MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO AXTHROPOLOGY. do 

 ANTIQUITIES AND ABORIGINES OF TEXAS. 



By a. R. Roessler, of Washington, D. C. 



In my frequent walks, some years since, along the beaches of the bays 

 and inlets of the Gulf of Mexico, a few miles south of the Guadahii^e 

 Eiver, I rarely failed to find a number of aboriginal relics — especially 

 immediately^ after the ebb of a high tide. I have also found many about 

 the bases of the sandy hillocks, or ''dunes," which have been heaped up 

 by the winds in many places along- the coast. I have occasionally found 

 large flints; but these were probably used for harpoons. Some of these 

 arrow-heads are very rudely wrought, while others, particularly a very 

 small kind, are. of esqiusite finish, with a poiut as sharp as a lancet, and 

 the cutting edges finely and beautifully serrated. Most of the specimen s 

 collected by me had necks, or shanks, by which they were fitted into the 

 shaft; a few, however, were without this api)eudage, but were either 

 grooved or beveled on both sides of the base of the tongue. The flint 

 pebbles, from which these arrow-heads were chipped, were probablj^ ob- 

 tained from 30 to 40 miles inland, where they abound in several localities. 

 All the Indian tribes of Texas, when it was first colonized by Americans, 

 used metallic arrow-heads, which they had probably substituted for flint 

 ones nearly a century before, or not long after the establishment of the 

 missions and military posts of San Antonio and La Bahia, where they 

 doubtless obtained copj)er, brass, and iron, all of which metals they used 

 for pointing their missiles. Fragments of earthen pottery are coexten- 

 sive with the flint relics. But they bear evidence that our aborigines 

 were never much skilled in the ceramic art. 



The Indian dead usually receive very shallow sepulture. Often the 

 Texas tribes do not bury their dead at all, but merely pile logs or stones 

 upon their bodies, which are soon extricated and the flesh devoured by 

 beasts of prey. The bones being thus left to the action of the elements, 

 rapidly decay. Hence the osseous remains of the aborigines are rarely 

 found far inland, but in various places along the coast the winds have 

 performed the rites of sepulture by blowing the sand upon the dead. 

 At Igleside, in 18G1, human bones were disinterred at two localities 

 more than a hundred yards apart, from a depth of 8 feet ; and recently, 

 in October, 1877, others were discovered in a sand hill, or "dune," near 

 what is locally known as the "False Live Oak," -in Kefagio County. 

 About a month after the discovery I went to the spot and found that a 

 large quantity of human bones, including several skulls, had been ex- 

 posed by the caving of the "dune;" but being much decayed, had 

 broken to pieces in falling, and quickly dissolved in the Gulf tide at the 

 base of the "dune." I saw for 40 feet along the face of the steep slope, 

 from which the sand had slidden, a number of human bones and skulls 

 projecting at various angles. One skull, which was better preserved 



