158 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 



abundance, and of many patterns, knives to 

 flay the game. It is not enough to merely 

 glance at a trimmed flake of flint or care- 

 fully-chipped splinter of argillite, and say to 

 yourself, " A knife." Their great variety 

 has a significance that should not be over- 

 looked. The same implement could not 

 be put to every use for which a knife was 

 needed ; hence the range in size from several 

 inches to tiny flakes that will likely remain a 

 puzzle as to their purpose. 



Besides home produfts, articles are found 

 that have come from a long distance, and 

 no class of objefts is more suggestive than 

 those that prove the widely-extended system 

 of barter that prevailed at one time among 

 the Indians of North America. There are 

 shells and shell ornaments found in Wis- 

 consin which must have been taken there 

 from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico ; 

 catlinite or red pipe-stone ornaments and 

 pipes found in New Jersey that could only 

 have come from Minnesota. Shell beads are 

 often found in graves in the Mississippi Valley 

 that were brought from the Pacific coast, and 

 the late Dr. Leidy has described a shell bead, 

 concerning which he states that it is the Conus 



