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MAKING STONEJVEAPONS . 1 
National Museum Has Group Show¬ 
ing Indian Methods 300 Years Ago. 1 
WASHINGTON, March 10,-Many new 
and attractive ethnological exhibits have 
been recently opened for inspection by the 
public in the new National Museum Build¬ 
ing at Washington. One. known as the 
Quarry Group, represents a scene in the 
present District of Columbia before the 
coming of the white man. It shows a 
group of six Indians mining or quarrying 
rocks for utensils, weapons, &c., and 
shaping them for future use. This group 
is intended to illustrate the work carried 
on in the great quarries on Piney Branch 
not long before the arrival of the Eng¬ 
lish, some 300 yeai's ago, near the point 
where Eighteenth Street would cross that 
stream. 
The man at the left is represented as 
employing a heavy wooden pike in prying 
up the lapger boulders, while the seconu 
breaks them up preparatory to selecting 
fragments of suitable size and shape for 
implement making. 
The third man roughs out the forms of 
the implements by means of quick, sharp 
blows with a boulder hammer, using either 
the selected fragments or the smaller 
boulders for the purpose. 
T'he fourth workman trims the edges 
and shapes up the thin blades with an 
implement of bone or antler set in a 
wooden shaft. The flaking is accomplished 
by setting the point of this implement 
against the edge of the roughed-out blade 
and pressing it downward with a quick, 
strong movement, reinforced by the 
weight of the body. Flakes are thus re¬ 
moved from the under side, and the fold¬ 
ed buckskin pad serves to prevent break¬ 
age of the blade under treatment. 
John Smith of the Jamestown Colony, 
about 1608, says, speaking of a Powhatan 
hunter, that “ his arrowhead lie quickly 
maketh with a little bone which he ever 
weareth at his brasert (belt).” 
The shaping processes here illustrated 
were formerly in general use among the 
•tribes. The women doubtless aided in the 
work of transportation and in preparing 
food for the quarrymen. The costumes 
shown are modeled after the garments of 
the Virginia Indians at the period of dis¬ 
covery, as illustrated in the drawings of 
John White, artist of the Roanoke Colony. 
That the quarries oK the region were 
worked by the Powhatans and adjacent 
tribes is amply proved' by the discovery 
on their deserted village sites and in their 
shell heaps throughout the Potomac- 
Chesapeake region of countless numbers 
of implements identical with those pro¬ 
duced in the local quarries. 
This group was desig ned 
Holmes, Head Curator of; Anthropology.; 
then-frgtrrS'S'"Were modeled by U. S. J. 
Dunbar, sculptor, and the whole was in¬ 
stalled by H. W. Hendley, ethnological 
preparator, in 1911. 
TREASURES FROM THE FAIR. 
Plaster Casts and Totem Poles Received 
at the National Museum. 
For the past several days the National 
Museum aud Smithsonian Institution have 
been receiving huge boxes, barrels, and 
cases containing the material exhibited 
at the exposition at St. Louis, together 
with a large number of castings and re¬ 
productions of some of the famous mate¬ 
rial of the Berlin, Paris, and British 
museums, which had been sent to St. 
Louis. 
Through the enterprise of Prof. W. H. 
Holmes, chief of the Bureau of Ethnol¬ 
ogy, the National Museum secured some 
exceedingly valuable anthropological 
material sent to the exposition from varl- , 
pus parts of the globe, notably from i 
Alaska. The greatest prize thus secured 
were two enormous, carved totem poles, 
thirty-five and forty feet in height re- | 
spectively. These two poles, carved from 
Alaskan cedar, were once the chief pride 
of an Alaskan village, and were one of 
the sights of the exposition. They arriv¬ 
ed early last week loaded on a flat car, 
and were set up in the west hall of the 
museum, among the Alaskan and Eskimo 
collections. They had to be introduced 
through one of the windows, and were 
found to be too high, by several feet, to j 
stand upright in the building. A cross 
cut saw was accordingly produced, and 
for t time the place looked like a house- 
raising and . log-rolling, the members of 
the corps of laborers taking turns at 
sawing off the uncarved butts of the two 
poles in order that they might stand 
upright. Inasmuch as the poles are about 
three and one-half feet thick at the base, 
this proved to be no easy task. 
The casts which Prof. Holmes obtained 
at St. Louis of masterpieces from some 
of the great European museums consist 
of Greek statuary, Assyrian and Baby¬ 
lonian bas reliefs, and curious stone idols 
obtained many years ago in Mexico and 
Central and South America by famous 
German explorers. 
