76 IHSrORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Conohasset may be as ancient as Athens or Corinth, and 

 these Indian relics as antique as Dr. Schliemann's from 

 ancient Troy. 



Winter* settlements were here in the ancient forests, 

 probably along the course of Bound Brook. 



Fresh water was brought in buckets of birch bark from 

 the stream a few rods off, where a stone axe swung by a 

 swarthy arm might have broken the ice in winter for their 

 domestic comfort. Settlements along the shore for sum- 

 mer resorting must have been many, for at least three 

 places have been rich with relics of Indian life. 



One of these summer camps was upon the edge of 

 Straits Pond, north of Jerusalem Road, in the very yard 

 where Bostonians now resort. An orchard grows now 

 where heaps of shells were discarded by the Indians. 

 Thomas Hudson in plowing here, thirty years ago, en- 

 countered those kitchen heaps, and found several stone 

 implements, among which were the grooved tomahawk, 

 and the grooved codfish sinker, before mentioned. No 

 such shell heaps are here in Cohasset as have been found 

 upon the banks of the Damariscotta in Maine, where piles 

 of huge oyster shells have reached the height of twenty- 



* The following account of some stone " fireplaces " in Beechwood, upon Barn 

 Hill, may possibly have mistaken the beds of ancient charcoal pits for Indian 

 wigwams; but even if the Indians here were not in the habit of building stone 

 hearths in their lodges, still their abodes in many places of Cohasset are sufficiently 

 proved by the implements discovered. 



The field on Barn Hill had been plowed over by several generations, and the 

 stones in certain spots were allowed to trip the plow without any attempt to clear 

 them out. 



Finally, one day about thirty-five years ago, Ira B. Pratt, then at work with his 

 father, started to dig out these troublesome stones. But upon scraping away the 

 dirt from some of them, there were bits of charcoal found in the crevices, and they 

 were so placed together as to make a pavement five feet in diameter, such as nature 

 is not in the habit of making. There were five such nests of stones within an area 

 of two hundred feet in width. Fragments of a stone axe and a gouge, also spear- 

 heads and arrowheads, were found in the field near these nests. These all may be 

 evidences of an ancient Indian settlement; for each wigwam had a fireplace in the 

 middle of it, where fish and birds and other game could be roasted, while as many 

 as a dozen hungry redskins were gathered about its rude liearthstone. 



