Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/470

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454
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and used horn arrows in hunting instead of the notched ones; or else they were manufacturers of war-points for other tribes, and lived peaceably by hunting, fishing, and agricultural labors. All that we know could be interpreted more in favor of the first view than of the second, for, while we are sure they were agricultural to a certain extent, this fact would not be opposed to an argument for their warlike character. The Southern Indians, within the historic period, were at war all the time, and still raised quantities of maize.[1]

The fact of the race of people here buried raising maize is established by finding, in some pits, quantities of it completely carbonized. Corn seems to have often been placed in pots and buried with the bodies, to serve, perhaps, as food for the journey to the spirit-land. Another of their agricultural labors was that of raising tobacco; for, in common with nearly all the other North American races, they were smokers. Numbers of pipes, of various styles and materials, are found here. Some of them are of the red clay known as Catlinite, others of ordinary limestone. In Fig. 19 is shown a pipe carved out of hard

Fig. 19.

limestone. It is very highly polished, and considerable skill is exhibited in the carving of the head. It is evidently meant for a wolf, and the teeth, though interlocking in a peculiar way, are still tolerably true to nature in having the long canines.[2]

  1. Jones, "Antiquity of the Southern Indians," p. 7. "When, in 1730, the whites interposed their good offices to bring about a pacification between the Tuscaroras and the Cherokees, the latter responded: 'We can not live without war; should we make peace with the Tuscaroras, with whom we are at war, we must immediately look out for some other with whom we can be engaged in our beloved occupation.'" For notice of agricultural labors, see Jones, pp. 296 to 320.
  2. Many other forms of pipes from this locality are given in the "Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iii, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.