80 SIE DANIEL WILSON 



" Aucieut Mouuments of the Mississippi Valley," describe one of the mounds opened by 

 them within the great earthwork on the North Fork of Point Creek, in which, according 

 to their estimate, about four thousand hornstone discs were disposed in regular order, 

 in successive rows overlapping each other. In 1864, I had an opportunity of examining 

 some specimens retained in the possession of Dr. Davis. They were mostly discs measur- 

 ing about six inches long and four wide, more or less oval, or broad spear-shaped, and 

 fashioned out of a fine gray flint with considerable uniformity of character. Mr. Squier 

 assumed that the deposit was a religious offering ; but subsequent disclosures of a like 

 character confirm the probability that it was a hoard of material stored for the tool- 

 maker.' 



In other, though rarer cases, the cache has been found containing finished imple- 

 ments. In digging a cellar at Trenton, New Jersey, a deposit of one hundred and twenty 

 finished stone axes was brought to light, at a depth of about three feet below the surface. 

 Another discovery of a like character was made when digging for the construction of a 

 receiving vault of the Riverview Cemetery, near Taunton ; and similar deposits are recorded 

 as repeatedly occurring in the same State.^ In two instances all the specimens were 

 grooved axes. In another, fifty porphyry celts were found deposited in systematic order. 

 Mr. Charles Rau has given the subject special attention, and in a paper entitled "Ancient 

 Aboriginal Trade in North America," he furnishes evidence of addiction to certain manu- 

 factures, such as arrow-heads, hoes, and other digging tools, spear-heads, chisels, etc., by 

 skilled native craftsmen.'^ Deposits closely corresponding to the one reported by Mr. 

 Sqtiier as the sole contents of one of the mounds, in " Clark's Work," Ohio, have been 

 subsequently discovered in Illinois, "Wisconsin, and Kentucky. One of the Illinois 

 deposits contained about fifteen hundred leaf-shaped or roirnded discs of flint arranged in 

 five horizontal layers. Another, said to have contained three thousand five hundred 

 specimens, was discovered at Fredericksburg, in the same State. A smaller, but a more 

 interesting hoard was accidentally brought to light in 1868, when some labourers in 

 opening up a new street, at East St. Louis, in the same State of Illinois, came upon a col- 

 lection of large flint tools all of the hoe and shovel type. There were about fifty of the 

 former and twenty of the latter, made of a yellowish-brown flint, and betraying no traces 

 of their having been used. Near by them lay several large imworked blocks of flint and 

 green-stone, and many chippings, fragments of flint.' Deposits of a like character, but 

 varying both in the number and diversity of their contents, and, in general, showing no 

 traces of use, have been discoA^ered in other States to the east of the Mississippi. In the 

 Smithsonian Report for 18*7*7, Mr. Rau prints a curious account of " The Stock in Trade of 

 an Aboriginal Lapidary." In the spring of the previous year Mr. Keenan presented to the 

 the National Museum at "Washington a collection of jasper ornaments, mostly unfinished, 

 which had been found in Lawrence County, Mississippi. They were brought to light in 

 ploughing a cotton field, where a deposit was exposed, lying about two and a half feet 

 below the natural surface. It included four hundred and sixty-nine objects, of which 

 twenty-two were unwrought jasper pebbles ; one hundred and one were beads of an elon- 

 gated cylindrical shape, and a few of them partially perforated. Others were ornaments of 

 various forms, including two animal-shaped objects. The whole were made of jasper of 



' Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 158. - Abbott's Primitive Industry, p. 33. 



'■> Smithsonian Report, 1872. * Smithsonian Report, 1868, p. 402. 



