NO. 12 THE WINELAND VOYAGES — SWANTON 75 



Indian, but we are puzzled to know why Karlsefni happened to 

 have stocked his ship with it. He was, indeed, a trader, but he had 

 had no previous experience of Indians or Eskimo. Perhaps, as one 

 writer suggests, the sight of this red cloth roused the anger of the 

 bull and so led to a rupture between Whites and Skrellings. Other- 

 wise the explanation of this in the Flat Island Book to the effect that 

 a Skrelling attempted to steal some weapon from a Norseman and 

 was killed by him is the more probable. The writer of the Flat 

 Island narrative has been ridiculed for speaking of the use of cows' 

 milk in trade by the Norse, but this might have been a mere episode 

 and not as extensive as represented, and the supplies of red cloth 

 carried along by Karlsefni require explanation equally. The "wooden 

 building for the shelter of grain" said to have been discovered by 

 Thorvald's men in an island toward the west need occasion us less 

 surprise — raised shelters of this kind being well known to the Indians 

 — than their failure to find a single human being along coastlands 

 which were densely occupied in later times. 



It will be safe to discount the skin boats of the Hop Indians what- 

 ever we may think of those of the Unipeds, and to identify the Skrel- 

 lings in that territory with the Indians, though we cannot tell whether 

 they were the Algonquians later found in possession or not. 



The "bomb" which occasioned such panic among the Norse has 

 never been satisfactorily explained. The only suggestion made, so far 

 as I am aware, is that of Schoolcraft, already mentioned. Unless it 

 was some shaman's device to frighten the enemy, in which case it was 

 eminently successful, I can suggest no explanation, and I doubt 

 whether one ever will be suggested knowing as we do how many op- 

 portunities there were for the facts in the case to be distorted before 

 an account was committed to writing. We may note, however, that 

 it is given in the Saga of Eric the Red, and remark that if it had 

 been incorporated in the narrative of the Flat Island Book it would 

 have been regarded as another case of Flat Island Book romancing 

 pure and simple. 



The question of Norse relics need not be taken up here. The 

 Dighton Rock, Skeleton in Armor, and old Stone Tower, in spite of 

 a recent rehabilitation of the problem as concerns the last mentioned, 

 may be safely rejected as valueless from the evidential point of view. 

 The same cannot be said regarding certain more recent finds, includ- 

 ing the Kensington Stone. But if Paul Knutson entered Minnesota 

 and left this stone as a memorial of his visit, he came much later than 

 Leif or Karlsefni and entered by way of Hudson Strait and Hudson 



