72 SIE DANIEL WILSON 



and appear to iudicalo the site of an aboriginal workshop, with one of the tools of the 

 ancient arrow-maker, who here fashioned his implements and weapons, and traded with 

 them to supply the need of the old Huron or Petun Indians of western Canada. The 

 Spider Islands in Lake Winnipeg, near the outlet, have been noted by Dr. Eobert Bell, as 

 a favourite resort of the old workers in flint, where they could trade the products of their 

 industry with parties of Indians passing in their canoes. " I have found," he says, " a 

 considerable number of new flint implements, all of one pattern, in a grave near one of 

 those sites of an old factory ; " the body of a man — presumably the old arrow-maker — 

 had been buried there in a sitting position, surrounded with the latest products of his 

 industrious skill. 



In 18*rô I devoted several weeks to a careful study of some of the principal groups 

 of ancient earthworks in the Ohio valley, and visited Flint Ridge to examine the native 

 flint pits in the country of the Shawnees. They were formerly a numerous and powerful 

 tribe of Indians. But they took part, in 1*763, in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and were 

 nearly exterminated in a battle fought in the vicinity of their old quarries. From these 

 it is probable that not only the Shawnees, but the older race of Mound-Builders of 

 the Ohio valley, procured the material from which they manufactured many of their 

 implements, including some of those used by the latter, in the construction of their great 

 earthworks. 



Flint Ridge, as the locality is called, a siliceous deposit of the Carboniferous age, 

 extends through the state of Ohio, from Newark to New Lexington. It has been worked 

 at various points in search of the prized material ; and the ancient pits can still be recog- 

 nized over an extensive area by the funnel-shaped hollows, or slighter depressions where 

 the accumulated vegetable mould of many winters has nearly effaced the traces of the 

 old miners. The chert, or hornstone, of this locality accords with that from which the 

 implements recovered from the mounds appear to have been chiefly made. One fact which 

 such disclosures place beyond doubt, viz., that the so-called Mound-Builders had not 

 advanced beyond the stage of flint or stone implements, is of great significance. Their 

 numbers are proved by the extent of their earthworks in many localities in the Ohio 

 valley ; and the consequent supply of implements needed by them as builders must have 

 involved a constant demand for the flint-miners and tool-makers. The great earthworks 

 at Newark are among the most extensive structures of this class, covering an area of 

 several miles, and characterized by the perplexing element of elaborate geometrical 

 figures, executed on a gigantic scale by a people still in the primitive stage of stone 

 implements ; and yet giving proof of skill fully equalling, in the execution of their geo- 

 metrical designs, that of the scientific land-surveyor. On this special aspect of the ques- 

 tion, it may be well to revert to notes written immediately after a careful survey of the 

 Newark earthworks, so as to suggest more clearly their extent and the consequent number 

 of workmen and of tools in demand for their execution. The sacred enclosures have to 

 be classed apart from the military works of the Mound-Builders. Their elaborate fortifi- 

 cations occupy isolated heights specially adapted for defence ; whereas the broad river 

 terraces have been selected for their religious works. There, on the great unbroken levels, 

 they form groups of symmetrical enclosures, square, circular, elliptical, and octagonal, 

 connected by long parallel avenues, suggesting analogies with the British Avebury, the 

 Breton Carnac, or even with the temples and sphinx-avenues of the Egyptian Karnak and 



