QUATERNARY AGE. 285 



bare, to my great surprise and joy found it to be an arrow- bead. 

 So far as I knew, this was the first mark that had yet been dis- 

 covered of the presence of man during this age. From that time on- 

 ward I have seized every opportunity of exploring these deposits for 

 human remains. The same year I found some flint chips in the 

 bluffs back of Jackson, in Dakota County, but it was not absolutely 

 clear that these were of human origin. My next find was about 

 two and a half miles southeast of Omaha, in a railroad cut, where 

 I found a large coarse arrow or spear- head. This last was found 

 in 1874. It was found twenty feet below the top of the Loess, and 

 at least six inches from the edge of the cut, so that it could not have 

 slid into that place. The first found was fifteen feet below the top 

 of the deposit. It appears, then, that some old races lived 

 around the shores of this old l; t ke, and paddled their ca- 

 noes over its waters, and accidentally dropped their arrows 

 in its waters or let them fly at a passing water-fowl. It is possible 

 also that these arrows came into this old lake by drift-wood. I 

 once found an arrow sticking in a log that came down the Mis- 

 souri, and if it had continued on to the Gulf it might have been un- 

 earthed in the far- off future, when that portion of the continent at 

 the mouth of the Mississippi had become dry land. Thirteen 

 inches above the point where the last named arrow was found, and 

 within three inches of being on a line with it, in undisturbed Loess, 

 there was a lumbar vertebra of an elephant (E/ephas Americanus}. 

 Unfortunately this vertebra partially fell to pieces on exposure. It 

 appears clear from this conjunction of a human relic and proboscid- 

 ian remains that man here as well as in Europe was the cotempor- 

 ary of the elephant in at least a portion of the Missouri Valley. 



In 1876 and again in the spring of 1877 I found additional arrow- 

 heads in the Loess of the Republican Valley. One in a section 

 described on a previous page east of the Republican Forks in 

 Dundy County. It was in the Loess below the second bed of black 

 soil, or fourteen feet below the surface. Here, then, primeval man 

 existed anterior to two old land surfaces, between which and after 

 the last, this region again became the bed of a Loess lake. Hon. 

 R. W. Furnas also found a hatchet in the Loess, five feet below the 

 surface, in Brownville, Nebraska. 



The climate probably varied considerably during the progress of 

 this age. What inclines me to that view is the fact that about the 

 middle horizon an unusually large number of southern species of 



