The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
Objects of copper consist chiefly of thin sheets of native copper rolled
in such a way as to form tubular beads. Sometimes larger pieces of rude
sheets of copper have been found. This copper must have been brought
from some locality near Lake Superior, where copper-mining was carried
on in prehistoric times.
Pottery or earthenware objects. Numerous fragments of pottery bowls,
dishes, cups, and other vessels occur in some localities, usually in
fields where the sod has been ploughed for the first time, and where the
location is convenient to a stream or lake. Occasionally pottery sherds
have been found at greater depths, even to two or three feet. In such
cases they were evidently covered by olay and sands deposited from the
overflow of the waters in some former period of time, no doubt many
centuries ago. In some of the most ancient burial-mounds a few perfect
vessels of pottery have been discovered. These are small urns with
flaring rims and more or less decoration, the principal part of which
consists in most instances of a continuous, deep groove running spirally
around the entire body of the vessel.
Only one example of a pipe made of pottery has yet been reported from
this region. This is a large pipe, having bowl and stem in one piece,
found by the writer in a burial-mound in 1908. Both the stem and bowl
are decorated with grooves.
The urns here referred to and the straight tubular stone pipes
previously mentioned are precisely similar to most of those found by the
writer in numerous mounds in Dakota some years ago. The shell articles,
pendants, rings, and beads also afford strong evidence in support of the
view that they who reared most, if not all, of the mounds of Manitoba
and North Dakota were one and the same people.
THE STONE AGE IN UTAH
The remains of prehistoric and ancient people hitherto discovered in
Utah consist principally of the ruins of various houses in the cliffs
and valleys, and the contents thereof. Besides these there are ancient
irrigation ditches of some size and importance in the southern part of
Utah. There are also petroglyphs or rock carvings of various kinds upon
the vertical faces of many of the rock cliffs; and what appear to be
tracks or prints of the human foot in volcanic rock have been found in
one or two places.
While the houses whose ruins occur in the broad valleys of Utah vary in
size and in the number of rooms, and also in the structure of their
floors and the interior finish of their walls, they may all be regarded
as belonging to the same class of mud or adobe structures. The
cliff-houses, however, differ in so far as some are stone buildings,
others mostly adobe, and others small caves just large enough for
occupation as dwellings or for use as storage-bins.
The more important artifacts obtained from the ruins of Utah are here
enumerated and described:—
_Objects made of Wood_
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