After a thorough investigation I concluded that the ancient people had quarried this flint, worked it down to convenient disc form for distribution, and taking it in canoes down the Little River to the Cumberland, down the Cumberland to the Ohio, up the Ohio to the Scioto, and thence to North Fork of Paint Creek, landed it one half mile from the Hopewell village. The distance by water would be seven or eight hundred miles, as near as I can judge. If the material was not brought in this manner, it must have been obtained by trade, and one can scarcely conceive of over eight thousand discs weighing from one fourth to two thirds of a pound each, being carried overland on the backs of Indians from northwest Tennessee to central Ohio. In spite of the great quantity of material stored in the Hopewell mound referred to, yet most of the chipped objects on the village-sites of the Hopewell group and in the mounds were made of Flint Ridge material, instead of the nodular flint of the cache. My theory is that the deposit was made in the last years of the occupancy of the Hopewell group, and for that reason the Indians did not make general use of it. [Illustration: FIG. 203. (S. 1–1.) Peculiar reamer with very broad base. The stem is wanting, the shoulders are squared. This form is rare. E. H. Collins’s collection, Cherokee, Iowa. ] [Illustration: FIG. 204. (S. 1–1.), one of those specimens difficult of classification, is from Mr. Gibson’s collection, Schenectady. The turned point is sometimes found in knives, seldom in drills. Quite likely this specimen should appear in the knife-class; yet the point (rare in that it is curved) is not unlike the reamers. ] Deposits, or caches, contained not only discs but elaborate blades and oval forms. The latter are the most common. The delicate leaf-shaped blades found in many of the caches could have been used as knives without further workmanship, or notched and barbed and employed as spear- and lance-heads. More slender spears were produced by chipping from the sides of the leaf-shaped implements and barbing. These caches represented the stock in trade of the aboriginal merchant rather than the possessions of a warrior or priest. If a warrior or chief, or any other man, buried his possessions, we should find in that cache objects not entirely of one class. The number of these caches, their widespread extent, and the fact that all of them tell the same story, are to my mind clear evidence that when the greatest villages of ancient times from Pittsburg to Mandan, from Lake Itasca to New Orleans, and from Bangor to Los Angeles, were inhabited, there were numerous aboriginal traders and artisans who traveled from point to point disposing of their wares.