250 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



of New York. The Epoch of the mammoth, by James C. South- 

 all, shows a horn harpoon from Switzerland precisely like some from 

 Onondaga county. 



25 years ago it was a notable fact that most of the bone.and horn 

 implements in the Smithsonian institution were from the Pacific 

 coast, and perhaps the majority are still. Few were known from 

 New York and New England, where their historic use is well attested. 

 Little had been done in systematic excavation, and most articles at 

 hand were surface finds of stone. A change has taken place ; and 

 the last 10 years have added wonderfully to our knowledge of 

 implements of bone and horn. Comparatively little has been done 

 in the Algonquin fields of the eastern counties of New York, but 

 many an Iroquois site has yielded large quantities of these. Usu- 

 ally they were too low in the ground to be reached by the plow, 

 lying in the refuse heaps or the deep ash pits of early villages, but 

 coming forth as bright and unimpaired as when lost centuries ago. 

 AVhat they were will appear as we proceed. 



When Yerazzano visited Long Island in 1524, as many sup- 

 pose, he found the Indians using fish bones for arrowheads, but 

 farther west they had those of stone. In 1620 arrows were used 

 against the whites at Nantasket creek, Mass., tipped with brass, 

 eagle claws and horn. In the first volume of the Massachusetts 

 historical society's collections is an account of New England's 

 plantations, written in 1629 by Rev. Mr Higgeson. He said : 

 ' For their weapons they have bowes and arrowes, some of them, 

 headed with bone, and some with brasse." Capt. John Smith said of 

 the Yirginia Indians : " Their hookes are either a bone, grated as 

 they noch their arrows, in the forme of a crooked pinne or fish-hooke, 

 or of the splinter of a bone tyed to the clif t of a little sticke, and with 

 the end of the line they tie on the bait." Loskiel mentions hoes 

 made of the shoulder blade of the deer, and other quotations might 

 be given. 



In a letter to the writer in 1880, Prof. George H. Perkins of 

 Burlington university, Yt., said : " We have no implements of bone 

 in Yermont, but from the other side of the lake are some split 

 bones that may have been used as awls, and one very fine barbed 

 spear point." This was a harpoon, barbed on both sides. At a 



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