16 
MATERIALS FOR MANUFACTURE 
For raw materials out of which to manufacture artifacts the people 
of this site depended on rocks, minerals, clay, and animal and vegetal 
materials. 
Rocks , Minerals , and Clay 
The rocks and minerals found here, both in a raw and manufactured 
state, comprise chert, chalcedony, quartz, quartz crystals, quartzite, mica, 
soapstone, graphite, iron pyrites, red ochre, hematite, iron ore, limestone, 
sandstone, slate, hornblende schist, micaceous schist, schistose slate, granite, 
gneiss, granite-gneiss, diabase, diorite, greenstone, basaltic rock, porphyry, 
claystone, and clay. 
Chert, both grey and black, was rarely used, although common at 
Algonkian sites in the Ottawa and St. Lawrence valleys. Only six arrow- 
points found by us, and five by Mr. White, four scraper blades, and the 
large object in Plate XVII, figure 12, are chipped from this material. 
Besides the manufactured artifacts there are seven chips, two of which 
show secondary chipping. The nearest source is on Rideau lake, where 
Dr. T. W. Beeman of Perth found a workshop and quarry in 1891 (Boyle, 
5:15). A very brittle chert, nearly black in colour, and resembling some 
of that found here, abounds in the limestones of the Ottawa valley. 1 
What seems to be a species of whitish chalcedony was chipped into a 
scraper blade. 
Besides a few broken, but otherwise unworked, pieces of quartz and 
a quartz pebble, there are fifteen quartz crystals, one of which shows a 
peculiar, concentric type of crystallization. They probably come from the 
local limestone, being found in drusy cavities in the dolomite of this forma- 
tion in many places. 2 
Two large pieces of mica are roughly quadrangular, and a small piece, 
which lay on the hollow side of a pottery fragment when found, is of an 
irregular shape. The nearest places where this material could have been 
obtained in such large pieces are in the townships of North and South 
Crosby, South Burgess, and South Elmsley, Leeds county, and in North 
Elmsley and North Burgess townships, Lanark county, from about 25 to 
40 miles west of Roebuck. 
White, pink, green, grey, browm, and black soapstone, some of it 
mottled, was used as material for a large number of beads and for two pipes. 
Besides these objects there are three worked pieces that have no definite 
form. The nearest source is in Leeds county, about 30 miles distant. 
There are seven pieces of graphite. If not brought hither in the drift, 
the nearest sources of this material are in Darling and North Burgess town- 
ships, Lanark county, and North and South Crosby townships, Leeds 
county, the first about 25 miles, and the last about 40 miles, away. 
No copper or artifacts made of it were found, although it is probable 
that, like the people of Hochelaga 3 and Stadacona, 4 the Roebuck people 
i See Geol. Surv., Canada, Ann. Rept. 1863, p. 628; also, Wintemberg, (4: 136). 
*Geol. Surv., Canada, Ann. Rept. 1863, p, 500. 
’S*? Cartier's narrative, p. 171. According to Lighthall (1: 201) copper axes have "been found in the debris of 
Hochelaga." 
‘The people of Stadacona, among other gifts, gave their chief Donnacona, before his enforced departure for 
France, “a large copper knife from the Saguenay" (Cartier, p. 233). 
