NO. lO NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG 26"] 



mound builders as well. In regard to pottery, the two cultures, so far 

 as known at present, are quite distinct. On the other hand, the re- 

 mainder of the artifact complex of the two is basically similar. Both 

 cultures have tobacco pipes of pottery and stone, both have the two 

 main types of arrowpoints already described,"" the same types of flint 

 knives and scrapers, the same types of bone and antler implements, and 

 both worked shell in much the same manner. Dififerences appear in 

 the fact that pottery pipes predominate in Nebraska culture sites, 

 stone pipes in Upper Republican culture sites, and the artifacts of the 

 former culture generally exhibit a greater richness and variety than 

 do those of the Upper Republican culture. Indeed, if it were not for 

 the striking difference in ceramics found at the two types of sites, it 

 would be rather hard to draw a clear line between the two cultures. 

 Yet this major difference, combined with the minor distinctions listed 

 above, seems to justify their separation as distinct cultural entities. 

 The similar evidences of relative antiquity observed in excavating both 

 types of sites, combined with many close parallels in the content of 

 the two cultures, strongly suggests that the two were contemporaneous 

 in time and definitely reacted upon one another. The significance of 

 this evidence will be discussed in the next section. 



The Sterns Creek Culture 

 The cultural evidence revealed in the lowest stratum at the Walker 

 Gilmore site (fig. i, site 26. and pi. 19) is so different from the other 

 known prehistoric horizons in Nebraska that it must be classed as a 



*"* This uniform occurrence of two types of arrowheads, a larger and a smaller, 

 in at least two prehistoric Nebraska cultures is significant. That the difference 

 was functional rather than accidental is indicated by Bradbury, 1817, pp. 164- 

 165. when he describes the arrows then in use among the Arikara : " To produce 

 a m.ore copious discharge (of blood), the heads of the arrows designed to be 

 used in hunting are much broader than those intended for war. The heads of 

 both are flat, and of the form of an isosceles triangle ; the length of the two 

 equal sides three times that of the base. In neither does the shaft of the arrow 

 fill up the wound which the head has made; but the shaft of the hunting arrow 

 is fluted, to promote a still greater discharge of blood." In a footnote he adds 

 that formerly the Indians made arrowheads of flint or horn stone, but at the 

 time of which he writes (1810) they purchased them from traders, who cut 

 them from rolled iron or hoops. Dunbar mentions the grooved arrow shaft in 

 use among the Pawnee but states that this tribe never followed the practice 

 of making two kinds of arrows, one for war and one for hunting. (See De Land, 

 1906, p. 308.) This agrees with the archeological findings, inasmuch as two 

 distinct sizes of arrowpoints have not been found on protohistoric and historic 

 Pawnee sites, whereas the Arikara seem to have preserved an old differentiation 

 between large " hunting " points and small " war " points noted in the two 

 main prehistoric cultures so far distinguished in Nebraska. 



