holmes] 



ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES^PART I 



255 



A'ations were consequently quite shallow. The ledge which crosses the 

 stream approximately at right angles was followed to the right and 

 left by the ({uarrymen until the line of pittings was nearly a mile in 



length. These ancient diggings have been almost ob- 

 Modern Operations literated by natural filling (fig. 125) or by the more 



recent mining operations. The latter, gince the 

 advent of the whites, have been greatly accelerated by the introduc- 

 tion of steel sledges, picks, shovels, and crowbars (figs. 120, 127, 128). 

 It is said that with the aid of the whites blasting has been occasion- 

 ally resorted to. Some of the present excavations are as much as 10 

 feet in depth, and have advanced 20 feet or more with the dip of the 

 strata to the east. A usual section (fig. 129) now^ exposed in the 



Fkj. 124. Catlin's sketch of the iiiiK'Stouu quarry. 



deeper excavations beginning above, shows 2 to 4 feet of soil and 

 beneath this G to 8 feet of (juartzite, the latter resting on the thin 

 stratum of pipestone, beneath which, forming the bed of the quarry, 

 are compact (juartzites. Numerous hanuners of hard stone, some 

 discoidal, others roughly grooved to facilitate liafting, were found 



about the older pits (fig. 130), and the prairie in the 

 Used ™^ "^"^^ ^ vicinity is dotted with camp sites and lodge rings, 



about which are strewn bits of pipestone and other 

 refuse of manufacture along with typical grooved bone-breaking, 

 .stake-driving hannners of the Plains tribes (fig. 131). Some of the 

 partially worked pieces of the stone are shown in figure 132. 

 38657°— 19— Bull. 60, pt. 1 18 



