588 STONE IMPLEMENTS FR M SHORES OF LAKE MICHIGAN. 



of narrow sandy ridges covered with forest trees, which extend around 

 the head of the lake. Alternating with these are marshes which in 

 former years were frequently covered with water for a considerable 

 period of the winter and spring, but displayed for the rest of the year 

 a heavy growth of flags and grasses. The sharply defined ranks of 

 oak woods regularly divided by meadows are still a characteristic of 

 the lake shore landscape. 



Cities and towns now occupy much of the area, and artificial drain- 

 age has changed the marshes for the most part into cultivated fiields. 

 The ridges were at different times in the past the beaches of Lake 

 Michigan; three are well marked and continuous, while many inter- 

 mediate ones are mere sand bars. The width of this zone of shore 

 formations is variable. In northern Lake County, Ind., it is 7 or 8 

 miles; across Chicago, from the present beach to Summit, it is about 

 14 miles, this being the greatest width; at Evanston it is 4 miles, 

 and between this place and Winnetka, 5 miles farther down, the 

 beaches fade out into the present shore line. Similar areas of shore 

 country occur at other points about the Great Lakes. One of them, a 

 narrow detached district between the cities of Waukegau, 111., and 

 Kenosha, Wis., has been repeatedly visited by the writer for pur- 

 poses of study. It is a mile wide and displays all the characters of 

 the larger region about the head of the lake. It is limited on the west 

 by an old shore line of clay bluffs. 



Aboriginal remains. — Along the sand ridges old hearths and scat- 

 tered relics of aboriginal life mark sites formerly occupied by camps 

 and villages. In certain localities such remains are continuous for 

 miles, and are traceable in wind-swept places, where the sand drifts 

 away from the heavier objects, leaving them exposed on the surface. 

 The objects are such as characterize similar sites throughout the 

 United States. They consist of groups of hearthstones cracked and 

 broken by fire; fragments of pottery of the kind made and used by the 

 tribes of the Eastern and Middle States ; net weights ; the refuse of stone 

 shaping, and implements and ornaments of stone and sometimes of cop 

 per. Articles formed of less durable substance are exceptional. An 

 occasional gun flint or iron axe connects certain sites with the period of 

 French and English trade. A few of the graves give like evidence in 

 silver crosses and ornaments introduced by the Jesuits. However, 

 on all the sites the refuse of stone flaking is constant, and represents 

 a purely aboriginal phase of art. 



In 1853 Professor Lapham recorded the abundant "evidence of the 

 former manufacture of articles of flint near Kenosha.'^ Similar obser- 

 vations at Evanston were made some years ago by the present writer 

 (1884).^ Chert refuse was collected at that time illustrating successive 



' Antiquities of Wisconsin. I. A. Lapham, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl- 

 edge. Vol. VII, page 6, 1855. 

 '^Science. Vol. III. page 273, 1884. 



