90 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. CO 



substantially fruitless. Traces of savage man appeared at many points but 

 they were all superficial ; in the deeper parts of the sections I found nothing 

 which could fairly create a suspicion that a really ancient member of the species 

 had dwelt in this valley. Whenever I could establish anything like time ratios 

 they seemed to show that man had not been at work in this part of the country 

 for more than one or two thousand years. . . . The only positive conclusion 

 which I attained was to the effect that man had never taken to our caves or 

 hunted our larger herbivora in the way he did in Europe, and if he occupied 

 this part of the continent in the time when he was settled in the Old World his 

 habits were peculiar. ... I undertook in a more general way to search for 

 such evidence in the New England district. Here too I failed to ascertain any- 

 thing which could be reckoned as proof that man had been on the ground for 

 two thousand years ; in fact I have seen nothing which raised a presumption 

 of his presence for half that time in the region north of New York.' 



The conclusions of Slialer are supported by the explorations of 

 jMercer, who, well (|ualified by experience and acting under the advice 

 of Professor Cope, made a reconnaissance of the caverns of the Ohio 

 Valley : 



We followed the New River into the Kanawha, the Kanawha through its deep 

 gorge into the Ohio, and the Ohio nearly to its mouth in the Mississippi, examin- 

 ing all the caves and rock shelters by the way. 



The time has not come to describe in full or fairly estimate the evidence thus 

 collected. Suthce it here to say that as compared with prehistoric Europe every- 

 thing was modern, that while in Europe you have many cave layers, here we 

 found but one, namely, that representing the North American Indian, and, 

 tiually, that wliile in Europe Iiuman relics in the cave layers evidently reach 

 back into geologically ancient times becaiise of their association with the bones 

 of extinct animals, here, with two exceptions, the bones of animals, cooked and 

 eaten by the cave visitors, were modern. In other words, we had failed thus 

 far to find any evidence of a race of mound builders antedating the Indian or 

 any trace of the so-called Paleolithic man. who, if he existed in the eastern 

 United States, had, strange to say, avoided these caves, which had not only 

 given shelter to the red man, but, as bits of glass, buttons, and leather on the 

 surface abundantly showed, had continually tempted the ingress of the white 

 man.^ 



The results of cavern exploration, even though negative, must 

 have very considerable weight in dealing with the important ques- 

 tion of the settlement of America. Cope, a paleontologist of the 

 highest standing, favored the view that man had probably occupied 

 the western world at periods corresponding to the occupation of the 

 Old AVorld, but his excavations in the Port Kennedy cave and others, 

 which produced the remains of many extinct species of animals of 

 Pleistocene age, brought to light no trace of man. 



Mercer's explorations of the caverns of the eastern United States 

 have strengthened the already formidal)le negative evidence against 



1 Shaler, Man and tho Glacial Period (Antiquity of Man in Eastern North America), 

 pp. ISO-lSl. 



- Mercer, Jasper and Stalagmite Quarried by Indians in tlie Wyandotte Cave, pp. 

 397-398. 



