1876.] Antiquity of the Indians of North America. 67 
people using and making them. I will therefore first refer to 
them, in endeavoring to point out the indications of the antiquity 
of the Indian. 
On examining a complete series of arrow-heads from one locality, 
we find that whatever mineral was available was utilized in their 
manufacture, and on the sites of arrow-makers’ workshops not 
only is there a vast accumulation of chips of the more popular 
minerals for arrow-heads, but quantities of water-worn pebbles 
from the river and brook beds, which have been split in two, or 
otherwise tested, to see if by the first fracture they gave promise 
of being available. Again, certain minerals seemed specially 
adapted for a given pattern of arrow-points, and were used almost 
exclusively for it. We have here certainly an unquestionable 
indication that the art of arrow-making had been progressive, 
whether the progress was made while the Indians were in this 
country, or acquired previously. In either case, the progress had 
been made; and when we find rude arrow-heads in consider- 
able numbers, of plain patterns, scattered singly about fields and 
forests, it is quite conclusive that these are the forerunners of the 
former, — the elaborate jasper specimens, — and that the progress 
in the art of arrow-making was acquired during the Indian’s occu- 
pancy of this territory. As this was very slow, the date of his 
arrival reaches back into strictly prehistoric times. 
Having seen that different minerals were used by the Indians 
in arrow-making, let us consider in detail what evidence there 
is of great improvement in the production of these implements. 
The poor specimens of themselves do not simply indicate, as might 
be claimed, that they are the work of beginners in the flint-chip- 
Ping art, for they are found in such localities and under such con- 
ditions far too often for one not to see that they are the weapons 
of an earlier time than are the more elaborately wrought forms 
found hear them. In a country overgrown with forests, where 
there is annually a vast deposit of dead leaves, there necessarily 
isa steady increase in the depth of the soil by the deposition of 
a thin layer of vegetable mold. This increase I believe to be 
about one one hundred and twenty-eighth (,},) of an inch per 
annum, in beech, oak, and chestnut woods. If on examination of 
the undisturbed soil of such forest tracts we find jasper and 
quartz arrow-heads at a depth of ten inches which are large, not 
Xeutely pointed or symmetrical, and of the simplest patterns, as 
the leaf-shaped or triangular ; and smaller, symmetrical, stemmed, 
barbed, acutely pointed specimens two or three inches deep, as a 
