The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studiesWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
America -- Antiquities; Atlantis (Legendary place); Ethnology -- America; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
The occurrence of well-stored caches in some of the ancient mounds of
the Ohio valley, as well as their repeated discovery in other
localities, accords with the idea of systematised industrial labour, and
the storing away of the needful supplies for agricultural and domestic
operations, and for war. Messrs. Squier and Davis, in their _Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, describe one of the mounds opened
by them within the great earthwork on the North Fork of Point Creek, in
which, according to their estimate, about four thousand hornstone disks
were disposed in regular order, in successive rows overlapping each
other. In 1864, I had an opportunity of examining some specimens
retained in the possession of Dr. Davis. They were mostly disks
measuring about six inches long and four wide, more or less oval, or
broad spear-shaped, and fashioned out of a fine gray flint with
considerable uniformity of character. Mr. Squier assumed that the
deposit was a religious offering; but subsequent disclosures of a like
character confirm the probability that it was a hoard of material stored
for the tool-maker.[31]
In other, though rarer cases, the cache has been found containing
finished implements. In digging a cellar at Trenton, New Jersey, a
deposit of one hundred and twenty finished stone axes was brought to
light, at a depth of about three feet below the surface. Another
discovery of a like character was made when digging for the construction
of a receiving vault of the Riverview Cemetery, near Taunton; and
similar deposits are recorded as repeatedly occurring in the same
state.[32] In two instances all the specimens were grooved axes. In
another, fifty porphyry celts were found deposited in systematic order.
Mr. Charles Rau has given the subject special attention, and in a paper
entitled “Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America,” he furnishes
evidence of addiction to certain manufactures, such as arrow heads, hoes
and other digging tools, spear heads, chisels, etc., by skilled native
craftsmen.[33] Deposits closely corresponding to the one reported by Mr.
Squier as the sole contents of one of the mounds, in “Clark’s Work,”
Ohio, have been subsequently discovered in Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Kentucky. One of the Illinois deposits contained about fifteen hundred
leaf-shaped or rounded disks of flint arranged in five horizontal
layers. Another, said to have contained three thousand five hundred
specimens, was discovered at Fredericksburg, in the same state. A
smaller, but more interesting hoard was accidentally brought to light in
1868, when some labourers in opening up a new street, at East St. Louis,
in the same State of Illinois, came upon a collection of large flint
tools all of the hoe and shovel type. There were about fifty of the
former and twenty of the latter, made of a yellowish-brown flint, and
betraying no traces of their having been used. Near by them lay several
large unworked blocks of flint and greenstone, and many chippings and
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