42 



AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 



seem to possess a relative antiquity; 

 but the oldest known remains, in every 

 case, may be placed as Algonkian with 

 considerable certainty. No paleoliths 

 have been reported, and it would seem 

 from the comparative lack of antiquity 

 of the remains that the natives could 

 not have lived in this region for many 

 centuries before the advent of the 

 whites. The accounts of contempo- 

 rary writers prove conclusively that 

 these archaeological remains, if not 

 those left by Indians found here by the 

 early Dutch and English settlers, must 

 have been from people of very similar 

 culture. In culture, the local Indians 

 were not as high as the Iroquois, nor 

 perhaps as the Lenape or Delaware 

 proper from whom they sprang; but 

 they compare very favorably with the 

 New England tribes. Absence and 

 scarcity of certain artifacts such as 

 steatite vessels, the long stone pestle, 

 the gouge, adze, and plummet, and the 



abundance and character of bone and 

 pottery articles show them to have 

 been intermediate in character be- 

 tween the Lenape on the south and 

 west, and the New England tribes on 

 the east and north; and consultations 

 of the old European contemporaries 

 show that this was the case linguistic- 

 ally as well as culturally. Examination 

 of the remains also shows that the 

 influence of the Lenape on the west, 

 and of the New England peoples on 

 the east, was most strongly felt near 

 their respective borders. Iroquoian 

 influence was strong, as evinced by the 

 pottery, and there is also documentary 

 evidence to this effect. Finally, as is 

 frequent throughout most of eastern 

 North America, the archaeological 

 remains may be definitely placed as 

 belonging to the native Indian tribes 

 who held the country at the time of its 

 discovery or to their immediate ances- 

 tors. 



LOCATION OF ARCHEOLOGICAL REMAINS ON MANHATTAN ISLAND.' 



THE first field-work done on Man- 

 hattan Island is of very recent 

 date. Doubtless many articles 

 of Indian manufacture and evidences 

 of Indian occupation were found 

 as the city grew up from its 

 first settlement at Fort Amsterdam, 

 but of these specimens we have 

 very few records. An arrow point 

 found in the plaster in the wall of 

 a Colonial house was, without doubt, 

 in the hands of some member of the 

 Kortrecht family; and Indian pottery 

 has been found in a hut occupied by 

 Hessian soldiers during the War of 

 Independence. The first specimens 

 to have been preserved, to the know- 

 ledge of those now interested in the 



subject, were found in 1885, and con- 

 sisted of Indian arrow points dis- 

 covered in Harlem during excavation 

 for a cellar on Avenue A, between!20th 

 and 121st Streets. Some of these are 

 spoken of by James Riker 2 as being in 

 the author's cabinet. Riker also 

 speaks of shell-heaps near here. 3 The 

 next specimens preserved were found 

 at Kingsbridge Road (now Broadway) 

 and 220th Street in 1886, and are in 

 the John Neafie collection at the Mu- 

 seum. These consist of an arrow point 

 and a few bits of pottery. The next 

 work was begun in 1889 by Mr. W. L. 



1 By James K. Finch, revised by Leslie Spier. 



2 History of Harlem (1881), footnote, p. 137. 



3 Ibid, p. 3i. 



