BULL. 30] 



STONINGTON STOKAGE AND CACHING 



643 



Phillips in Am. Anthr., n. s., ii, no. 



I, 1900; Proudfit in Am. Anthr., ii, no. 

 3, 1889; Rau, Archseol. Colls. Nat. 

 Mus., 1876; Reynolds in 12th Rep. Pea- 

 body Mas., 1880; Schumacher (1) in 

 Surv. AV. 100th Merid., vii, 1879; (2) in 

 Bull. Surv. of Terr., iii, no. 3, 1877; (3) 

 in 11th Rep. Peabody Mus., 1878; Smith 

 (1) in Mem. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., iv, 

 Anthr. in, 1903; (2) ibid., ii, Anthr. i 

 1899; (3) ibid., Anthr. i, pt. vi, 1900 

 Snyder in The Antiquarian, i, pt. 9 

 1897; Squier and Davis in Smithson 

 Cont., I, 1848; Stevens, Flint Chips, 1870 

 Teit in Mem. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 



II, 1900; Thruston, Antiq. of Tenn., 1897 

 Wilson in Nat. Mus. Rep. 1897, 1899 

 Wyman in Mem. Peabody Acad. Sci., i, 

 no. 4, 1875. (w. h. h.) 



Stonington. A former Pequot village in 

 New London co., Conn. In 1825 there 

 were 50 Indians there. 



Stono. A tribe formerly residing in the 

 neighborhood of the present Charleston, 

 S. C. , probably about Stono r. They may 

 be identified with the Stalame of the 

 French explorer Laudonniere in 1562, 

 mentioned as confederated with Audusta 

 (Edisto). In the English colonial docu- 

 ments the Stono and Westo are named 

 together as at war with the Carolina set- 

 tlers in 1664, 1669-71, and again in 1674, 

 in consequence of raids made on them by 

 the whites for the purpose of procuring 

 slaves, but this association is due to noth- 

 ing more perhaps than similarity between 

 the names. If it actually existed, they 

 must have retired among the Creeks 

 along with the Westo (Yuchi). Con- 

 sult Gatschet, Creek Migr. Leg., i, 1884; 

 Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull. 

 B. A. E., 1894. (A. s. G. J. R. s.) 



stono.— Rivers, Hist. S. C, 38, 1856. Stonoes.— 

 Hewat, Hist. Ace. S. C. and Ga., i, 61, 1779. 



Storage and Caching. The storage of 

 articles and supplies appears to have 

 been quite general throughout America, 

 and the practice of caching, or hiding, 

 things not less so. The extent of this cus- 

 tom indicates its ancient origin, a conclu- 

 sion strengthened by the discovery of 

 large deposits of articles of stone which in 

 many instances show partial disintegra- 

 tion and other indications of great age. 

 Hoards of stone axes have been found in 

 New Jersey, ceremonial implements in 

 Florida, tobacco pipes in Ohio, and leaf- 

 shaped blades along the greater part of 

 the Atlantic seaboard. Many authors 

 have described the methods employed by 

 the Indians in the storage and caching 

 of things, the process often evidencing 

 great ingenuity in concealment. The 

 season, the temperature, the locality, and 

 the time required to make a cache were 

 important considerations. When time al- 

 lowed, some things were sewed in skins 



and suspended on trees or hidden in hol- 

 low tree trunks; others were buried un- 

 der shelving rocks or in carefully pre- 

 pared holes in the ground. Owing to 

 seasonal journeys of large numbers of 

 persons in search of food or other sup- 

 plies, many things had to be left behind 

 which, because of their weight or bulk, 

 would add to the difficulty of movement. 

 Caching was resorted to in order to pre- 

 vent the hidden things from being dis- 

 turbed by wild beasts, stones often being 

 piled over the cache; or, when the deposit 

 was of food or clothing, fires were built in 

 order that the ashes should hide surface 

 indications and thus keep enemies from 

 disturbing the deposit; or, in other cases, 

 the sod was carefull)' removed and re- 

 placed after the cache was completed; or, 

 if the land was sandy, water was poured 

 over the surface to conceal indications of 

 the ground having been disturbed. The 

 term cache, from the French cacher, ' to 

 hide,' has been very generally adopted 

 by the whites, who have not been slow 

 to accept and practise this primitive 

 method of hiding things intended to be 

 reclaimed. 



Martin Frobisher (1578), according to 

 Dionese Settle, found that the natives in 

 Baffinland hid their provisions, "both 

 fish and flesh, in great heaps of stone," 

 a practice still generally followed in the 

 frozen north. Jacques Cartier (1535) 

 found the natives on the St Lawrence to 

 have vessels "as big as any butt or tun" 

 in which to keep their fish that had been 

 dried in the summer; these people are 

 also said to have kept their corn in gar- 

 rets on top of their houses. Pierre Biard 

 refers in 1616 to winter storehouses in 

 Canada wherein the natives kept smoked 

 meat, roots, shelled acorns, peas, beans, 

 etc., which they first put into sacks, and 

 these in large pieces of bark that they 

 then suspended from interlacing branches 

 of two trees, so that neither rats nor 

 dampness could injure them. Biard 

 refers also to the corn he ate in going 

 upstream, which the natives sought in 

 secluded places where they had hidden 

 it in little caches of birch-bark when they 

 went down the river. The Jesuit Rela- 

 tions record many instances of this gen- 

 eral habit, while on war, trading, and 

 other expeditions, of caching food, to be 

 used on the return journey. Many in- 

 stances are related of the loss of caches by 

 robbery, through forgetfulness of their 

 locations, or through injury by weather, 

 and of great suffering caused thereby. 



Champlain, in 1603, spoke of pits dug 

 in slopes of the seacoast to a depth of 5 

 or 6 ft, in which sacks made from plants 

 and filled with grain were placed and 

 covered with sand, "which keep as well 

 as our granaries." 



