
47 
pottery, and had been supplied with vessels by the traders, they 
had entirely done away with the custom, ‘excepting at public 
festivals, where they seem, like all others of the human family, 
to take pleasure in cherishing and perpetuating their ancient 
customs.’ Elsewhere, among the Sioux or Dacotas, to whom the 
Assinaboins belong, the tradition has been preserved that their 
fathers used to cook game in its own skin, which they set up on 
four sticks planted in the ground, and put water, meat, and hot 
stones into it. The Sioux had the art of stone-boiling in common 
with the mass of the northern tribes. Father Charlevoix, 
writing above a century ago, speaks of the Indians of the North 
as using wooden kettles and boiling water in them by throwing in 
red-hot stones, but, even then, iron pots were superseding both 
these vessels and the pottery of other tribes. To specify more 
particularly, the Micmacs and the Souriquois, the Blackfeet and 
the Crees, are known to have been stone-boilers ; the Shoshonees 
or Snake Indians, like the far more northerly tribes of Slaves, 
Dog-Ribs, &c., still make, or lately made, their pots of roots 
plaited, or rather twined, so closely that they will hold water, 
boiling their food in them with hot stones ; while, west of 
the Rocky Mountains, the Indians use similar baskets to boil 
salmon, acorn porridge, and other foods in, or wooden vessels 
such as Captain Cook found at Nootka Sound, and La Pérouse 
at Port Frangais. Lastly, Sir Edward Belcher met with the 
practice of stone-boiling, in 1826, among the Esquimaux at Icy 
Cape.” * 
In Australasia and many of the Polynesian Islands, the 
practice of stone-boiling was in universal use until comparatively 
recent times. It is now, however, being rapidly superseded by 
the introduction cf metal pots and pans of European origin, The 
large wooden bowl on the table is said to have been used by the 
inhabitants of Banks Island, New Hebrides, in conjunction with 
heated stones for cooking food. 
It has been suggested that many of the so-called pot-boilers 
found on the cultivated patches of the Downs are merely flints 
which have been accidentally burnt in couch or other refuse 
heaps. This may be the case in a few instances ; but the genuine 
articles are readily recognised by their aged aud weathered appear- 
ance, and also by their similarity with the undoubted specimens 
from the prehistoric entrenchments and habitation sites. 
Having completed my brief and analytic description of the 
remains found in association on these productive spots, we will 
now turn to the Ordnance Surveys, and note the positions of a 
few of the most typical of such sites which I have discovered and 
paid repeated visits to during the past year or so. In the 
neighbourhood of Cissbury you will observe there are three. One 

* Early History of Mankind, pp. 263-264. 
