Lard 
Indiana Archaeology 67 
produced by a shock or pressure acting strongly in any desired plane, 
as in cutting glass with a diamond. It occurs to the writer that a 
heavy, symmetrical tool with a reasonably good edge, held firmly in 
exactly the right position and tapped carefully in the proper or neces- 
sary way, would come the nearest to producing desired results of any 
method that the aborigines could have employed. The grooved axe 
of granite or diorite, to give a tough, homogeneous texture; perfect 
symmetry in shape, to give a pressure or shock that could be calculated 
and depended on; a deep groove to provide for a close grip of the handle, 
that an exact position of the implement might be secured and a firm 
contact be had with the material to be worked upon; would apparently 
give an implement exactly suitable to their needs. And great credit 
should be given them for so perfect a tool and for the remarkably per- 
fect artifacts that were produced in flint, jasper, chalcedony and ob- 
sidian. 
We, then, here in Indiana, are in the environment of a most won- 
derful archaeological field which is beginning to claim attention because 
of its remarkable attainments in the stone age, and further than that 
we are in the center of a territory which was occupied apparently by 
a culture antedating the first of the two cultures mentioned in Ohio, 
that is to say the people who erected embankments and mounds along 
the Mississippi valley, traces of whom have been found in the lower 
Wabash valley. 
Prof. Moorehead made extensive explorations at the Cahokia 
mounds, across the river from St. Louis, this past season, and the 
results will be of great interest. Prof. Moorehead made explorations 
which gave the exhibit of Ohio archaeology for the World’s Fair in 
Chicago, which is now in the Field Museum at Chicago, and has since 
then been Curator for the Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. 
The Cahokia explorations as reported by him will surely throw much 
further light on the progress of this ancient aboriginal race from the 
South to their final abiding place in Ohio. 
Why, then, should we not take steps to unravel some of the mys- 
teries connected with a race which stood head and shoulders above the 
stone-age peoples of the Old World, and who as a people in historical 
times have shown themselves to have been in the front rank of un- 
civilized aborigines, having a personality, independence and ability far 
above other savage races? 
We have occupied their lands, turning them into vast wealth. We 
have used their names of places and things which have given us the 
most picturesque feature of our language. So it should be with grati- 
tude as well as pride that we take up Prehistoric American Archaeology 
and make it the beginning of American History. 
Indianapolis. 
