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 flints and potsherds, Canon Green well remarks, “occur at times in
very large quantities, the flints generally in the shape of mere
chippings and waste pieces, but often as manufactured articles, such as
arrow points, knives, saws, drills and scrapers, etc.” He further notes
that they are found distributed throughout the sepulchral mound, “in
some instances in such quantities as to suggest the idea that the
persons who were engaged in throwing up the barrow, scattered them from
time to time during the process.” Assuredly whatever motive actuated
those who contributed such objects while the sepulchral mound was in
progress of erection, they were not designed as any slight to the manes
of the dead. In districts remote from those where the flint abounds,
flakes and chips of the prized material must have been in constant
demand to replenish the sheaf of arrows, and replace the lost or broken
lance, knife, and scraper. The trader would barter the raw material for
furs and other equivalents, or the industrious miner would carry off an
adequate supply for his own future use. Such small objects, possessing a
universally appreciable value, would be as available for current change
as the African cowrie, the Ioqua shells of the Pacific coast, or the
wampum-beads of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. If this
assumption be correct, the scattering of flint flakes, while the mound
was being piled over the grave, was a form of largess not less
significant than any later tribute of reverence to the dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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