GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERIilTORIES. 653 



acquainted witli tlie laugnage, history, manners, and customs of the 

 neighboring tribes of Indians, informs me that they know nothing 

 about thera. He reports that the Shoshones look upon them as the gift 

 of God to their ancestors. They were no doubt made long ago, some 

 probably at a comparatively late date, that is to say, jusf prior to com- 

 munication of the Indians with the whites, but others probably date 

 centuries back. Their great numbers in particular localities may per- 

 haps be accounted for from the circumstances that the neighboring 

 buttes may have been especially the places resorted to for the materials 

 of which the implements are made, and the ruder ones were perhaps 

 cast aside. The decomposition of the surface of some of the jasper 

 and flint specimens may be looked upon as indicative of considerable 

 age, though this change may have taken place more rapidly than ordi- 

 narily, from the action of alkaline matters with which the soil of the 

 country is often much imbued. 



In an excursion to Grizzly Buttes, about ten miles from Fort Bridger, 

 I observed what appeared to be the remains of the basin of a large 

 pond or lake. The surrounding buttes were low mounds, the remains 

 of the once more elevated boundaries to the supposed lake. Upon the 

 edges of this I noticed immerous spawls of stone, and among them a 

 number of well-finished stone arrow-heads. They appeared to me to be 

 the traces of a i^eople who once camped on the shores of the lake, which, 

 perhaps, has been drained for some centuries. 



The Indians, in seeking a site for their temporary or more permanent 

 abodes, would naturally select places where there was a supply of water 

 and fuel, jis well as of game. In repeated instances, after traversing a 

 desert waste, I have been led to look upon some sheltered valley, or a 

 hollow iu the hills, green with vegetation and furnished with a spring 

 of water, as having been formerly occupied by Indian lodges, and in all 

 cases the view was confirmed by the discovery of a number of charac- 

 teristic stone implements. 



In this relation I may take the opportunity of speaking of a stone 

 implement of the Shoshone Indians, one of so simple a character that 

 had I not observed it iu actual use and had noticed it among the mate- 

 rials of the buttes, I would have viewed it as an accidental Sj)awL It 

 consists of a thin segment of a quartzite bowlder, made by striking the 

 stone with a smart blow. The implement is represented in Fig. 13, 

 and is circular or oval, with a sharp edge, convex on one side and flat on 

 the other. It is called a " teshoa," and is employ'ed as a scraper in 

 dressing buflalo-skins. By accident I learned that the implement is not 

 only modern, as I obtaiucnl one of the same character, together with 

 some perforated tusks of the elk, from an old Indian grave, which had 

 been made on the upper part of a butte, and had become exposed by 

 the gradual wearing away of the lattier. 



The perforated tusks of the elk are also a subject of some interest in 

 connection with the history of primitive man. The tusks are worn in 

 the form of a necklace, as ornamental trophies, by the Shoshone and 

 other Indians of the West. In a recent number of the American Jour- 

 nal of Science and Art for 1872, in a notice "On fossil man of the cav- 

 ern of Brousse-rousse, in Italy," it is stated that besides a human skull 

 associated with the bones of many extinct animals, there were also 

 found several flint knives and a number of perforated canines of the 

 stag. It wx)uld thus appear that primitive man in Europe as well as in 

 this country used the same kind of ornaments, as he did the same kind 

 of stone implements. 



Fig. 14 represents one of the perforated canines or tusks of the 

 elk, found in the Indian grave as above indicated. 



