

 The smallest of them is 3.^ inches long by 2| inches broad at the 

 base; and the largest one measures o inches in length and 3^ inches 



