242 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



(beginning in 1868) by Dr. C. A. White, now of the United States National 

 Museum, along the Mississippi and its tributaries in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, 

 Missouri, and Indiana. " In general character," he states, " these fresh-water 

 shell-heaps resemble those of marine coasts, but they are usually not so extensive. 

 They vary in extent from a few bushels of shells to accumulations from fifty to 

 a hundred yards long, four or five yards broad, and from a few inches to a yard 

 or two in thickness. They are usually located upon the immediate bank of the 

 river, sometimes a little below, and sometimes above the reach of the highest 

 floods." 



The three most interesting shell-heaps were found by him near the villages 

 of Keosauqua, Sabula, and Bellevue, in Iowa ; the first upon the bank of the 

 Des Moines River, and the other two upon that of the Mississippi. The shells 

 constituting these heaps represented fourteen species of Unio and one of Pahidina, 

 all still inhabiting the neighboring water. Among them occurred remains of 

 the cat-fish and sheep's-head, snapping and soft-shelled turtle, wild goose, buf- 

 falo, and common deer. The artefacts consisted of flint flakes and arrow-heads, 

 one greenstone axe (found at Keosauqua), and fragments of a coarse kind of 

 pottery. 



Both at Sabula and Bellevue Dr. White noticed in the ground small pits, 

 showing the action of fire, and now filled with shells and bones. " The earth had 

 evidently been heated by building a fire in the pits ; the mollusks and other food 

 were then placed in them, then covered, and the contents allowed to cook by the 

 retained heat." 



Concerning the age of these heaps, Dr. White thinks "that the. entire 

 absence of all articles of civilized manufacture, even those that savages most 

 eagerly secure, seems to be very good evidence that they are older than the date 

 of the discovery." He also found oak and elm-trees from two to two and a half 

 feet in diameter growing in the soil that had accumulated upon the shell-heaps, 

 and he ascribes to the latter an age of not less than two hundred years.* 



Georgia. The shell-deposit on Saint Simon's Island, briefly but graphically 

 described by Sir Charles Lyell,f may serve' as a type of artificial accumulations 

 of marine shells in Georgia. Concerning deposits of fluviatile shells, Colonel 

 Charles C. Jones remarks that they are found upon the banks of most of the 

 rivers in Georgia. He further says : 



* White: Artificial Shell-Heaps of Fresh -Water Mollusks; Proceedings of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science; Twenty-second Session, held at Portland. Maine, August, 1873; Salem, 1874; p. 133, 

 etc. A short notice relating to the same subject had previously appeared in the "American Naturalist " (Vol. 

 Ill, 1870, p. 54), and also an article of wider range, " Kjoekkenmceddings de 1'Amerique du Nord," in the 

 Compte-rendu of the Fifth Session of the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology, 

 held at Bologna in 1871 (Bologna, 1873, p. 379, etc.). 



f See p. 218 of this volume. 



