The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2

STEM CONTRACTING FROM BASE

Although there are fine examples of flint-workers’ art in the class, “Stems expanding from base,” yet as a rule it includes more simple forms than stems contracting from base. This is true of most types. Fig. 90 shows simple forms in Class C, p. 23. Fig. 107, from Mr. Braun’s collection, East St. Louis, stands for the long, slender spear-heads occasionally found in the South and the Mississippi Valley region, evincing high art in stone-chipping. The convex stem is shown in Fig. 99. Fig. 119 is from Dr. Jack Shipley of Texas. These present typical Texas specimens with both contracting and expanding stems.

Fig. 121, Wisconsin types, Fig. 110, Willamette Valley, Oregon, and Fig. 112 should be compared by readers. These plates will emphasize the difference in form. Some of these are classified under “Stems contracting from base,” others belong in the division, “Stems expanding from base.” Yet even in the same class there are to be observed certain differences, for the stem is not always the essential feature.

Fig. 121 represents some of the best specimens from Wisconsin sites. Fig. 126 is from Mr. Reeder’s collection, Michigan, and represents the best type in spear-heads of all kinds from Tennessee and Kentucky and Ohio. The tops of many of these are convex and have been worn smooth either because of the method of fastening, or on account of some particular purpose. This is noticed in a great many of the finer specimens, and leads me to believe it is not hard usage that brings about such a condition, but that specimens were in position for a great length of time, and this polished or smoothed surface is brought about through such means.

Fig. 122, from Dr. Barnard’s collection, Seneca, Missouri, illustrates the best of the small Missouri points. Dr. Barnard’s collection is from the outskirts of the Ozarks, where the art is superior to the cave art of the Ozarks proper. The points found throughout the buffalo country do not vary greatly, although it is possible to distinguish such points as these from those of Texas. Fig. 105 represents Pennsylvania specimens from Mr. Deisher’s collection, and Fig. 132, more of the interesting Mississippi Valley spear-heads from Mr. Reeder’s exhibit. Figs. 125 and 147, Mr. L. Gibson’s collection, Schenectady, New York, give two abnormal points, such as are occasionally found. I do not think that such were arrow- or spear-heads, but must have been knives. It would be impossible to shoot them with much accuracy. They are always interesting, and I shall have more to say regarding them later. Figs. 116 and 117 present two plates from the collection of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. These were found generally throughout the Ohio Valley. Careful study of them will acquaint readers with several points. First, they are of the best workmanship. Second, they are almost entirely of flint ridge or Tennessee nodular flint. Third, a large proportion are rotary. Fourth, the barbs are unusually chipped and fine. Fifth, the bases are straight, concave, and convex. Sixth, what is more important than either stems or bases, the striking feature in these is the barbing and notching. The tangs and shoulders are the prominent points in these three plates—not the stems—which are of secondary consideration. For example, in Fig. 116 the shoulders and tangs are everything, and this will be found to be true of many flint implements. Consider Figs. 97, 110, and 133 from the Columbia River Valley. In some of these the stem is of importance, in others the stem is secondary to the barbing. Fig. 114 presents typical Pennsylvania specimens from Mr. Deisher’s collection. The central one has expanded shoulders and represents a type more common in Pennsylvania than elsewhere. Fig. 115 is a plate of spear- and arrow-points from George Charters’s collection, Greene County, Ohio. I wish to call attention to those seven specimens on this plate which are marked “S,” and to refer to them in considerable detail.

Little attention has been paid by archæologists to ascertain an important feature of prehistoric times. I refer to the presence in most of the tribes of skilled workmen whose specialty seems to have been the manufacture of certain kinds of implements. That some men were more skillful in the making of axes or pipes, and handled bone chipping-tools with more dexterity than others, goes without saying. If one were asked to state what proportion of men were skillful in the art of stone-working, no one could give a definite answer; but the searcher finds in limited areas a particular style of flint-chipping, or a local form of axe or pipe. These appear to have been made in the same manner, perhaps with tools of the same pattern. The guiding hand of the master workman is seen. Each one is stamped with individuality, therefore one may conclude that either a certain person made these objects, or perhaps the men of a given family made them.

Supposing that a young man who showed proficiency in flint-chipping should at the age of twenty become so skillful that his works were in demand. It would follow that if he were given the ordinary span of life his period of proficiency would extend for forty years. If he retained his health and faculties, his activity might reach fifty years. It is also quite likely that other men, perhaps not so competent as himself, assisted him in his work and blocked out the forms or reduced them to convenient size for him to finish. Such a labor division as Catlin and Sellars affirm existed, enabled the skillful worker in flint to produce a larger number of implements than if he attempted to work his own material from the initial stage to the completed form. His people residing in the same village would avail themselves of his wares, giving him in return food, or implements, or clothing. His surplus stock in all likelihood was sent to a distance to be exchanged with other tribes.

Such a man may have selected flint of a certain color, so that the product of his labor might be instantly recognized.

In order to place the evidence I have collected along these lines before readers, I would cite the finding of twenty-two axes in one room of a ruined pueblo, five miles south of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1897. These are of the variety of stone and the same workmanship. Six particular disc-pipes were found in graves at the mouth of the Wabash by Clifford Anderson, in 1898, when exploring for the founder of the Archæology Department of Phillips Academy. I would mention the effigy pipes found by Squier and Davis at Mound City, a cache of forty leaf-shaped implements, slightly different from the ordinary leaf-shaped knife of similar material and the same workmanship, found in 1896 in a mound near Coshocton, Ohio, the Hopewell discs, and the Hopewell sheet copper.

My boyhood days were spent in Greene County, Ohio, and from 1876 to 1886, and during short intervals afterwards, I diligently searched the fields and village-sites of the Little Miami River, Cæsar’s Creek, Massey’s Creek, Oldtown Run, and Shawnee Creek. The observations made by a boy are of no scientific value, save in this respect—that these hundreds of excursions, in which my mind was concentrated on flint implements and flint workings exclusively, gave me a knowledge of a distribution of flint implements in Greene County, Ohio, which has been of value to me in after years. And it is fortunate that a gentleman living in my home town, Mr. George Charters, has since collected from farmers and boys Greene County specimens to the number of three or four thousand. As his collection contains no objects of consequence outside of Greene County, one may obtain from that exhibit the proof of my contention that in Greene County, within a radius of ten miles of Xenia, Ohio, in any direction, there were, perhaps, three or four men who were exceedingly skillful in the manufacture of large spear-heads or lance-points of Flint Ridge material. These are somewhat different from other spear-heads and may be easily recognized. They are of white chalcedony, and are mottled and veined with pink or red or grey. They are usually made of the most beautiful stone to be found in the Flint Ridge quarries. They are not only oval, but if turned on edge one will observe that they are exceedingly symmetrical, being a fourth to as much as one third inch in thickness in the centre and yet tapering to an edge almost as thin as a knife-blade entirely around. The notches are evenly and deeply cut, the shoulders and tangs in sharp relief. No large flakes were detached from these implements during the final stages of manufacture; on the contrary, small minute scales or flakes were thrown off, and the finished specimen is as delicately worked as the average obsidian point from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Both Catlin and Sellars have said that the knowledge of cleavage in stone is an acquired art. We have in modern times the lapidary who works semi-precious as well as precious stones. He must understand the texture of every stone he works. So with the lapidary who worked carnelian, agate, and chalcedony—which are semi-precious stones.

No ordinary aboriginal workman made these specimens. They were the work of an artist who was a lapidary. He was an expert in selecting his material and he was an expert in bringing it to completion. In color and shape these specimens reminded me as a boy of a certain sun-fish in the streams in that part of Ohio, and we used to call them “sun-fish spears” to distinguish them from the others.

There are examples of the work of these artisans in near-by sections of Ohio, but they are most common in Ross, Warren, Clinton, and Greene counties. I never heard of them in Indiana or Kentucky. From the number of them found I venture the opinion that the art was handed down through several generations, for I do not believe that two or three men could have made them all. Furthermore, there are other specimens of this same peculiar pattern to be found in southern Ohio. These, while creditably done, are not the work of an artist. The famous workmen may have had imitators, or they may have attempted to train others in order that the art might be perpetuated. Be that as it may, the other implements bear the same relationship to these beautiful products as does a copy made by an amateur of a famous painting to the work of the great artist himself. Readers are requested to study carefully the style, form, and chipping of these “S”-marked specimens shown in Fig. 115.

And there are many places in the United States where types that stand for the lifework of a family or of an individual, or let us say of the grandfather, and then the father, and following him the son, may be found. All of this is not opinion merely. To the man who states that all projectile points are alike,—and, surprising as that statement is, I have heard a number make it who should know better,—the spears referred to might seem identical with the yellow chert spears of Illinois. But if one is seriously interested in archæology let him examine an exhibit from a given locality, and I think that he will soon come to the belief that in that locality there lived one or more persons whose specialty was the manufacture of a certain type of implement made in a way that was clearly individual; and the man, or men, who made them were artists beyond question.

Figs. 110 to 134 show groups from various localities in the United States including specimens under various classifications previously described. Attention is called to the central specimen in the upper row of Fig. 110. It is a long, thin, leaf-like blade, slightly notched at one end. Fig. 95 presents several serrated Oregon points; and Fig. 138 shows nine objects from the Mandan village-sites, North Dakota. The Mandan points are nearly all triangular in form with square bases. That is, before being notched or barbed they were stemmed square, or at one end angular, and seldom with convex sides. Then the notches were cut, giving the appearance of a war-point with notches.

A few Mandan objects have concave bases, prominent shoulders, or barbs, but the most of them were of the form shown in the lower specimen in Fig. 138.