Warren K. Moorehead

“ Man invented pottery because it was more convenient for him to make a receptacle out of clay and bake the clay than to hollow a bowl out of stone. He moved in the line of least resistance, and it was easier to make a bowl or a dish from clay than to carve such a utensil from stone. While Indians roasted much of their meat on the end of sticks, or baked the food in the ashes, yet they preferred to boil and stew their foods. This is especially true of the established villages where a profusion of pottery fragments abounds. ”

“ We would then be unable to determine that a grave once there existed, and it is possible—I do not say probable—that such graves may have been made in times of extreme antiquity in the North or South, and that all of the softer substances and bones have disappeared. In that event, these graves of an early culture would not appear to us as graves, but as a small cache of rude implements. ”

“ FIELD STUDY NEEDED Before concluding my remarks on the stone age in North America, I would call attention to the necessity of more and careful field work, and an understanding of the difference between various sites rather than continued museum work, or the reading of reports and publications. That man who considers arts and crafts of tribes to have been pretty much the same in America is very ignorant concerning real archæology. ”

“ We are dependent chiefly on history for our knowledge of the use of textile fabrics.
But in the Southwest the aridity of the climate, together with the fact that the walls of the cliff-houses kept out the occasional rains, and that the sands of the desert drifting over the ruined pueblos, worked in harmony to preserve a goodly number of fragments of textile fabrics. Some of these are in the American Museum, New York City, others in Washington, Denver, and Philadelphia museums. All are of great interest and were made use of by stone-age man. ”

“ They live in settlements and in very rough country, avoiding the plains. In passing from one settlement to another, there is always a ravine in the way which they cannot cross, although they can talk together across it. At the slightest call five hundred men collect, and on any pretext kill and eat one another. Thus it has been very hard to subdue these people, on account of the roughness of the country, which is very great.”
It has been known for many years that the Seri Indians living on an island in the Gulf of California are still in the stone age. ”

“ Along the stream itself one may discern, on both north and south bank sites, all kinds of cultures, thus proving that the Ohio River was not only a thoroughfare but the thoroughfare in prehistoric times. It is only when one proceeds up the streams from the Ohio back fifty or a hundred miles in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio that one observes how the local cultures have developed. The culture of the Muskingum and Scioto in Ohio are practically the same; the Miami is different. The Wabash in Indiana is yet another culture and the Illinois yet a third. ”

“ Barrett’s work among a people as yet untouched by civilization, and as the point of view of these Cayapa Indians was so different from ours, it was difficult for us to understand their motives and conceptions. All truly primitive people live in a world so apart and removed from our own that one should be able by long study to place himself mentally in that world. ”

“ When we realize the point of view, the mind, and the concept of the stone-age man fully, we shall, quite likely, understand the true import of the strange problematical polished stones so common in the Mississippi Valley. These stand for more than mere ornaments. ”

“ Assuming that because of wars there were usually more women than men,—and I think that the early American history will bear out this statement,—the domestic arts were in excess of the other arts; and even if the persons engaged in domestic science were in the minority there would naturally be more cooking, garment-making, weaving, and general domestic science in vogue in a village or a cave or a cliff-dwelling than elsewhere. It is not surprising, therefore, that awls and hammer-stones, pestles and mortars, rough axes and hoes should predominate in such places. ”

“ If the Ohio Valley had been occupied by mound-building people when La Salle and Hennepin made their voyages of discovery, these worthy and zealous explorers would have made reference to it in their reports. But La Salle and Hennepin heard of the great Illinois towns on the river of the same name in that state and journeyed from Quebec to visit those towns. There were thousands of Indians living in the Illinois country, but Ohio appears to have had little population—that is of Indians, and none whatsoever of mound-building people. ”

“ It is surprising, the skill of prehistoric man in carving. When Squier and Davis made their exploration of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, they found many highly carved and ornamented pipes. Years afterwards, observers who were unjustly skeptical endeavored to prove that these were made with rat-tail files or were the work of white traders. Since the time of Squier and Davis, even more remarkable carvings, work in copper, intricate designs on shell, and various tablets have been unearthed, in numbers, and by men against whom no charge could be made. ”

“ There are eighty cabins, and in the middle of the village a fine level square, where from morning to night there are young men who exercise themselves in running after a flat stone which they throw in the air from one end of the square to the other, and which they try to have fall on two cylinders that they roll where they think that the stone will fall. ”

“ It is good that Mr. McGuire has given us so careful a distribution of pipes as is set forth in his fifteen divisions. The student of archæology must distinguish between the pipes from the old burial-places and those that are apparently modern. The prehistoric cultures and the modern cultures of our American aborigines here in the United States may be compared with those of Europe; where on one site we might find Roman weapons or implements, those of early Germanic tribes associated with the Roman, and beneath all of these, those of the stone-age type. ”

“ I shall show, in the chapter cited above, that the prehistoric as well as the modern Indians selected the most favorable localities for villages; therefore modern villages were often built on the site occupied by a prehistoric building. The presence of stone, clay, bone, and shell objects on these sites indicates that the population was greater in prehistoric times than in modern. The fabrics and the wooden objects of ancient times have long since disappeared, as have most such things of even two centuries ago. ”

“ An interesting human effigy found in northern Ohio, now in the collection of the Ohio State University, Columbus.
The bird is much in evidence as a prehistoric sculpture. In fact, there are more bird-pipes than any other life-form. This at once suggests the famous “Thunder Bird,” so famous in Indian mythology in America. Yet if it is true that these effigies are not totemic, as relating to tribes, but stand for “Thunder Birds,” it is curious that so many different kinds of birds should have been represented. There are the hawk, eagle, crow, woodcock, duck, woodpecker, paroquet, and others. ”

“ All writers on pottery observe a great difference between the ware of the North and that of the South. Professor Holmes points to this in more than one place in his writings, and he asks this question: “Is it due to differences in race? Were the Southern tribes as a body more highly endowed than the Northern, or did the currents of migration, representing distinct centres of culture, come from opposite quarters to meet along this line. ”

“ In the far North there is no pottery. In the St. Lawrence basin pottery is insignificant. In New England the few artistic specimens of decorative pottery have been made much of by observers, but these rare examples of the ceramic art indicate progress on the part of a few individuals. There was no real potters’ art north of the Ohio River or east of the Wabash. True, there are some good examples of fine pottery from the Ohio mounds, but the ancient Northern peoples made but little progress in ceramic art save on the part of a few individuals living in the Scioto Valley, southern Ohio. ”

“ An unknown number of bone effigies and bone tools that must have been made and used by the ancient people have disappeared, because as in the case of textile fabrics they were not preserved unless buried in ashes.
Aboriginal man was very saving. When he killed a deer or a bear he not only made use of the meat and the hide, but also of the bones and sinews. The proof of such economy lies in any large village-site, where one finds in the ashes bones of practically every bird, animal, and fish formerly in the neighborhood. ”

“ Again, while all Indians have skins more or less red, the variation in physical appearance among our aborigines is surprising. No one could fail to distinguish an Ojibwa from an Iroquois, or a Sioux from an Apache, or an Osage from a Seminole, even if one had no knowledge of Indian language or customs. Environment and habitat must have influenced these tribes and affected their stature and physical conditions. ”

“ I have never seen an effigy of a mountain, a tree, a plant, or a flower. The modern Ojibwa Indians design flowers in their bead-work. The ancient Ojibwa did not. The native American did not seem to have been impressed by plant-life or inanimate 4objects. Occasionally, he scratched a trail or a tipi on an ornament, and some of the pictographs in various portions of the United States show wigwams, trails, etc. But while there are numerous examples of carvings in stone, shell, and bone of animals, birds, fish, and reptile life, we search in vain for carvings of the other things I have mentioned. ”

“ ADAPTATION TO CONDITIONS Among our American aborigines one trait stands out prominently, and that is the art of adapting themselves to existing and local conditions and environments. Perhaps no race so readily appreciated that it must depend entirely upon its own resources. We find, therefore, that it is immaterial whether the native Americans live in Maine or in Florida, in North Dakota, or Texas ”

“ The highest art is found where the largest villages, or the most numerous mounds or cliff-houses, were located. In small mound groups, or areas where the population was not sedentary, the art is very crude. Throughout the areas where the culture is highest, notably Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois, we find these large mound groups referred to, all of which proves that the people lived long enough in one place to develop an art. ”

“ It is natural to suppose that as the ceramic art developed, to the variety of forms in clay, man added the dish, the waterbottle, the effigy, and more or less complicated forms of the jar or the bowl. And because nothing but true cooking-pots are found in the Lake Superior region, New England, the Delaware and Susquehanna valleys, I claim that the pottery art was not developed in those regions beyond the manufacture of rough utensils to be used about the fire. ”

“ The Indian cuts a hole through the ice, and erects a small structure to shield himself from the wind. An effigy of a fish made of wood or bone, or in these modern times of tin, is dangled about four or five feet beneath the ice. Large fish approach this decoy, and as they are more sluggish in their movements in the winter, the Indian has no difficulty in driving the spear into such one as he wishes, before it is able to draw out of range. I suppose that the method did not vary in 141ancient times. Naturally, where possible, the Indians preferred to set nets or build fish-weirs. ”

“ While it is true that a great deal of pottery has been taken from mounds, graves, cliff-houses and ruined pueblos by expeditions under my direction, yet I have never made a detailed study of ceramic art in America, although in a certain sense familiar with the forms found throughout this country. ”

“ I never believed that the population in America exceeded one million (north of Mexico) at any time, assuming that the field evidence is against the statement so often made that there are as many Indians in America to-day as at the time of the discovery. ”

“ But the freshness of the Iroquoian pipes and pottery and the general tone of the objects—and by tone I mean that appearance which most of them possess—indicate that they show European influence—lead the archæologist to conclude that as to antiquity they are not in the class with the other objects found in America. It has always been my opinion that five or six centuries of time are sufficient to account for their production. ”

“ The effigies carved in catlinite, and observed among tribes west of the Mississippi during the historic period, seem to have been inspired by a knowledge of the superior arts of the white people. We find that while the roving tribes of the Plains painted various battle and hunting scenes on their tents and shields, yet they were inferior in art as compared with the Pueblo, the Cliff-Dweller, or the Mound-Building peoples. ”

“ One specimen of a grooved hammer found in the region is made from a true hematite nodule and is only three fourths of an inch in length. Some mauls and hammers have a complete continuous groove near the middle of the stone; 334but in most cases there is half an inch or more ungrooved, the furrow ceasing at the point from which the handle of the implement is directed. The usual rocks employed in their manufacture are gneiss and granite; but limestone and amphibole sometimes occur. Ungrooved mauls and hammers have been found, and occasionally one almost spherical in shape. ”

“ I have referred to the stone-grave culture of this region elsewhere. It merits further detailed study on the part of archæologists.
In the State of Illinois are long yellow chert spear-heads and lance-heads and knives, some of which have slightly turned points. Many of these are not unlike the Scandinavian daggers. In Michigan and Wisconsin there is a wealth of copper, many of the sugar quartz spears and knives, large numbers of peculiar winged problematical forms which have been quite fully illustrated in this work. The Illinois and Wisconsin cultures are separate and distinct. ”

“ Shell beads are as widely distributed as chipped implements and more generally found throughout the United States than pottery. In fact, in most cemeteries, mounds, and cliff-houses where human burials occur, are strings of beads of various kinds and sizes. I might enumerate all the shells found in both fresh water and salt, and made use of by the natives in America, but this is hardly required. ”

“ None of them look old in the sense that objects from other sites appear old.
In southern New York and throughout New Jersey and Delaware we have chipped and polished implements which are supposed to stand for the prehistoric Delawares, and these types appear, in the main, very old. They are more than weather-beaten, many of them were on the verge of disintegration. Time alone can account for such condition. The Delaware Valley and the Susquehanna must have been ideal places for prehistoric man. ”

“ There are also strange effigies of whale, and rude effigies so rough that one does not know what the maker intended to represent. Plummet-shaped stones are also common. But the slate gorget and ornament, and the bell-shaped pestle, the discoidal and bicave, and many other forms, are almost wanting. The pipes are not common and far inferior to those of the Ohio Valley and Middle South and the South. New England, then, may be divided into two culture-groups, that east of the Merrimack River and that lying between the Merrimack and the Hudson. ”

“ It follows, therefore, that here in America, when we find modern catlinite pipes and rectangular stone pipes on a village-site or beneath the surface, these may represent different epochs or cultures. These cultures may or may not be separated by hundreds of years.
There are many complications to be taken into consideration, in our study of the distribution of pipes. As has been pointed out, rude pipes are quite as likely to have been made by modern Indians as by prehistoric people. ”

“ Nothing that we have in use to-day was known to stone-age man—even so common a thing as fire is confined and changed to suit our will.
Various effigies, polished problematical forms, bright copper, shell or mica, pottery, textile fabrics, and forms in wood—these were the extent of his art. He knew no horizon beyond the stone effigy, the ornamented gorget, etc. A colored stone, piece of copper, or anything in stone unusual attracted his eye. I believe that these 364appeared to him different from ordinary stones. For the same reason he must have considered hematite as more or less of a mystery. ”

“ Their bird-stones are very like those of Indiana and Ohio, yet they have a broad bird effigy usually with ears on both sides of the head which is not found save occasionally in southern Ohio and Indiana, and seldom in the South where mound copper is common. Their gorgets and pipes appear to be local. It has occurred to me that the peoples of Indiana and Ohio, and possibly the South, made raids in the copper country, or found copper nuggets in the drift, or mined their own copper, or robbed the Northern peoples of such copper as they wanted. ”

“ From the collection of B. H. Young, Louisville, Kentucky. Rare forms of pestles from the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys.
What we should consider the simplest form of mortar is a question. Of course, the mortar, rather than the pestle, is the essential thing. Man must have something in which to grind or crush his food, and it did not matter to him whether the receptacle was wood, stone, or leather so long as it served the purpose, and it was of no consequence to him whether his pestle was a round stone, an oval, an elongated pestle or bell-shaped, or a flat mano stone. ”