﻿FIELD AND FOREST. 



25 



Shell Heaps in Maryland. 



It was many years ago and long before the first half of the present 

 century had expired that I first saw one of these Indian accumulations 

 of their housekeeping refuse. At that time the attention of scientists 

 had not been especially directed to them as ethnological studies. 

 They had been regarded by the iarmer as convenient piles of material 

 to be used as fertilizers, and in one of the (Geological reports of Mary- 

 land, published about that time, Dr. Ducatel gave the arguments, 

 pro and con, with a view of settling the question as to whether the heaps 

 were old oyster shell banks, left high and dry on the land by a subsi- 

 dence of the waters of Chesapeake Bay, or refuse shells thrown into a 

 common heap by an encampment of Indians who frequented a particular 

 place during the oyster season. The invariable separation of the two 

 valves, the occurrence of broken pottery of cooking vessels, the bones 

 offish and quadrupeds used for food, with implements of stone of re- 

 cognized aboriginal manufacture, taken .in connection with the loca- 

 tion of these accumulations, in a quiet creek convenient to the camp 

 of the savage, would seem to decide them to be of ethnological interest 

 entirely. 



As the shores of the Chesapeake and the Potomac once" swarmed 

 with a wild population, who derived their subsistence mostly from the 

 free productions of nature, it is easy to comprehend how these heaps 

 are so numerous, as to be found on the bay, rivers and creeks wherever 

 you may chance to go ashore. 



During a summer vacation, being on a visit to an Eastern Shore 

 County of Maryland, near one of the many small streams between 

 Sassafras and Chester Rivers, and for the particular occasion, attending 

 a reunion common among the neighbors after harvest, known as a 

 fishing frolic, it was proposed, after suitable attention had been given 

 to the business of the day, to pay a visit to one of these heaps, lying a 

 little lower down the creek where the owner of the land was engaged 

 in burning the shells into lime to be spread on his farm. Having ar- 

 rived at the spot, a long low mound of shells and rubbish overgrown 

 with bushes and weeds, came into view. A walnut tree of about fifteen 

 inches in diameter, was growing out of the top of the ridge, as an evi- 

 dence of the antiquity of the deposit. A cross section of it showed a 

 base of twelve or fifteen feet with a vertical height of five or six. It 



