KANSAS CITY PREHISTORIC REMAINS. 197 



the Charlotte street outlet of the channel, that I found the spear head I 

 liave shown you this evening, lost, no doubt, by ' 



" A brave old fisherman, 

 All of the olden time," 

 while providing for his daily wants from the fishes sporting in the channel. 



The Loess formation, though comparatively very new, belonging to our 

 own geological time, estimated by years as we compute time, is indeed very 

 old. It had its beginning about the time the Niagara river commenced its 

 erosion of the rocky barrier which causes that world's wonder, the Falls of 

 the JSTiagara. Since that time the Niagara has cut a channel through the 

 solid rock back for a distance of seven miles. The length of time required to 

 accomplish this has been variously estimated by Dana, Lyell ajid other geolo- 

 gists, at from thirty-one thousand to one million years. 



Prof. Aughey has estimated the time required for the deposit of two 

 hundred feet in thickness of Loess at twenty thousand years. Eeckoning 

 our Loess deposit at one hundred feet, this spear head, from these estimates? 

 must have lain where I found it for at least twenty-one thousand years, 

 proving man's presence at Kansas City and upon this continent for at least 

 that great length of time. 



From the evidence of the specimen I have shown you, and from a stone 

 axe described to me by Col. Van Horn, found in grading Commercial street, 

 near the foot of Grand avenue, buried in the Loess fifteen feet, beneath the 

 surface, and from other stone implements described by Prof. Aughey, found 

 imbedded in the Loess of Nebraska and Iowa, 1 think that but little doubt 

 can remain that man existed upon the earth at the time this deposit took 

 place. 



Did he have an existence here prior to that time? There are many 

 xeasons rendering it probable that he had. Overlying the erie clay and un- 

 derlying the recvent drift deposit, and the Bluff formation in Ohio, Illinois, 

 Iowa, Missouriv, Kansas and other States, is an ancient " forest bed," with a 

 soil from six inches to three feet in thickness. This ancient forest sprang 

 up and had a vigorous existence in a climate not materially different from 

 ■our present climate. The flora was not widely different from ours, and with 

 a river drainage almost, if not entirely equal to our present drainage, there 

 is no apparent reason why man should not have existed at the time. There 

 was everything needful to supply his wants, and the condition in every 

 way was such as to render his existence highly probable, or there was 

 nothing at least to preclude the idea of his existence. Besides, the late Dr. 

 Koch, in a paper submitted to the Academy of Science of St. Louis, claims 

 to have found in Benton county, in this State, two arrow heads associated 

 with the skeleton of the Missourium in a layer of vegetable mould, covered 

 to the depth of twenty feet with alternate layers of sand, clay and gravel. 

 One of the arrow heads lay underneath the thigh bone of the skeleton, the 

 bone actually resting in contact upon it, so that it could not have been 

 iplaced there after the deposit of the bone. The value of the claim of Dr. 



