1876.] Primitive Man. 281 
near by. This shell-heap contains charcoal and pieces of worked 
bone and stone. It had been previously visited by the late H. 
D. Thoreau, who regarded it as an ancient Indian dwelling-place, 
though he published no account of it. Quite recently Professor 
Hartt, of Cornell University, has explored some of the interior 
fresh-water shell-mounds of Brazil, which are very extensive, 
selections from which are preserved in the Peabody Museum at 
Cambridge. 
The study of the works of man from the oldest shell-heaps, 
the only records left of the progress their builders had made, 
tends to show that he was as far advanced at least as are the 
miserable creatures the traveler meets with now in the Straits 
of Magellan, or as are the Dyacks of Borneo, the Australians, or 
` the Andaman Islanders. In other words, we have the life of 
man manifested now in a condition as primitive and no more ad- 
vaneed towards civilization than in the earliest prehistoric periods 
which have thus far been studied. 
The only records we have of the earliest inhabitants of the St. 
John’s River are the shell-mounds and the comparatively few im- 
plements they contain. J udging from these of the progress the 
natives had made, it is clear that they too had passed out of the 
primitive stage, had become hunters, had made some progress in 
the useful arts ; and, however rude their implements, they were 
such as could only have been the result of long-continued efforts. 
They have left no signs of having learned the art of agriculture, 
but their tools, if they had any, may have been of a perishable 
nature. In the oldest mounds no pottery has been discovered, the 
builders of them no doubt having been ignorant of it. Though 
implements of wrought shell, bone, and stone are met with, they 
are not numerous, and those of stone from the interior of the 
mounds are quite rare. 
The bones of animals obtained by hunting on land are in com- 
paratively small numbers, so that, far as indications go, the older 
natives subsisted chiefly on fish and shell-fish. This is strikingly 
the case at the mound on Huntoon Creek, Osceola Mound, the 
mound next above Blue Spring, and at Horse Landing. Whether 
the inhabitants who built and dwelt upon the older shell-heaps, 
°F even upon the later ones, were the same people the first ex- 
Plorers found occupying the shores of the St. John’s is uncertain. 
e Indians who lived in Florida later had no traditions with 
regard to those who preceded them in remote times, nor is it to 
be expected that they should have, for they were not the descend- 
