590 KANSAS CITV REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



road at Beaverhead Cafion, and finally reached Fort Hall and Portneuf River 

 October 19-20, 1878. 



During this whole journey I made continued examinations for archaeolog- 

 ical relics, but had very little success until we reached Upper Madison Fork. 

 Here and around Henry's Lake, Henry's Fork and Beaverhead Canon, and on 

 Market Lake and Snake River, I gathered some very characteristic obsidian im- 

 plements which I transmit to the Academy for illustration. 



I have always understood, until within a few years, that the presence of ob- 

 sidian weapons in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming, and in Utah also, 

 was due to the probable intercourse of exchange from the Indians, or we may 

 say Astec races, of Mexico, with the more northern tribes. I am satisfied that 

 whatever obsidian arrows, lance-heads and leaf-shaped implements I have found 

 in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, etc., were more probably derived from the 

 Yellowstone and from Snake River rather than from New and Old Mexico. Ob- 

 sidian implements begin to abound from Great Salt Lake northward ; and on 

 Portneuf and Snake and Henry's Fork of Snake River, in the National Park, 

 and on Madison Fork its abundance everywhere, both wrought and unwrought, 

 ceased to become extraordinary or noticeable. I have been assured by rehable, 

 trusty residents of Idaho and Utah Territories that even to this date, not farther 

 back than fifteen to twenty years ago, they have repeatedly seen the Bannock and 

 Snake Indians of that region make themselves arrow-heads of obsidian, beauti- 

 fully and skillfully worked out of flakes, by a simple process of slow clipping 

 on the edges by means of a buckhorn tool, with a cross notch, holding the flake 

 in a piece of buckskin so as not to cut their hands on the fresh, sharp edges 

 of the obsidian flake. 



In the National Park Prof. Hayden's parties found a gorge in the mountains 

 which is almost entirely formed of volcanic glass; they have aptly named it Ob- 

 sidian Canon. Here, evidently, the material has been used from time immemorial 

 for flaking and conversion into implements. The most common form I have 

 found was leaf form, some of them as much as five or six inches long and well 

 proportioned. Some arrow-heads of obsidian, unfortunately lost in the moun- 

 tains, are beautifully and regularly worked, and one especially was as if made 

 only a few days before, as it retained an edge and a point as keen as a razor. 



The antiquities I have noticed and examined on Madison Fork, extend 

 along the river for three or four miles. These consist of large rings of stones, 

 generally rounded and water-worn. Some of them surround low mounds now 

 scarcely one and one half feet high, as if an old wall around the mound. These 

 were mostly noticed about twenty miles southeast of Virginia City. Going south 

 from them about one and one half or two miles, and in the open bottom lands on 

 west side of the Madison Fork, we found a singular series of remains, the use of 

 which it is difficult to conjecture. These remains generally follow the edge of a 

 sHght step Or terrace, of which Madison Valley off"ers numerous examples that 

 extend for miles on each side as regularly as if artificially constructed. The re- 

 mains are small piles of stones set at regular distances, sometimes connected by a 



