THE ABORIGINES. 77 



five feet ; but many hundreds of savages may have re- 

 sorted to those famous oyster beds, while only a modest 

 few of our local Indians feasted here upon their clams. 



The Indian women with wooden spades dug out of their 

 mud beds the bivalves of Cohasset birth and breeding for 

 the hungry braves, that might have grunted their appre- 

 ciation, or scolded their disapproval. Domestic scenes of 

 the same sort have left their traces in the ground of 

 Cooper's Island in Little Harbor, where Thomas Farrar 

 has plowed out a dozen or more of stone tools. Some one 

 has called attention to the little bulbs of wild garlic 

 which can be found growing on Cooper's Island as a late 

 witness of the Indians' kitchen gardens. 



The still water of the harbor was, no doubt, attractive 

 to their cranky little dugout canoes, and the soil was good 

 for their corn, while near enough to the fish that were 

 used to manure it. The third place of abundant relics is 

 the sloping ground at the north end of the bridge over the 

 entrance to Little Harbor. Several workmen who have 

 dug the soil at this place tell of axes and hatchets and 

 arrowheads and other sure evidences of Indian camping 

 grounds. 



One stone mortar for grinding corn, the only stone mor- 

 tar so far reported in Cohasset, was said to have been 

 found here. Wooden mortars were much used when white 

 settlers first came to New England, but decay has long 

 since banished them, so that the few stone ones in exist- 

 ence are the more valuable. 



Many more relics from this spot at the entrance of Lit- 

 tle Harbor may be discovered some day, when the sod 

 fetters are loosened. What tragedies may have darkened 

 this lovely slope during the many generations of abo- 

 rigines are not denied by the quiet now reigning there; 

 for, neither does it tell of a score of dead bodies which 

 lay spread there from a terrible wreck, within the memory 

 of livinsr men. 



