CHAPTER XI
SCRAPERS
TYPES WITH ONE OR MORE SCRAPING EDGES WITHOUT OR WITH NOTCH (INCLUDING CIRCULAR)
A good deal has been published regarding scrapers. They served pretty much the same purpose everywhere in the world. While this is true, yet there is a great difference in scrapers, and the simple statement that they are scrapers with or without notches does not suffice. There are ordinary flakes worked to a scraping edge, and scrapers with deep notches and long tangs; there are scrapers with barbs, and without barbs; there are broken arrow-heads worked into scrapers. I have subdivided the scrapers under the Committee’s general class as follows:—
- A.
- Flakes worked to a scraping edge (several in Fig. 192).
- B.
- Ordinary oval and circular scrapers. (See Fig. 184.)
- C.
- Spoon-shaped scrapers. (See bottom row, Fig. 190, and bottom row, Fig. 184.)
- D.
- Scraping edge extending entirely around (bottom row, Fig. 188).
- E.
- Notched or shouldered scraper. (See Figs. 187, 193.)
- F.
- Crescent scraper. (Two to the left in Fig. 187, one in Fig. 193.)
- G.
- Specialized scraper. (See Figs. 188, 190, 191, 193.)
Scrapers are commonplace tools, yet they played an important part in the life of ancient man. They illustrate his economy, for we know that he made over broken spear-heads and arrow-points into scrapers.
I have endeavored to show in these illustrations all types, from the circular disc with the scraping edge to the highly specialized forms. Of course, scrapers and knives merge the one into the other, and where the scraper ends, the knife begins.
Series can be arranged in any large collection beginning with the simple knife and working back to the scraper, or vice versa. In the Mandan village-site ash-heaps more than seven hundred scrapers were found by Mr. E. R. Steinbrueck; the large Mandan collection of five thousand specimens, which contains them, was presented to our Museum through the kindness of Professor E. H. Williams, Jr. A plate of these scrapers is shown in Fig. 190.
Fig. 184. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of classes “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D,” Phillips Academy collection, Andover, Massachusetts. These are from various portions of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.
Fig. 185. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of Class “E.” These are the more common Wisconsin-Minnesota forms. F. M. Caldwell’s collection, Venice, Illinois.
Fig. 186. (S. 1–1.) Scrapers, New Jersey types. Materials: jasper and quartz. Stephen Van Rensselaer’s collection, Newark, New Jersey.
Fig. 187. (S. 1–2.) Twenty scrapers, all with notches or shoulders, from various portions of the United States. Andover collection. Attention is called to the second one from the left in the lower row, which is sharply concave on one side.
Fig. 188. (S. 1–1.) Specialized scrapers from the Columbia River Valley. B. W. Arnold’s collection, Albany, New York.
Fig. 189. (S. 2–3.) In the top row a chipped flake and simple forms of scrapers. No. 20 is a highly specialized form. Dr. Jack Shipley’s collection, Pilot Point, Texas.
Fig. 190. (S. 2–3.) In the lower row, a spoon-shaped scraper to the left, and four ordinary scrapers; the next row from the bottom, two heavy flint flakes worked to a scraping edge. They are of the same form as the Pennsylvania scrapers shown in Fig. 191.
Fig. 191. (S. 1–1.) Two specialized scrapers from the collection of George A. Huber, East Greenville, Pennsylvania. These are of quartzite and are interesting specimens. The form is not as rare in Pennsylvania and Georgia as one would imagine. Similar forms are shown to the left in the middle row of Fig. 190.
In the past, among archæologists, there has been no little discussion with reference to scrapers. They were mounted in short handles of both bone and wood. Numbers of them have been found in the cliff-houses in the Southwest attached to their original handles. It is unfortunate that in the Mississippi Valley, east of the Great Plains, the climate is such that none of the larger bone tools have withstood decay. At Madisonville, the cemeteries and ash-pits have furnished us with some of the larger bone handles, but elsewhere, all have disappeared. Stone scrapers were inserted by the Plains tribes in bone handles, and under the chapter devoted to bone objects several of the handles will be illustrated. One of these was found near the head of the Missouri River about twenty years ago, and apparently had been lying on the surface for a considerable length of time. It is of old type, and I have taken it to represent how the scrapers in ancient times might have been mounted. There are some similar tools in the Smithsonian, American Museum of Natural History, Peabody Museum, and other institutions. Scrapers are few in New England compared to the Mississippi Valley and the North.
Fig. 192. (S. 2–3.) Andover collection.
In view of the small number of flint implements occurring on the Great Plains, which the Indians called the “buffalo country,” there are more scrapers of yellow chert, poor jasper, and white flint, in proportion to other parts of the country than elsewhere in the United States. By the buffalo country I mean all the territory drained by the following rivers: the Missouri, Red, Brazos, Arkansas, Mississippi, and tributaries. The Indians of this region, particularly of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas, depended on the buffalo. The buffalo was used by them for manifold purposes: (1) Food; (2) bones for implements and weapons; (3) glue from the hoofs; (4) strings from the sinews; (5) skin for garments; (6) skin for dwellings; (7) skin for boats; (8) hide for packing-cases and bags, shields, etc.; (9) skull for ceremonies; (10) the small bones for rattles; (11) the hair for filling material; (12) droppings for fuel, etc., etc.
Fig. 193. (S. 1–1.) Five scrapers from the collection of Stephen Van Rensselaer, Newark, New Jersey. These are of argillite and red chert. The central one is quite unique, having three concavities, all of which show that they have been much used, being polished.
Fig. 194. (S. 2–5.) From the collection of the University of Vermont, Burlington. These specimens were collected about the shores of Lake Champlain. Ten of them are scrapers, three of them are reamers or short drills, five of them are scraper-knives and seven are drills. This little collection is typical of Lake Champlain forms, and emphasizes how one type merges into another. Near the centre, the almost angular object with the broken point may illustrate the first form of drill. Just below it and above the two scrapers is a rudely chipped object which may also stand for the beginning of the drill form.
The preparation of hides was perhaps the most important work, and required the attention of all the women in each village and consequently the employment of thousands of scrapers and flint knives. The value of the buffalo to the aborigines cannot be overestimated. The Indian killed and made use of every part of the animal, and the hide-hunters and white men, who made record killings simply to satiate a lust for blood and slaughter, exterminated the buffalo. Chief of these was W. F. Cody, or “Buffalo Bill,” who killed 4280 buffalo in fifteen months, according to Professor W. T. Hornaday in the Smithsonian Report for 1887. The slaughter of the buffalo by himself and nameless Bills and Dicks, of frontier fame, was responsible for much of the trouble with our Plains tribes. Canada was cursed with no such class of frontiersmen, and Canada never had one twentieth part of the trouble with her Indians that we have had with ours. The extermination of the buffalo by the white hide-hunters was justly considered a national calamity by the Indians of the West. It menaced their very existence and made paupers of whole tribes.