1876.] Traces of an American Autochthon. 329 
are simply approximations to this (as though they aimed at this 
but got the stem twisted in growing), such as 
T= Hy Sy 
La ne Bey 
{=3 Hisi 
TRACES OF AN AMERICAN AUTOCHTHON. 
BY DR. C. C. ABBOTT. 
HEN in our rambles over the fields, in search of relics, we 
chance to find lying side by side some rough, rude imple- 
ment and a delicate, artistically-wrought arrow-point, we are apt 
to merely glance at the former, and perhaps smile at so poor an 
effort at flint-chipping, while admiring the beauty of finish and 
excellence of workmanship displayed by the latter. But the 
unshapely implement has a history that, if not as eloquent as the 
legends of the red man, is far older, and calls up a shadowy vis- 
ion of a still more distant time, when another people dwelt in 
this goodly land, and fashioned for its use these rude stone weap- 
ons that now alone are left to tell its story, and recall the time 
when this “great continent was occupied by a wide-spread 
though sparse population.” 
During the summer of 1872, having heard of the occurrence 
of Indian relics in a gravel bank then being removed, I carefully 
examined the face of the bluff, and succeeded in finding a single 
stone implement, and subsequently two others. These three 
Specimens were described and figured soon after, and I then ex- 
Pressed the opinion that, “ had but a single specimen been found, 
we might reasonably, perhaps, have applied to it the doctrine of 
chances, and maintained that it was merely a freak of nature ; 
but the occurrence of three specimens so near each other effect- 
ually disposes of the justice of such an opinion, and we must 
admit the antiquity of American man to be greater than the 
advent of the so-called Indian.” =e 
I have lately succeeded in finding a few specimens of relics, in 
Tata of river drift, similar to those figured in the NATURALIST, 
but higher up in the series; thus apparently connecting them 
with the rude forms found near and occasionally on the surface, 
which I formerly believed to be the forerunners of the later 
1 The American Naturalist, vii. 204. 
