225 
the mound-building tribes in the Ohio valley, for there are graves and 
mounds in Ontario that contain gorgets of shell and stone, copper 
axes, awls, and beads similar to specimens that have been unearthed 
in Ohio, Indiana, and other parts of the United States. Only a few 
of these remains have been excavated by trained investigators, so that 
wliile we are certain that tliey belong to the prehistoric period, we 
cannot actually prove that tliey precerle the Troquoian occupation of 
the province.^ Several of the graves, we may note in passing, con- 
tained considerable fiuantities of red hematite, like the grave at Red 
liaiik in New Brunswick. But refl was a favourite colour with the 
Indians in many parts of North America, so that we should not 
attach too great significance to this feature. 
The Pi-airie Provinces and the Mackenzie basin have jiroved 
barren fields for the archaeologist, apparently because their inhabitants 
liave always been migratory peoples who never stayed long enough 
in one place to leave extensive remains. In the southern ]iarts of 
the Prairie Provinces are burial mounrls similar to those of Dakota 
and other states to the southwarfl. They contain, besides a few 
human bones, fragments of crude pottery, shell beads, and other 
stray objects already recorded by early explorers of the ]dains, so 
that they add very little to our knowledge. Stone cairns and circles 
of stones that held down the edges of tents are numerous from the 
International Boundary to the Arctic ocean, but many of them are 
quite recent, often no older than the present century. Occasionally 
we find tent-stones so covered with lichens or buried in the turf that 
we feel sure they date from pre-European times, but digging reveals 
nothing except perhajrs a few flakes of chert or quartzite. The plough 
of the farmer often turns up a grooved stone hammer or a tubular 
stone jhpe which we recognize as characteristic of the plains' region, 
and here and there one stumbles on long rows of boulders that, 
mosaic-like, trace out some geometrical design or a human or animal 
figure. But nowhere have archa'ologists found evidence of other 
inhabitants than those of the present day, or traces of even their 
occupation earlier than a century or two before the arrival of the 
white man. 
Tlie village sites, graves, and camping i)laccs in the valleys of the 
Thompson and Eraser ihvers, and the innumerable shell-heaps or 
1 Wiiitenihern. W. J,: "ArtifiK'ts fiMnn Aiicif'iil Onn’os and Miiiinds in Ontario”; Trans. Roy. 
Soc., Canada, Third srivii's, :;xii, snc. 11, pji. 17-j-2('2 (Otlawa, 11)28). 
