THE MISSOURI MOUND BUILDERS. 19 



axes, knives, flint cores and chippings, flat stones used for grinding corn, 

 fragments of pottery, etc., are found. Some of the implements, you will 

 perceive, are very rude, while others present a superior finish. They are 

 found imbedded in the upper surface of the loess, along old roads, acd in 

 fields that have been in cultivation for a number of years, where the super- 

 incumbent vegetable mould has been entirely removed by attrition, or other 

 causes. A farmer residing in the neighborhood remarked to me that the 

 older the field the more implements were revealed by the plow; that they 

 were not encountered by the plow in fields that had not been in cultivation 

 ^en to twenty years. The surface in Clay and Platte counties bordering on 

 the river, where these implements are found, is very undulating, and sub- 

 ject to rapid change by attrition, especially in cultivated fields and along 

 public highways. Mr. Krouse, who resides in the neighborhood, on the 

 southern slope of the bluff overlooking the Missouri, showed me a beauti- 

 ful spear -head found embedded in the loess, three feet beneath the surface. 

 Its situation in the loess cannot be mistaken, for it was found while exca- 

 vations were being made for the purpose of terracing and grading his 

 yard. At the same level numerous flint flakes were found. These imple- 

 ments, evidently, were deposited before a vegetable mould was formed in 

 the localities of their deposition, and, probably, upon what was then a lake 

 shore. 



These views are sustained by my own observations, as well as by the 

 unanimous verdict of the people of the neighborhood, as to the situations 

 in which the implements are found. The Line Creek pottery, you will 

 perceive, differs from that found on the south side of the Missouri, which I 

 had the honor to describe in my September paper, and no doubt can claim 

 a superior antiquity. The difference is obvious, and relates to the fashion- 

 ing of the vessel. While the latter shows no signs of a mould having been 

 used in the construction of the vessel, the former has clearly delineated'on 

 the outer surface the markings of the mould in which the vessel was fash- 

 ioned. Indej)endent of this marked distinction, the pottery as yet encoun- 

 tered on the south side of the river is found in situations indicating a more 

 recent deposit than that found on the north side, and most probably be- 

 longed to a different race, or, if to the same race, certainly at a later period 

 of time. 



There seems to have been two eras in this country in the manufacture 

 of pottery, — that in which a mould, constructed of grass, the inner bark of 

 a tree, or coarse threads made of the sinews of animals or other material^ 

 was used, inside of which the vessel was moulded and given shape, and an 

 era in which the vessel was shaped without an outer moiild. The latter^ 

 though the eras may lap in sequence of time, is subsequent to the former^ 

 and extends down to our own time, for we find pottery of this latter type 

 now manufactured and used by some of the aboriginal races of New Mexico 

 and Arizona. 



It is highly probable when the surface ®f the earth in the immediate' 



