30 
The more usual form of hoe found throughout the agricul- 
tural regions of America is an oval or ovate flat chipped flint, 
not very dissimilar from many of those of the so-called 
Amiens type, but usually somewhat thinner, and often ol very 
large size. Foster, in his Prehistoric Races of America, 
describes several such implements from Illinois, borne oi 
them are as much as thirteen inches in length, and may have 
been used as spades rather than as hoes. It is characteristic 
of these implements that they are found in large numbers 
too-ether. Thus Abbott describes a cache of such tools, called 
by him hatchets, found in New Jersey, and containing one 
hundred and fifty. In the collection of the Brooklyn His- 
torical Society is one of these implements, stated to be mom 
a similar deposit. But, as might be expected, the greatest 
repositories of these tools are among the remains of the semi- 
civilized “Mound-builders” of the Ohio and Mississippi 
valleys, one of the oldest peoples of the American continent. 
Squier describes a deposit in Ohio in which as many as six 
hundred of these tools were found, while a vast number 
besides must have existed in it. These were under a mound 
supposed to have been of sacrificial character, and their dis- 
coverer seems at a loss to conjecture then use. 
The same writer informs us that the “ Flint ridge/ which 
is one of the quarries from which the mound-builders obtained 
the material of these and other implements, “ extends for 
many miles, and countless pits are to be observed throughout 
its entire length from which the stone was taken. These 
excavations are often ten or fourteen feet deep, and occupy 
acres in extent.” Similar repositories of flints where very 
extensive manufactures have been carried on, in the Uintah 
hills in Wyoming, are described in one of Hayden s reports 
on the Western territories. 
The occurrence of these roughly-shaped hoes in large de- 
posits may be explained in several ways. Mr. Jones has 
pointed out to me a statement of Carver, that the makers. of 
flint implements were in the habit of hiding away quantities 
of them until required for use, or for purposes of trade. 
Deposits of this kind would, however, consist of various kinds 
of weapons and implements, not usually of one kind alone. 
Ao-ain, in the case described by Squier, the accumulation may 
lnwe been a great act of sacrifice. It was the practice of the 
mound-builders to offer public sacrifices, and the occasion (or 
some rule of their worship) caused that in some instances 
tobacco-pipes were offered, in others weapons, in others orna- 
ments; and there seem to have been some of these rites in 
which ^ agricultural tools were propor offerings, perhaps to 
