INDIAN IMPLKMKNTS. 29 



There is a good variety of color, texture and shape among the 

 arrow heads. A large number are of white quartz of varying 

 degrees of transparency and coarseness of grain. The material 

 for the making of these was easily found in the scattered 

 blocks of " white flint " so common along the Delaware. The 

 black flint of which others are made is not so easily traced. 

 While arrow heads of this material are to be found scattered 

 widely over Delaware county, they are scarce compared with 

 those made from white quartz and jasper. The black arrow 

 heads, in fact, have sometimes the dull opacity of black 

 jasper, and at others the conchoidal fracture and the semi- 

 translucent, thin edges of the chalk flints and the gun flints of 

 our ancestors. The jasper, whether red or yellow, possibl}^ 

 came in part from the serpentine belts, where it is still found 

 sparingly, and some of it may have been taken from the abo- 

 riginal quarry discovered some years ago in New Jersey. 



If these implements are not especially noteworthy from a 

 collector's viewpoint, their occurrence in such variety in one 

 place would seem at least worthy of record. Here, evidently, 

 once stood an Indian village. Two or three centuries ago, if 

 we are to accept contemporaiy ideas as to the slow and contin- 

 uous subsidence of this shore, the high water mark was about 

 four feet, vertically, lower than at present. The swamp back 

 of the dyke was less prominent. The wigwams were probably 

 close to the water, in the angle between the river and L,amokin 

 Run. The topography, possibly, was more nearh^ like that of 

 the river shore at present near Claymont, where the fast land 

 joins on to a shingly beach pitched at a considerable angle 

 with the horizontal. 



What with subsidence and encroachment of the tidal 

 waters, covering over with the rejections of neighboring indus- 

 trial establishments, building of bulkheads and piers and open- 

 ing of streets, the site of this aboriginal village, known onh^ 

 to us from these stone implements, bids fair to be altogether 

 unknown to our children. Hence this account and the accom- 

 panying sketch. 



