OF THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. II9 



Italy and Bohemia. These men also carried on a trade in flint 

 between France and the neighboring islands in the Mediterranean. 



II. — EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC TRADE IN AMERICA. 



The evidences of an extended commerce in the stone age 

 on the American Continent, are much clearer than those of Europe. 

 One cause for this may be that upon the arrival of the European in 

 America he found the native races in the midst of their stone age or 

 only emerging from it into the age of metals. 



Prehistoric man in America had widely extended commercial 

 relations during the age of stone. He dealt extensively in flint, slate, 

 mica, red pipestone, shells, pearls, jasper and obsidian. According 

 to Mr. Squier, implements made of the compact sihcious stone of 

 Flint Ridge, in Ohio, have been found in Kentucky, Indiana, Illin- 

 ois and Michigan. In 1869, some children playing in the neighbor- 

 hood of Fayetteville, St. Clair County, Illinois, found a deposit of 

 fifty-two disc shaped flint implements. These implements were made 

 of the stone from Flint Ridge. This fact shows conclusively that 

 this stone formed an article of trade with the natives, aud had been 

 carried by them a distance of over 400 miles. 



This Flint Ridge appears to have been the gigantic quarry from 

 which the thousands of flint implements found scattered over so 

 many states were produced. It apparently stood in the same relation 

 to the worker and user of stone as the ancient copper mines of Lake 

 Superior did to the worker of copper after the introduction of that 

 metal as the chief article for manufacturing purposes. It was prob- 

 ably a sacred or neutral territory upon which all the tribes met on 

 an equal footing, and at peace with one another, being at the same 

 time a great fair ground or market place, in which the products of 

 the various peoples were exchanged. It is hardly probable, judging 

 from the quantities of spoiled and broken implements found in the 

 neighborhood, that Flint Ridge was a seat of manufacture occupied 

 by one tribe or people, in the same manner as the copper mines 

 appear to have been. 



Another species of stone, dealt largely in by the ancient North 

 American, was slate. This slate is. of a greenish shade, otten 

 marked with darker parallel or concentric stripes or bands- There 

 3re in the National Museum at Washington, objects of this slate 



