yune 15, 1876J 



NATURE 



155 



terial (soap-stone) appears to have had a long cylindrical 

 body, and ends in an enlarged and trumpet-shaped mouth, 

 and possibly was used as a horn," 



Fig. 5 has faintly engraved upon it a serpent, or what 

 appears to have been one. This representation of a ser- 

 pent, and the figures on the specimens, Nos. 3 and 4, have 

 probably the same object. Either they represent the 

 owner, the name of the object beiiig that of the possessor 

 of the tube ; or, if they were used solely by the sorcerers 

 as " medicine tubes," ^ wherewith they blew away disease, 

 then the serpent in the one case, and the figures, now un- 

 determinable, on Figs. 3 and 4, were the "gods" or 

 " devils," through whose inspiration the " doctors '' effected 

 their cures. How to explain the meaning of the " wings," 

 of Fig. 2, is certainly difficult, if I am correct in my surmises 

 concerning the other specimens ; but these may simply 

 be meaningless ornamentation, just as the broken speci- 

 men. Fig. I, when entire, was just as effectual as any in 

 blowing away disease, provided the suffering patient was 

 made to believe so, by entertaining faith in his physician. 



A few words in conclusion upon the use of stone drills 

 in boring through stone. There is, in the museum of the 

 Peabody Academy at Salem, Massachusetts, several hun- 

 dred specimens of stone-drills, all of jasper, and varying 

 greatly in length. These specimens, collected by the 

 writer, have been frequently experimented with, and they 

 are found capable of very rapidly drilling in the minerals 

 of which these tubes and "gorgets" usually are marie. 

 And when sand and water are used in addition, it is not 

 extremely difficult to drill in mineral of hke or greater 

 density. Stone-drills, such as here referred to, are not 

 flat, like a slender arrow-point, but quadrangular (diamond- 

 shaped) when viewed in section. The points of the few 



Fig. 5. — One-half natural size. 



perfect specimr ns I have found, were mostly very highly 

 polished, and the bides showed clearly, in bome specimens, 

 the action of sand. These drills vary from one to seven 

 inches in length, and from three-sixteenths to over an inch 

 in diameter ; or rather the bores they made, had these 

 measurements. Figures of such drills are given in vol. vi. 

 of "Amtrican Naturahst," pp. 205—214; also by Mr^ 

 Evans, in " Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain,' 

 p. 290, Fig. 230. None of the drills, however, mentioned 

 by Mr. Evans, are large, and are capable only of perfor- 

 ating thin plates of stone. While convinced that a reed, 

 with^sand and water was most frequently used in deep 

 bore=, I can see no reason for doubting that stone-drills 

 were also used ; for such specimens are by no means rare, 

 and no other use can be suggested for them. 



The various forms of stone implements found in New 

 Jersey, however specialised, appear to be all traceable 

 to others, far less elaborate, and these ruder patterns, 

 as I have endeavoured to show, are now found at such 

 depths, as a mile, that they may safely be considered as 

 of greater antiquity and the forerunners of the more 

 finished types, the true surface-found specimens. From 

 this fact 1 have concluded that the red man of the Atlantic 

 coast of North America reached our shores a palaeolithic 

 savage, and when discovered by the Europeans had 

 attained to the neolithic stage of culture. 



There is one form of stone implement (and only one) 

 that oflers an exception to the assumed rule that the 

 ruder antedate the more finished specimens ; that is, the 



I Veneeas (Nat. and Civil Hist, of California, vol. i., p. 97. London, 

 i7Sg) stages : " Thev (medicine men) applied to the suffern'g part of the 

 patient's body the chcuuaco, or a tube of a very hard bUck stone ; and 

 throuah this they sometimes sucked, and other times blew. Quoted by 

 C. C Jones, junr., in " Antiquities of Southern Indians, p. 36^. 



smoking pipes. There are no rude or palaeolithic pipes 

 occurring in New Jersey, nor, I believe, in any portion of 

 the country. They are all more or less polished and so 

 wrought that they must be classed as a neolithic form of 

 stone implement. Among the chipped unpolished imple- 

 ments of the river gravels I have been unable to find any 

 specimen that could be imagined even to be connected 

 with the custom of smoking. There is, however, abundant 

 evidence of improvement in the flint-chipping art having 

 been attained by the red man while an occupant of this 

 country, readily traced in the axes, arrowpoints, and 

 other forms of weapons and domestic implements ; and 

 such advance is not seen in the fashioning of pipes. 



For the reasons already stated, I conclude that the 

 custom of tobacco smoking was introduced or established 

 after the red man had attained to the higher division of 

 the Stone age ; and that the first pipes were of perishable 

 materials. Such pipes must, I think, have been of wood. 

 Succeeding the use of this, which was necessarily incon- 

 venient, there is reason to believe that a rude clay bowl 

 was attached to the stem, a mere shapeless lump of clay 

 that they would soon learn was rendered somewhat more 

 durable by the exposure to heat. The use of clay bowls 

 might have arisen, too, by the hardening of the earth 

 simply, if the first receptacle for the tobacco was simply 

 a depression in the ground, to the bottom of which was 



Fig. 6. — Plain Pipe Bow!, natural size. 



placed one end of the reed, through which the smoke was 

 drawn to the mouth. However this might have been, I 

 believe I have found fragments of pipes so rude in their 

 shape and coarse in their composition as to warrant the 

 belief that such specimens were the forerunners of the 

 durable stone pipes that now occur in scanty numbers 

 among the relics of the red men of New Jersey. 



Inasmuch as the use of clay for pipe bowls was not 

 abandoned, there of course exists a vast range of excel- 

 lence in the workmanship displayed in their manufacture, 

 and many of the fragments that I have found were as 

 artistically ornamented and made of as carefully prepared 

 clay as others were rude and of the coarsest material. 

 These rudest specimens are never found in graves, and 

 seldom met with except when deeply embedded in the 

 soil, suggesting that they were in use before the custom 

 of burying the smoking pipes of the dead with them was 

 established, and therefore that they antedate the more 

 elaborately finished specimens, which are occasionally 

 found among the deposited relics of " grave-finds ; " but 

 such an occurrence is rare in comparison with the pre- 

 sence of stone pipes under similar circumstances. 



While the pipe bowls of stone exhibit a considerable 

 range in the excellence of their finish, there is not suffi- 

 cient variation to warrant one in considering the more 

 rudely finished specimens as the older. They are all well; 



