ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS IN NEW JERSEY. 373 
are by far less numerous, and form no longer heaps, but lie thinly scattered 
over the ground, which is partly under cultivation, and swampy in some 
places, as marked in the drawing, by which it is only intended to show ap- 
proximately the location and extent of the deposit. 
By searching among these shell-heaps and in the adjacent fields I obtained 
more than three hundred specimens of Indian manufacture, consisting of stone 
axes, arrow and spear-points of different shapes, flint knives, and many pieces 
of broken -crockery. The tomahawks, which consist of greenstone or sand- 
stone, are of the usual shape, and encircled with a groove for attaching them 
to a handle. The material of the arrow and spear-heads is either flint, com- 
mon quartz, greenstone, or a kind of dark slate. ‘The specimens made of the 
two last-named mineral substances have a rather clumsy appearance, owing to 
the roughness of the material; but those wrought of flint are mostly well 
shaped and present pretty good samples of aboriginal art. That the manu- 
facture of arrow-heads was carried on in this place is evident from the great 
number of flint chips which lie scattered among the shells; and, moreover, IL 
picked up several unfinished arrows, which were thrown aside as useless in 
consequence of a flaw or wrong crack, or some other irregularity in the mate- 
rial. ‘These specimens are in so far interesting as they illustrate the process 
of arrow-making. The fragments of pottery which I collected here consist 
of a dark clay, either mixed with coarse sand, or pure, and for the most part 
rather slightly burnt ; some of the sherds still bear the ornamental lines and 
notches cut in the surface of the vessels. The mixing of the clay with 
pounded shells does not seem to have been practiced by the Indians of this 
region. I found also a fragment of an apparently large vessel cut out of a 
talcose stone. A few clay beads were picked up on the spot, but I did not 
obtain any of them. 
The last Indians who visited periodically the neighborhood of Keyport, even 
within the recollection of old people, belonged, according to the statement of 
my informant, to the tribe of Narragansetts. They made their appearance 
every year and caught shell-fish, which they dried for winter use. ‘Their en- 
campment, however, was not on the spot of which I have given a description,, 
but in Pleasant Valley, a little less than four miles south of Keyport. 
I am informed that similar shell-beds occur on Long Island, where the 
neighboring farmers use the shells for burning lime. Two centuries and a 
quarter ago the Dutch colonists of Manhattan island made the same use of the 
shells heaped up by the Indians of that locality. 'The account of New Neth- 
erland given by the Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, contains the following: 
passage relative to the subject : 
‘There are some houses built of stone; lime they make of oyster shells, great heaps of 
20 
which are found here, made tormerly by the savages, who subsist in part by that fishery.’ 
Sir Charles Lyell saw on St. Simon’s island, near the mouth of the Alta- 
maha river, in Georgia, large Indian shell-mounds, of which he gives the fol~ 
lowing description : 
‘¢ We landed on the northeast end of St. Simon’s island, at Cannon’s Point, where we were: 
gratified by the sight of a curious monument of the Indians, the largest mound of shells left 
by the aborigines in any one of the sea islands. Here are no less than ten acres of ground, 
elevated in some places ten teet, and on an average over the whole area five feet, above the 
general level, composed throughout that depth of myriads of cast oyster shells, with some 
mussels, and here and there a modiola and helix. They who have seen the Monte Testaceo, 
* Memoir of a Captivity among the Mohawk Indians, a Description of New Netherland 
in 164243, and other Papers, by Father Isaac Jogues, of the Society of Jesus, with a 
Memoir of the Author, by John Gilmary Shea, (New York, 1857,) p. 57. In the original the 
passage runs thus: ‘Il y a quelques logis bastys de pierre; ils font la chaux avec des 
coquilles d’huistres dont il y a de grans monceaux faits autrefois p les sauvages, qui vivent 
en partie de cette pesche.” 
