FOWKEE] ABORIGINAL FLINT QUARRIES 531 
fully described by Phillips? and Holmes.’ The two other deposits 
have not received the recognition they deserve. 
Doctor Snyder® has reported the discovery in a mound on the 
Illinois River of several thousand disks chipped from compact blue- 
gray nodules or concretions. The similarity in all respects of these 
objects to those found in the Hopewell Mound near Chillicothe, Ohio, 
has been cited as evidence that the earthworks in these widely sepa- 
rated localities are of the same age and due to the same people. The 
assumption seems to be that only one natural deposit of such material 
can exist; that only one tribe would use it; that this tribe would pro- 
cure, within a comparatively short time, all that was needed; and 
that the mine or quarry, once abandoned, would not be resorted to 
in later times. None of these conclusions necessarily holds true. 
Some years since Dr. J. T. Whelpley, of Cobden, who for more 
than a generation had been making studies and explorations in 
Union and adjoining counties, found a stratum of nodules which is 
undoubtedly the source, or at least one of the sources, of the imple- 
ments recorded by Doctor Snyder. It is on a ridge 1144 miles south 
and a half a mile west of Cobden, on the Barge farm, at the head of 
one branch of Clear Creek. The flint, while the highest visible rock 
in the hill, reaches the surface in its natural position at only three 
places, none of them more than 5 or 6 rods in linear extent. Else- 
where it is covered with earth, so that the outline or the extent can 
not be ascertained. Neither Doctor Whelpley, who has made careful 
search for them, nor the present occupant of the land, has ever found 
any indication of aboriginal excavations. Nor is it probable that 
any were ever made; for in the banks of gullies and small ravines 
leading to the creek itself are great numbers of easily accessible 
nodules still retaining the original “quarry water,” and thus ob- 
viating the necessity for mining for material suitable for flaking. 
The number and extent of workshops in the vicinity, and the large 
amount of refuse on them, are evidences that this was once the seat of 
a great flint-chipping industry. 
Two miles west from the nodule deposit is a stratum of siliceous 
stone different in character and appearance from any that has here- 
tofore been reported. It is located on Graham and Whittaker’s land, 
114 miles south and 214 miles west from Cobden, or half a mile west 
of the deep cut which replaces a former tunnel on the Mobile and 
Ohio Railway. The flint, if even this elastic term may include the 
4W. A. Phillips, Aboriginal quarries and shops at Mill Creek, Illinois. (Amer. Anthrop., 
n. s. vol. II, no. 1, pp. 37-52, New York, 1900.) 
5 W. H. Holmes, Handbook of aboriginal American antiquities, Bur. Amer, Ethn., Bull. 60, 
pt. 1, pp. 187-194, Washington, 1919.) 
6J. F. Snyder, A group of Illinois mounds. (The Archaeologist, vol. III, pp. 77-81, 
109-112, New York, 1895.) 
