58 BELIQULE AQTJITANIOS:. 



V. 



SOME OF THE IMPLEMENTS FEOM THE CAVES OF DORDOGNE COMPARED WITH 

 NORTH-AMERICAN-INDIAN TOOLS. 



THE following Letter, like the foregoing, was given in courteous reply to 

 inquiries respecting the North-American Tool referred to at page 32 and page 37, 

 and as to the possibility of Indian Implements and Habits being illustrative 

 of the Dordogne specimens. T. R. J. 



4 Gladstone Terrace, Hope Park, Edinburgh, 

 October 22, 1866. 



DEAR SIR, I have only just received from Dr. Balfour your note of the 

 22nd May, having but very recently returned from North-west America, and the 

 uncertainty of my locale and the expectation of my speedy return to England 

 having prevented your communication being forwarded to me. I, however, take 

 the earliest opportunity of doing myself the honour and pleasure of affording 

 you what information I possess (somewhat unsatisfactory, I fear) regarding the 

 " native British- Columbian implement " you refer to. 



Though very intimately acquainted with many of the aboriginal nations and 

 tribes of North America, having resided and travelled amongst them (almost 

 as one of their people) for a number of years whilst engaged as a Botanist and 

 afterwards as Commander and Government Agent of the Vancouver' s-Island 

 Exploring Expeditions, I cannot recollect any implement in use amongst them 

 exactly corresponding with the one figured and described in your letter, or in the 

 supposed analogues figured in ' Reliquiae Aquitanicse,' B. Plate III. & IV. fig. 3. 

 Though the Indians live to a great extent in the same state of barbarism which 

 they did a hundred years ago, yet the introduction of iron weapons and tools 

 amongst them by the Hudson's Bay Company and others has rendered obsolete 

 most of the former rude weapons of bone and stone, so that these are very rarely 

 seen except when accidentally dug up on the sites of their old villages. Even 

 the tomahawks and the scalping-knives of the horse-tribes are manufactured 

 in Birmingham and Sheffield, and imported for the Indian trade by the Great 

 Eur Company. 



I have, however, seen pieces of the horns of the Elk and other Deer, of a similar 



