Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Anthropology/Buried Flints in Cass County, Illinois
BURIED FLINTS IN CASS COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
By J. F. Snyder, M. D., of Virginia, Ill.
Prof. Joseph Jones has well said that "the fabrics of a people unlock their social history; they speak a language which is silent, but yet more eloquent than the written page."
To every thoughtful person there is a peculiar interest in the remains of nations that have fulfilled their destiny, and passed away; and this interest grows to fascination when studying the works of art, however rude, of people who have disappeared, and left no other legible records of their history and characteristics.
The origin and language of the prehistoric occupants of this region may remain forever unknown to us, and their color and personal appearance be only conjectured; but their implements, utensils, and ornaments, which have escaped the ravages of time, when properly interpreted, repeople our hills and prairies with their ancient inhabitants, and tell us, in language as plain as the written page, the story of their domestic pursuits and arts of life; of their customs, superstitions, and habits of thought.
In this view it is important that all discoveries of the remains, either of the works or the skeletons, of the aborigines, it matters not how insignificant, apparently, or how similar in kind they may be, should be carefully noted and accurately recorded, as each may possibly increase in some particular our knowledge of the primitive American tribes, or serve to confirm anew some fact of their history already known. Every stone implement, shell or bone ornament, and earthen vessel recovered, is a silent revelation of the past; and from this accumulated material the restoration of ancient life upon this continent is becoming annually more and more distinct.
It is well known to have been the custom of pre-Columbian Indians, as of their descendants in later times, to hide in the ground, for security until again wanted, stores of surplus provisions, and such implements and other articles as were not immediately needed or easy of transportation. Many of these buried stores of perishable materials, forgotten, or from other causes never recovered by their owners, soon totally disappeared; but others, consisting of objects wrought in stone, bone, and shell, are yet occasionally discovered in all parts of our country previously inhabited by the red race. These deposits are all full of interest, and some are wonderful for the surprising numbers, or weird beauty of design, or marvellous forms of the strange things they comprise.
Within the limits of this county two small subterranean long-hidden stores of flint implements have been recovered by the plow during the last two years. In the alluvial soil of Central Illinois, so destitute of surface rock, a stone of any kind turned up by the plow is of so rare occurrence as to at once attract the attention of any plowman, but unfortunately many valuable specimens so found excite but momentary notice and are again lost.
In the spring of 1880, Mr. George W. Davis, an intelligent farmer residing in Monroe precinct, 10 miles east of the Illinois River, when plowing one day in a field that, until a few years ago, had been covered with a heavy growth of timber, observed in the furrow his plow had just made a few sharp pointed flints, and stopping his team to secure them, he found on examination that they formed part of a deposit consisting of thirty-two small implements, which had been carefully placed in the ground, on edge, side by side, with their points toward the north. They seem to have been buried near the foot of a large oak tree long since prostrated and decayed. This spot was on the crest of the ridge bounding the valley of Clear Creek on the south, and half a mile distant from a corresponding elevation on the north of the little stream, known locally as "Indian Hill," so called because the skeletons of several (supposed) Indians with stone implements, bone awls, glass beads, &c., were some years ago disinterred there in the process of grading a public road.
The thirty-two implements were presented to me by Mr. Davis. With one exception they are made of a cherty, muddy-looking siliceous stone, of grayish color streaked with white; a flinty formation occurring in all lead-bearing strata of Illinois, and identical with the cherty nodules and seams very common in the sub-carboniferous outcrops of the upper Mississippi and southwest Missouri. They had been buried new, showing no marks of having been used, and their peculiar style of workmanship and similarity of design leave but little doubt that they are the product of the same artisan. The exceptional one in the deposit is a well-proportioned and perfect spear point, nearly 3 inches in length, neatly chipped from opaque, milk-white flint, strongly contrasting in material, shape, and finish with the others, and evidently manufactured by some other hand, perhaps in a different and remote workshop.
Fourteen of the lot are of the laurel leaf or lanceolate pattern, pointed at one end and rounded at the other, with edges equally curved from base to point, averaging three-eighths of an inch in thickness in the middle and evenly chipped to a cutting edge all around.
Fig. 1.
They are uniform in shape, but differ in size; the smallest measuring 2¾ inches in length by 1¼ inch in width at the center; and the largest one is 6 inches long and nearly 2 inches wide. These fourteen are of a type quite common in all parts of the Mississippi Valley, and are supposed to have been used as knives or ordinary cutting tools. In our collection are six of these supposed knives, taken a few years ago from a deposit of over four hundred in West Virginia, and very similar in material, pattern, and dimensions to the fourteen now before me.
Fig. 2.
The remaining seventeen are shaped alike, but also differ in size as the first do, and are of the same average thickness. They too are sharp pointed at one end, but in outline from base to point their sides are equally convex, one being considerably curved and the other curved but little from a straight line, giving them an ungainly and lop-sided form. Their broad ends, originally rounded, probably, like the first fourteen, have been chipped away on each side for half or three-fourths of an inch from the extremity, forming a broad rudimentary shank. At first glance these objects would readily be mistaken for unfinished awkwardly shaped spear-heads; but slight examination proves them to be completed implements, all fashioned after exactly the same pattern, with one end pointed, a greater convexity of one side than the other, and the base which in the first fourteen is regularly rounded, in these has been slightly cut away on each side, perhaps to facilitate their insertion in some sort of handle. The greater rounding out of one side than the other in all cannot be accidental, or due to want of skill in the workmen who made them; and this odd design is not easily reconciled with the ordinary forms and uses of spear points. Occasionally flint arrow-points are found approximating this shape, one side from point to shank describing a slightly curved or straight line with the other side regularly barbed, or curved, as in the common types. In our collection are two specimens somewhat concavo-convex, or sickle-shaped.
Fig. 3.
It has been gravely suggested that implements of this form were so made, and intended for use, exclusively for spearing and shooting fish, on the hypothesis that the greater weight of one side of the flint, or its irregular form, would give the shaft to which it was attached, when launched, a curved direction, thereby overcoming the water's refraction of the solar rays, and cause the weapon to strike the real and not the apparent position of the fish aimed at.
In order to test this idea I made several experiments with the abnormally shaped flints. Securely fastening the one-barbed arrow-heads in straight, perfectly made arrows, I shot them with a strong sinew-backed Indian bow, at marks in the water and in the air, and found in every instance that the deformed flint had not the least tendency to deflect the shaft from its direct course. I then inserted some of the lop-sided implements from this Clear Creek deposit in light javelin shafts 5 feet or more long, and failed to discover the slightest deviation of flight when thrown either with much or little force in the air or in the water. The result of these experiments led me to conclude that the one barbed arrow-points are merely weapons accidentally mutilated; and the most reasonable view of all the flints in the deposit now under consideration, save the intrusive white spear-point, places them in the general class of common cutting tools.
The second deposit of flints to which I have alluded was also turned up by the plow, on the 28th of March of the present year (1882), on the southern border of this county, 26 miles east of the Illinois River. Its location was on the brow of the hills overlooking Indian Creek to the south, and in a field cultivated for the last ten years, but which had been cleared from a dense growth of large forest trees. In this cache were thirty-five elegant implements entirely different in form, material, and finish, from those before described. Their position in the ground, was vertical and closely packed together, but otherwise without any peculiar arrangement. Axes and other objects made of copper, buried in the ground long ages ago by their rude owners, are now and then found, in many instances still encased in shreds of coarsely woven fabrics in which they had been carefully wrapped; the preservation of the matting or cloth being due to the salts of the decomposing metal. It is probable that the articles in all minor deposits, as the two here described, were also enveloped, when consigned to the safe keeping of the earth, in bark cloth or dressed skins, which, in the absence of antiseptic mineral oxides, have long since decayed without leaving a trace of their presence.
The thirty-five beautiful flints of this Indian Creek deposit are the perfection of ancient stone-chipping art. In form they are of the broad, or lilac-leaf pattern,
Fig. 4.
pointed more or less obtusely at one end and regularly semicircular at the other; the length but little exceeding the width; scarcely more than three-eighths of an inch thick in the center; they are smoothly chipped to an even sharp edge all around. They vary a little in size and somewhat in proportions, in the greater number the length exceeding the breadth by scarcely a third, while in a few, approaching the lanceolate type, the length is twice that of the width. The smallest of them is 3¼ inches long by 2⅜ inches broad at the base; and the largest one measures 5 inches in length and 3¼ inches across the widest part. Six of them are made of mottled red and brown glossy jasper, and the remaining twenty-six of ordinary white flint, shading in texture from the compact translucent glassy, to the opaque milk-white varieties. In one of the neatest and most perfectly proportioned specimens the natural conchoidal fracture of the stone from which it was struck gives one side its exact contour without aid of any chipping. In several are embedded fragments of fossil crinoidal stems around which the siliceous atoms in solution or suspension first collected and solidified to form the rock; and in six there remain near the edges small patches of the buff, rind-like calcareo-siliceous outer coating of the flint-nodules from which they were split, not entirely removed by the process of manufacturing. The rounded edge of each is smooth and worn, and the sides of some are gapped, testifying to long and hard usage before their interment, and indicating conclusively that the broad circular edge of the tool was the one chiefly used. There is no reason to believe that these beautiful objects were used as weapons in any manner. Their poi n ted ends may have been inserted in handles of some description for convenience of manipulating them; but their crescent edges, so similar to the half-moon knives of modern curriers and other leather workers, forcibly suggest their use as skin-dressers. They are too fragile to have been serviceable in the scraping work of canoe-making, or in shaping any hard- wood or bone instruments; and could not have so well preserved their flue edges as hand-used agricultural implements, or clay-diggers for pottery making. Hence, I conclude that they were the vade mecum of the squaws, and their chief reliance in all their work requiring the aid of mechanical appliances.