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 Cornell University Library 
 E 78.N6A131 
 
 Ten years' digginfls in Len^P.f, lf|[jA,,l?i?l i 
 
 3 1924 028 653 156 
 
IS 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028653156 
 
TEN YEARS' DIGGINGS 
 
 IN 
 
 A \ 
 
 LENAPE LAND 
 
 1901—1911 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT, M. D. 
 
 WITH TWENTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 ELISE GADDIS MOYER 
 
 TRENTON, N. J.; 
 
 MacCRELLI«H & QUIGLEV, PRINTERS 
 
 1912 
 
TEN YEARS' DIGGINGS 
 
 IN 
 
 lenape land 
 
 1901—1911 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT, M. D. 
 
 WITH TWENTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 ELISE GADDIS MOYER 
 
 TRENTON, N. J.: 
 
 MACCRELLISH & QUIGLEV, Prjnters 
 1912 
 
 K 
 
k,Z(:>kZ5l 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 As WEUv tie a man's hands behind his back and tell him 
 to defend himself as to expect an archaeologist to do 
 justice to his subject if he be limited by the exactions of 
 Time. 
 
 Archaeology cannot recognize this arbitrary method of 
 tabulating sequence of event. It bears the relation to the 
 proper work of the science that child's play does to man's 
 serious endeavor. To the everyday affairs of life and to 
 history it is indispensable, because custom has established 
 it as an aid to memory, but it is the most artificial of all 
 artificialization ; yet, such stress is laid upon its importance 
 that most men would be hopeless if they did not know the 
 day of the week or time o' day. 
 
 It is, therefore, when we enter the archaeological field, like 
 going from darkness into light, from a prison into freedom, 
 from error into truth. Time here is a stranger in a strange 
 land. It can make no demands but we may laugh at 
 them. An archaeologist is a free man. He has facts 
 only as his companions, and his sole duty is to record 
 their relationship. Ten or ten thousand are mere scribblings 
 on a school-boy's slate, hieroglyphics for pedagogues to 
 ponder over; but out in the open air, where, for problems, 
 we have rocks and rivers, hills and dales, with sand, clay 
 and gravel, instead of desks and black-boards, pens and 
 text-books, the facts confront you and invite inspection, 
 instead of bewildering suggestions, children of school-men 
 and their predecessors, the hermit, monk and philosopher, 
 
 (3) 
 
who knew nothing of the real world in which they lived, 
 and in their ignorance defined life as skillful nursing of 
 intellectual dyspepsia. 
 
 This good old earth, for good it is, although teeming 
 with serious defects, never traveled along its orbit with a 
 watch in its vest pocket. It never looked forward impa- 
 tiently for the noon hour that it might stop its work, and 
 never "struck" because some super-planetary influence was- 
 too exacting. Certain it is this has always been a busy 
 world, and if it were possible to ask it, it could not tell you 
 how old it was. It never took account of time in its infancy,, 
 and does not purpose to contract such a habit, now that it 
 has had sufficient experience to know better. 
 
 It is not a matter of the slightest importance when an 
 occurrence in Nature took place. Let us be sure that it did 
 occur, and then determine its relationship to other events 
 that are equally certain, but peremptorily shut up any 
 chatterbox who pesters you with the supreme silliness of 
 "how long ago did it happen?" 
 
 The fact that man existed on this continent when man 
 was more savage than any examples of humanity in the 
 experience of travelers, remote or modern, is sufficient. 
 This basic fact is one upon which the archaeologist may 
 safely stand while in search of particulars. It is like the 
 underlying rock upon which he rests while he examines in 
 detail the overlying gravel. 
 
 Unfortunate as it is, it is an imperative necessity to be 
 absolutely indifferent to public opinion. The archaeologist 
 must turn a deaf ear to every suggestion. To be logical, he 
 must accept no second-hand fact, but face Nature and deal 
 directly with her. His business it is to see what she has 
 done in seons past, to interpret them to his own satisfaction, 
 and never stop to consider if his conclusions agree with the 
 general one of Prof. This, That or So. It is wise to ignore 
 
them all for the time being and make yourself professor of 
 €ach condition as you find it. 
 
 There is no more deadly influence exerted than the opin- 
 ions of others. Gather your own from the fountainhead 
 of thought, Nature, and when the sun sets and field-work 
 is done, burn your midnight oil over the results. Then and 
 then only compare them with the results of others. Time 
 will sift the wheat from the chaff and tares and dirt and 
 dust, and the really interested element of the public can 
 €njoy the new additions to the common stock of knowledge. 
 Of the phenomena of Nature generally the world is pro- 
 foundly ignorant, and, what is worse, it is indifferent. A 
 fact that pleases some one person mightily, when told to 
 another too often calls forth only the chilling remark: 
 ■"Well, what of it?" 
 
 It is no false position then to assume of ignoring all 
 mankind save your precious self when facing Nature and 
 seeking from her at least an outline of what the earth has 
 been doing and what man has done in ages past. Nature 
 will not shout above the babble of the crowd, soi gO' alone 
 that you may catch even the faintest whisper. 
 
 Facts are extremely complex affairs, and the "simple" 
 fact of which we hear so much is non-existent. No object 
 or incident is unrelated. There is no such thing as "a thing 
 ■of itself." This table, at which I now sit and upon which I' 
 am now resting my arm, is not simply a table. That would 
 indicate it had suddenly been derived from nothing, and 
 was so much added matter to the common stock of it in the 
 universe. The table is wood; it was once a tree, and one 
 among thousands in a forest, and a man was instrumental 
 in felling the tree, in shaping the trunk, and a vessel carried 
 it across the sea and brought it to these United States, 
 -where it was skillfully shaped into a table, and passed on to 
 a dealer in furniture, and all this happened a century and a 
 
6 
 
 half ago. It has had five owners that I know of, and the 
 first was a man of prominence, and yet we speak of a table 
 as a simple fact. If what I have mentioned is simplicity, 
 the world's prayer should be to be saved from complexity. 
 All this true of indoor matters, what of the "simple" facts 
 that we face when out of doors? What we there call sim- 
 plicity is but the outcome of our own inability to grasp the 
 significance of Nature even when she is apparently at rest 
 and uncomplicated. Nature tests all our powers, and the 
 eye or ear or nose alone fail to convey any correct idea. 
 Seeing an object is not to comprehend it; hearing a sound 
 is not realizing its source, and a pungent odor may have far 
 more significance than we suppose. A pebble is but a frag- 
 ment of a rock, but what of that rock, and .whelre is it! 
 The song of a bird is but a breaking of the silence, but what 
 of the bird that uttered it? The nauseating stench of a 
 skunk is an atmospheric catastrophe, but what of the 
 animal ; where is its home ; what are its habits ? 
 
 Even more so, if such be possible, is complexity the condi- 
 tion of all that has been afifected by the mere presence or 
 actual touch of a human being. Man stands alone among 
 animals in this respect. He cannot make, but he can mar. 
 He produces no desirable result so far as INature is con- 
 cerned. His tracks are inefifaceable. Unlike etven the preda- 
 tory mammals, he cannot dwell for any lenglth of time with- 
 out leaving behind him a permanent earth-scar. Where the 
 molei upheaves the sod, flowers and new grass will flourish 
 in the broken turf, but man leaves barrenness as the evi- 
 dence of his one-time interference. This law is more and 
 more apparent as man advances intellectually, and no one 
 can overlook the evidence of his presence; but reaching 
 backward, when man was more animal than intellectual, it 
 requires a keener sight and a practiced hand to pick from 
 the rubbish-heap of Nature's activities such bits as man was 
 
instrumental in fashioning, or at least placing upon them 
 the mark of his one-time ownership. 
 
 Such skill — if it will be acknowledged as such — can be 
 acquired only after long practice, and no one will be as well 
 satisfied with its outcome as its possessor. To pick up a 
 battered pebble merely and say of it, "That is artificially 
 abraded," will not satisfy the ignorant audience to which 
 the remark is addressed, so it follows that one phase of 
 archaeology which is meaning-full to the happy few is mean- 
 ingless to the unfortunate many. But is this not true of 
 every department of knowledge? The question arises if it 
 is not well to pursue one's studies oblivious to that chaotic 
 mass, the public, and when the investigations in the field are 
 completed, so far as one man in a lifetime can complete 
 fhem, to give the results to this public and let it enlighten it 
 or be ignored by it, as the case may be. If others, as years 
 roll by, do as the writer has done, and arrive at the same 
 conclusions, the probabilities are that labor has been ex- 
 pended in the right direction, and a modicum of truth added 
 to the world's common stock of knowledge. 
 
 It is impracticable to set forth on a printed page the 
 actuality of a day's digging. There are conditions that 
 defy the camera, on the one hand, and defy the descriptive 
 power of the archaeologist on the other, yet they are none 
 the less real. To the curator, thinking only of filling a 
 museum case, or that pest, the amateur collector, thinking 
 of a rare specimen, these conditions are unknown, but to 
 the enthusiast who desires solely an accurate, though it be 
 a very transient, glimpse of what has been, they are more 
 real than the crania that he lifts from the earth or the 
 scattered relics that he sifts from the sands of one-time 
 village sites. 
 
 Digging is too suggestive of rough and tumble disturb- 
 ance to be in any sense a scientific operation. The spade 
 
merely moves, but never in a discrimiinating way. 'It 
 crashes through a pot as remorselessly as it does through 
 turf or a stratum of clay; so it is necessary, if real exam- 
 ination is one's purpose, to handle the earth as daintily as a 
 fragile shell. Not every evidence of man in a sand bank is 
 as big as a barn-door. The tiniest potsherd is as eloquent 
 of ceramic art as the grand gallery in the museum at 
 Sevres. The archaeologist afield needs all the aid that he 
 can command to both eye and hand that he may gather up 
 the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Such 
 slight traces of man's presence in ages past do not mean 
 anything, or very little, when consigned to a museum case. 
 They are too small to be intelligible when but objects in 
 themselves, but as meaning-full where found as are the 
 punctuating dots and dashes of a printed page, affecting 
 the entire meaning of the words, but which detached are 
 simply dots and dashes. Here, then, even a camera cannot 
 help us, and there is but one avenue open to us that leads to 
 logical conclusion, the scientific use of the imagination. 
 From such scanty traces that are traces no longer if re- 
 moved, there is a possibility of reconstruction of past condi- 
 tions. A footprint is as much evidence of man as if he was 
 still standing in his tracks. But when all the care has been 
 exercised that the occasion calls for, and the facts set down 
 in orderly array, they have no value in the minds of un- 
 sympathetic readers. Words, to the masses, are nothing 
 but words, and even when objects are offered, they are pre- 
 posterous in their demands. One bone is never enough; 
 they demand a skeleton. 
 
 Such pessimistic attitude is not discouraging, and it 
 should strengthen the independence of the individual who 
 essays to dig for himself. Ignorance has produced and 
 fanaticism preserved the most dreary and useless of all 
 tomes, and archseology is a close second. It is not a matter 
 
for literary exploitation so much as continued operation 
 "with the spade. The tendency has been to theorize over a 
 half-day hole. Only a few more spade-fulls of dirt tossed 
 out and the truth would be made plain. One tiny chip of 
 stone deep in an ancient sand-bed is worth all the beautiful 
 arrowpoints that are daily manufactured in the valley of the 
 Columbia river. But such a chip must be equal to the task 
 of rousing the imagination to its rightful work. The chip 
 must go back to the rock from which it came, and come 
 forward to the hand of the man who detached it from a 
 larger mass that a shapely weapon might come into being. 
 The man must stand forth boldly when his handiwork is 
 seen, or in what does a chip differ from the grains of sand 
 ■or the pebbles that surround it? The object finished, 
 weapon or implement must lead to its purpose or why was 
 it fashioned? There must start an unfolding that defies 
 language, but not the mind, until the whole story of the 
 distant past is told. Simple as is this story to the favored 
 few, it is heard with a pitying smile, if not a damning sneer, 
 and it is an even chance if one is more irritating than 
 another. Most of us have been so long salted in falsehood 
 that no freshening process is possible. This is peculiarly 
 true of archaeology. Who has not had to unlearn the fact, 
 as it was claimed to be, that some six thousand years en- 
 compassed earth's career? Antiquity is an ugly word as it 
 falls on ordinary ears, and unintelligible is so true a state- 
 ment as that the dawn of humanity broke one Miocene 
 morning; but it did. 
 
 It has been asked by those who should know better that 
 the archaeologist afield photograph his way through a sand- 
 bank, and, letting pictures tell their own story, keep his 
 mouth shut, but there are facts that elude the camera. A 
 general condition cannot be transferred to the plate as it 
 can to the retina. An eye has greater penetrative power 
 
lO 
 
 than a lens, and yet it has been suggested that a lens' story 
 is all that is needed. A lens can, however, misinterpret as 
 well as the eye. The sketch of an artist emphasizing cejrtain 
 features is telling the truth in a more effective way than 
 when the lens reduces all to the same level, and the prime 
 importance of one feature is lost in its reduction to a level 
 with features of no importance. 
 
 Unearthing tangible objects, skulls, axes, pots and 
 trinkets, arouses interest akim to excitement; but, after all^ 
 what of them ? The same skull has been perched on very 
 different shoulders by the craniologist, as the occasion re- 
 quired, instead of allowing it to remain where it belonged, 
 with the skeleton of an eye-witness to glacial activity. 
 W'eapons and homely artifacts tell their own story as the 
 rabble shouts its determination : cheap noise ; but the broken 
 stone or battered pebble or trifling chip that the trowel 
 brings to light holds the real secret, which, known, fulfills, 
 the purpose of archaeology. 
 
 Even our grandfathers remember seeing Indians here- 
 about, and it was these redmen's gtrandfathers that made 
 the relics that we now gather fromi the fields:; but as the 
 European colonist succeeded the Indians, whom did the 
 Indians succeed ? And, too, if he had a predecessor, what 
 of him? When was this beautiful valley of the Delaware 
 a veritable terra incognita to all mankind ? 
 
 Since 1877-78, whein I announced in most unequivocal 
 terms that man's antiquity had been demonstrated by dis- 
 coveries that associated him with at least the closing activi- 
 ties of the glacial period last occurring and, inferentially, 
 that he dwelt here previous to this physico-climatic condi- 
 tion; that mani witnessed the retirement of the glacier from 
 the valley of the! Diela'ware and was familiar with an arctic 
 fauna that roamed through the land and disported in the 
 icy waters of the river, the mastodon, elephant, caribou. 
 
II 
 
 musk-ox, walrus and seal — since then there has been, at 
 times, an outburst of criticism that was characterized by 
 anything but a calm questioning of the evidence as orig- 
 inally set forth. To the writer hereof, at whom it was 
 aimed, it was amusing at first, but soon became tiresome 
 and I ignored it. The facts, which were and are public, 
 not private, property, could not be affected by comments 
 upon them and, as I had dealt only with these facts, my 
 rest was not disturbed. 
 
 The source of all criticism should be closely scrutinized. 
 Moire wonderful discoveries would then be made than the 
 chance occurrence of a palaeolithic artifact in a bed of 
 gravel. It would seem as if, in this instance, that it had 
 been pre-arranged by ultra-conservative geologists that the 
 question of man's initial appearance on the North American 
 continent miust be determined by them, and not by digging 
 in the earth's upper crust but in the depths of their ignor- 
 ance and finally deciding at some annual junketing by vote 
 or unanimous acclamation. At least, the question appears 
 to have been looked upon, if not yet, in some such matter. 
 
 Certainly no geological condition which is comparatively 
 free of complications has been sO' misrepresented by some 
 geologists in their reports upon it, and most remarkable is 
 the fact that the violent outbursts of protest as to evidences 
 of man's antiquity here have come from those who have 
 never visited the locality. Indeed, the main purpose of an 
 official report on the surface geology of the State seems to 
 have been written with a predetermined design to demon- 
 strate the impossibility of man's occupancy of the region 
 prior to a few centuries ago. The evidence of man's pres- 
 ence in pre-Columbian time found upon the surface goes 
 unquestioned, but this same evidence — undeniably the same 
 — if occurring at a significant depth, becomes liisus naturce. 
 In short, man must be studied not as an animal but some- 
 
12 
 
 thing separate and apart from other products of evolution, 
 .and the ordinary procedure of palaeontological investigation 
 does not apply to him ; at least, not to him as an inhabitant 
 of the valley of the Delaware river. 
 
 The archffiological student, presumably, when engaged 
 upon his subject, reads to be instructed; but, so far as the 
 valley of the Delaware is concerned, he must read the vitu- 
 perative critics of antiquity only to be amiused. If taken 
 seriously, he will be led completely astray. Totally disre- 
 garding the truth, but determining to be sensational and 
 .secure the attention of the uninstructed crowd, only the 
 "yellow journal" methods have been used. The result is 
 this so-called archaeological literature is much more of a curi- 
 osity than artifacts in ancient river sands or in the debacular 
 debris of a retreating' glacier. Had it had a deterrent effect, 
 Yolk's twenty years of fruitful labors would not now 
 T>e illuminating a region where darkness had prevailed, a 
 darkness in which the non-resident archaeologists delighted 
 to revel, because, apparently, not their fortune to make dis- 
 coveries of equally far-reaching significance. 
 
 It is on record in more than one scientific journal that 
 occasionally an over-bold student has timidly whispered a 
 suggestion concerning antiquity, but forthwith was he 
 •effectually snubbed. "Official" science, claiming its word 
 was law, would have none of it. The case was one to re- 
 main forever on the calendar, but never to come up before 
 it. Smug content to allow Europe to have all the plums in 
 the pudding, at once, soothed its complacency and seared 
 its conscience. Such a status could not be permanently 
 maintained. It behooved non-official science to assert itself, 
 and, taking up the burden of investigation, demonstrable 
 truths were wrested from the reluctant grasp of Mother 
 Earth. Rebellion is sometimes wise, but the risks are tre- 
 Tnendous. Here is anl instance where victory crowned its 
 
13 
 
 efforts, but the vanquished are yet unable to realize that they 
 are defeated. Ineffectual murmurs still are heard in aca- 
 demic halls. 
 
 An interesting question comes to the fore when we realize 
 that we have a fairly complete series of traditions 'con- 
 cerning the Lenapeani career during centuries of continental 
 wanderings, and ought not these to render it unnecessary 
 to exploit inferential history derived from the study of 
 Lenapean relics that time has spared? 
 
 'The weakness of tradition lies in its susceptibility to in- 
 terpretations widely different or diametrically opposed. The 
 hero actually lived or is a sun-myth and thei advocates of 
 each view are equally strongly entrenched behind a be- 
 wildering array of arguments. Tradition, too, is usually 
 so vague that its original purport is left to conjecture. The 
 great battles of a people's ancient history as handed dowtt 
 from generation to generation may have been a trivial com- 
 bat as to numbers, but of far-reaching effect as its result. 
 Hence it is remembered. A river, swollen by unusual rain, 
 becomes an inland sea, and never a tale told of seeing some- 
 thing strange that it did not reach to wild extravagance and 
 become a fairy tale before it was forgotten. He who was 
 more skillful at any craft than his (fellows became a god 
 before he became a grandfather. Yet, with all this against 
 it, tradition has the ring of truth when read aright, and he 
 who would know something of the Delaware Indians must 
 read carefully Brinton's "Lenape and Their Legends." 
 
 On the other hand, there are unquestionable facts that 
 we cannot overlook, and such are the conditions under 
 which their imperishable relics occur. 
 
 A stone implement or a clay vessel cannot misrepresent 
 itself. We may ignore its significance and misrepresent it 
 to others, but what it is, it is, and no sophistries or ignor- 
 ance on our part can make aught else of it. The difficulty 
 lies in realizing its purport. To do this requires a training, 
 
14 
 
 very different from that of the mere collector, whose aim 
 is to appeal to the eye rather than to the understanding. 
 
 Tradition is not tangible. Even when recorded and so 
 made secure for all time to come, it is still tradition. Its 
 origin is never discoverable, however closely we may scan 
 the text. It bears such relation to it as an echo bears to 
 sound. At best, we can only say of it, it had a basis of 
 truth in the indefinite long ago. 
 
 This is not true of the artifact that ancient man has left 
 behind him. It passes directly back to the hand of the man 
 who made it. There is no intervening period of doubt, 
 forgetfulness or wilful misrepresentation. 
 
 We have only to consider our own history or what goes 
 by that name;. It bears the relation that darkness bears to 
 light. If any peoples' real history was wholly known, that 
 people would disappear, consumed in the fires of its own 
 confusion. The aboriginal historians were, doubtless, 
 equally discreet. They told a plausible tale, one that was 
 pleasing and tickled tribal vanity. The victories were 
 exalted to the highest pitch ; the defeats ignored completely. 
 No cowards figure large in tradition, but this does not 
 prove that none existed. 
 
 Nothing of all this uncertainty confronts us when we 
 unearth the relics remaining where once a wigwam stood, 
 or the plough brings to light what remains of a one-time 
 village site. It matters not what tradition has to say, here 
 is evidence that cannot be explained away. If it denies 
 what the relics assert, then it is plain how far we are war- 
 ranted in relying upon it. 
 
 If in their wanderings the Lenape reached the valley of 
 the Delaware and finally settled here, making it their 
 "home," as they thought, for all time to come, and this only 
 some five hundred years ago, then all traces remaining of 
 this occupancey must be explained as the output of their 
 industry during that period. But what if these implements. 
 
15 
 
 weapons and ornaments, to speak humanly, rebel? What 
 if they assert of themselves and substantiate their claim by 
 their surroundings, that they were old and forgotten before 
 the dawn of the first of those five centuries ? Is it reason- 
 able to tell them to "lie low and keep quiet," or, as a Chi- 
 cago professor of geology recommended to his students, if 
 they ever, by chance, discovered traces of man's antiquity, 
 to re-cover it. If the Lenape had embodied in their tradi- 
 tion that Scheyichbi was populated with a ruder people 
 when they reached that land and no trace of such earlier 
 occupation was now discoverable, then we would hesitate to 
 accept so much of that tradition; but it haj^ens there are 
 abundant evidences of such earlier occupation, and must we 
 reject them because tradition is silent? 
 
 Tradition has its value, but tangible evidence, innocent 
 of all the weakness of uncertain man, is not to be passed by. 
 Much truth can assert itself without man's agency. A 
 terminal moraine tells a truer story of a glacier than the 
 average tourist from Alaska or the Alps. 
 
 It is the province of the archaeologist to reconstruct the 
 past by the aid of such vestiges of it as remain. Tradition 
 may help at times, but the chances are that it will prove 
 a hindrance, for facts may become so diluted in this tradi- 
 tion that their one-time actuality becomes inferential only 
 and no longer demonstrable. 
 
 As upon other occasions, it is incumbent upon me to 
 ■express my gratitude for the indispensible assistance ren- 
 dered by M. Taylor Pyne, Esq., of Princeton, N. J. But 
 for this it would have been impossible to pursue those ex- 
 plorations which have yielded facts which I have en- 
 deavored to set forth in the following pages. 
 
 Chari^es Conrad Abbott, M.D. 
 
 "Three Beeches: 
 
 Trenton, New Jersey, 
 March 4th, 1912. 
 
i6 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IvENAPE lAND. 
 
 INDETERMiNABLY long ago, and therefore in that period 
 of the eairth's career which we call pre-historic, a 
 restless, roving people, skilled in many crafts, yet not pre- 
 eminent in any, reached what proved their ultima Thule 
 when they stood on the bank of the Delaware river and 
 facing the forest on its eastern shore, could do no more 
 than thread its maze and find an ocean confronting them. 
 
 Many a broad expanse between mountain ranges and 
 shores of many a lake had been theirs, but nowhere did 
 they make the land permanently their own and rest con- 
 tent to there develop it and themselves. A spirit of adven- 
 ture — or was it the result of disastrous wars? — ^led to 
 change of base time and again, until they reached, or a 
 part of their people had reached, the territory that was to 
 them, until ousted by the European colonists, Lenape Land. 
 
 It is not impossible to picture this region, particularly 
 the eastern shore of the river from the limit of its tidal 
 flow to the ocean and from the present Sandy Hook to 
 Cape May, when the Lenni Lenape took possession. Euro- 
 pean colonization, later, was too slow at its inception to 
 destroy all landmarks, and the river in front of it rather 
 than the forest behind it occupied its attention. Farms 
 extended landward only as the population increased, and 
 these were in the creek-valleys, for the water-way was then 
 more of a desideratum than the winding bridle-paths, which 
 had been Indian trails in other days. So it was that vast 
 tracts of forest remained for many years as the Indian had 
 left them. Road-making de nova and the widening of 
 
17 
 
 ancient paths for wagon traffic came later, and with it the 
 gradual "improvement" of the country, a glorious wilder- 
 ness converted to prosaic fields. The Indian names were 
 retained for some small streams, but so barbarously are 
 they mispronounced that no Indian now would recognize 
 them. 
 
 Among the earliest colonists the Indian was not an object 
 of interest so much as of suspicion, and the golden oppor- 
 tunity was lost to preserve a real history of their career as 
 they then remembered it, and their personal belongings 
 were regarded with pity because so inferior to those the 
 colonist then had in use. If preserved at all, it was to give 
 them as playthings to the children, and the result was, 
 precious relics, as they would be now, were destroyed. It 
 is true, somewhat later, Kalm, Loskiel and Heckewelder 
 did something to rescue the race from oblivion, but how 
 little does it amount to. To be told that an axe was used 
 to fell trees and an arrowhead was the armature of an 
 arrow-shaft might as well have been left unsaid. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all this discouragement facing the archae- 
 ologist at the outset, there is no reason for despair. Lost is 
 not always lost, or gone, gone forever. Some traces of 
 man are imperishable, and let them speak for themselves. 
 Before they do so let us further consider where these 
 traces are. 
 
 The Lenape Land was no low-lying, level plain, with an 
 imperceptible slope to the ocean. It rose in many places 
 sufficiently high above the sea to afford commanding out- 
 looks, and there where inland streams had worked their 
 way there were valleys, deep and wide and so densely 
 wooded that the skill of a savage might have been over- 
 taxed to thread them. There were wide meadows with their 
 treacherous quicksands and dry, sandy knolls — ancient 
 sand dunes — with sparse growth of stunted trees. If 
 
 2 A 
 
i8 
 
 variety was a necessity, there was sufficient for all needs, 
 and such variation of conditions is a necessity if its human 
 population would genuinely succeed in the struggle of 
 existence, for it is this variation that produces a wide range 
 of food, both animal and vegetal, and no race has proved 
 an unqualified success that was limited to one or the 
 other diet. 
 
 A varied flora and fauna, characterized by a wide range 
 of life-forms, conduces to mental activity. Variety is the 
 food of thought. A monotonous region reduces thought 
 vibrations to a monotone. A healthy growth is only coin- 
 cident with intricacy of its dependence, and these ideal con- 
 ditions obtained when the southern half of New Jersey was 
 something more than a coastal plain, which it had been long 
 enough to be a great deal more when the narrow, rock- 
 ribbed valley of the upper Delaware was choked with ice 
 throughout the year and throughout undetermined cen- 
 turies. It extended, too, far eastward of its present boun- 
 dary. The ocean has done much for us, but a vast deal 
 against us. It means a good deal to be robbed of many 
 square miles of habitable country. 
 
 There was no monotony in South Jersey during the 
 Pleistocene period. It means a good deal when the mam- 
 moth is rambling about, when the giant deer was abroad, 
 and cougars, bears, Virginia deer, caribou, and a long list 
 of smaller mammals found a safe foothold and flourished 
 as they have never done since. Then, the bird-life was at 
 the climax of its glory. The water courses and the sea- 
 coast were crowded with fowl, the forest with birds of the 
 wood, and every glade merry with the songs of thrushes, 
 finches and warblers. The forest was not one vast expanse 
 of gloomy pines, but many the square miles covered with 
 deciduous trees, oak, hickory, chestnut, walnut, beech, birch, 
 elm, locust, catalpa, tupelo. liquidambar, tulip, sycamore, 
 
19 
 
 sassafras, maple, willow, horn-beam, ash — trees available 
 for every purpose desired by man. The shrubbery was 
 abundant, luxurious and varied, and what is of much im- 
 portance, fruit-bearing. Whatever the life-form, it had 
 food in abundance. Then, too, the climate is to be con- 
 sidered, for there is no more important factor. The round 
 of the seasons in these remote prehistoric times, while the 
 northern half of the state was still glaciated, was so favor- 
 able to other life as it now exists, that man, living close to 
 Nature, could have had no reason to complain. It was that 
 happy medium between our present climatic extremes 
 wherein man only can reach a high estate. Frost is the 
 only safe stimulant named in Nature's pharmacopoeia — all 
 others are poisons. That the climate has changed since 
 European influx is scarcely open to doubt. No country can 
 be deforested as New Jersey has been without affecting cli- 
 matic conditions. Our rainfall may not have varied as to 
 quantity, but there is now a tending towards a wet and dry 
 season. Many of our smaller streams practically disappear 
 for weeks, and the river, above tide-water, "runs nearly 
 dry" and then suddenly overflows its banks to such an 
 €xtent that disaster results. The earliest people to reach 
 this region knew nothing of such erratic methods on 
 Nature's part. The dense forests prevented it. It is true, 
 later, the Lenape had a word for freshet, "mechaquiechen," 
 but it referred to the swelling of streams when the snow 
 melted at the end of winter. Years ago we were said not 
 to have any climate, but only samples of weather. This 
 was not true some thousands of years ago. Its substitute, 
 our present weather, is, as least to great extent, the out- 
 come of that recklessness of the European colonist, who 
 considered the world but a stepping-stone for himself to 
 something better. Reckless destruction for present gain 
 must lead to disaster sooner or later. 
 
20 
 
 Lenape Land was fortunately conditioned in Pleistocene 
 times and later, for though cool in winter and warm m 
 summer, both extremes were tempered and little so delicate 
 that to it the transition from one to the other proved fatal. 
 It mattered not that ice filled the distant valley, that snow 
 and rain and fogs were persistent there, for the ocean's 
 atmosphere tempered it all when it reached the coastal plain 
 and that wide expanse of forest-clad, rolling land twixt the 
 river and the sea. 
 
 The observer does not need to be a geologist in the 
 scholastic sense to read the simpler records of the past, if 
 he walks with his eyes really open. He need not go back 
 to the rocky hearts of mountains to get an adequate idea, 
 of his immediate surroundings. What is required is an 
 unbiased view of available facts, and so equipped he is not 
 likely to go astray. When associated and varied as the 
 contents of a schoolboy's pocket, it is not an evidence of 
 scientific skill to dissociate objects and determine their 
 respective places in the past and present. As we know that 
 the tiniest oak is older than the last crop of acorns, so we 
 can pronounce judgnient on the place in history an object 
 occupies. So it is that in the present we can read the imme- 
 diate past and in the pages of it still preserved, read back 
 yet another chapter. It is true it is not pleasing reading. 
 As we approach the past we draw near a pleasant condition,, 
 and reading nearer to our own time we draw away from it. 
 Lenape Land was a land of plenty and of pleasure in those 
 Pleistocene days before human history began recording 
 some of those embellishments that it would gladly have- 
 forgotten. And as the centuries rolled by and the glacial ice 
 finally disappeared from the valley of the river and the 
 seasons were established more as at present, and the fauna 
 changed only to the extent of some mammalian life retiring 
 northward, the land remaining still inviting, and this was. 
 
21 
 
 its condition when the "historic" Indian in prehistoric days 
 first sighted it, first stood on the shore of the river that he 
 then and there called his own, and soon after, for the first 
 time, watched, with astonished gaze, the resistless waves of 
 the sea breaking upon the strand. 
 
 When' did this happen, and who were these people? If 
 we look through the literature of the subject, the initial im- 
 pression' is that in proportion to ignorance was the eager- 
 ness to make reply, and after a perusal of twenty titles the 
 reader is left precisely where he stood when the first of the 
 series was opened at page one. Not that this literature has 
 no value. Even Boudinot's "Star in the West" has an 
 item here and there that is worth remembering ; so it is not 
 a star of such diminished magnitude it is wholly lost to 
 sight. 
 
 There is nothing to guide us as to when the Lenni Lenape 
 made the present New Jersey their own land, or whether 
 they went forward to possess it as discoverers or conquer- 
 ers. That is a question for later discussion ; but, however 
 it happened, come they did, but when? Of man it may be 
 said that he is the only mammal that leaves behind him 
 imperishable traces other than his bones. Unfortunately, 
 these do not lead tO' conviction as much as contention and 
 need not be considered at present. Man, too, is the only 
 mammal that is not sufficient unto himself, trusting neither 
 to his head nor hands nor heels, but requires a weapon. 
 Immeasurably as his intellectual power was beyond that of 
 the mammals with which he was associated, this alone was 
 not sufficient until it led to the invention of a weapon, which, 
 in fact, was not the birth of a unique idea, but an evolution 
 of the effectiveness! of a stick in the hand of an ape-like 
 forbear. 
 
 The rude weapons of the Lenape were far advanced over 
 the implements of ofifense and defense of their remote an- 
 
■Z2 
 
 cestors. They varied to meet varied conditions, and from 
 the weapon came the economic artifact, the agricultural 
 tool, the hunting and fi'shing devices and the innocent but 
 no less treasured personal adornment, as the naturally per- 
 forated pebble and then the elaborate bead. 
 
 It would be interesting tO' know hoKv well equipped were 
 the Lenape when they reached the valley of the Delaware. 
 Certainly, if they came directly from some distant point, 
 then they must necessarily have brought with them the char- 
 acteristic products of that region. If, on the other hand, 
 their progress was extremely gradual, then the artifacts 
 made as they approached the East would be similar in pat- 
 tern to what they had been accustomed, though the material 
 might change, one available rock not occurring where they 
 then were, but which was a characteristic one where they 
 had been dwelling. If, again, the country materially dif- 
 fered from time to time as the migratory movement con- 
 tinued, this would rouse the inventive faculties and new 
 forms would be brought into use to meet the new condi- 
 tions. Suffice it to state that the relics now found in Lenape 
 Land are Lenape relics and, while strongly resembling those 
 of the middle western States, yet they are not quite the 
 same. Some of the most marked objects of, say, the mound- 
 builders' area are wanting and often their substitutes are but 
 crude makeshifts in comparison. On the other hand, the 
 flint-work, at its best, is of marked excellence and com- 
 pares favorably with that of other parts of the continent. 
 O'f course much depends on the material at hand. The 
 jasper and pure quartz in the river valley are not as easily 
 worked as some forms of silicious stone found elsewhere, 
 but the difficulties had been overcome and the results ob- 
 tained is a marvel of skill in the flint-chipping art. 
 
 Of first importance in the consideration of the relics of 
 a people as a guide to the point in time when their presence 
 
23 
 
 began and for how long a time it continued, is the condition 
 of the territory as a whole. If the physical geography is 
 such that the surface is fixed, or comparatively so, and the 
 impenetrable rock or clay so near the surface that gradual 
 inhumation of objects is impracticable, then there is no 
 means of determining the relative age of objects found 
 intermingled upon this surface or very near it. Some may 
 be, probably are, immeasurably older than others, yet more 
 conspicuously an obj.ect of the surface than many a smaller 
 and more specialized form. If a thousand years had rolled 
 by, there would seem, judging from our standard, that a 
 decided improvement must have come about in the fabrica- 
 tion of implements, but not necessarily. The grooved stone 
 axe, which is a naturally formed pebble with edge and 
 groove added, is so far simple, yet complete, that improve- 
 ment is not to be looked for and no material modifijcation 
 occurred. How old, the oldest axe, cannot be determined, 
 but it is significant that they are not a feature of the "deep 
 finds" and extremely seldom a part of the grave contents of 
 an Indian, however shallow and recent, yet they were still 
 an object in universal use when Penn treated with the 
 Lenape under the outspreading branches of the elm at 
 Shackamaxon. Yet axes are old ; so old that the implement 
 was knidwn to those people before they came as far east as 
 New Jersey. They are very new as compared with, many 
 another fornii, yet very old as things of themselves, if con- 
 ditions under which they occur is a criterion. To say of any 
 object that it is not old because it is what it is, but if any- 
 thing else would, of course, be as old as the circumstances 
 of discovery indicated, is in line with the determined oppo- 
 nents of antiquity, and as such the reader is advised to ignore 
 it. Those students of archaeology in North America whose 
 sole purpose is to modernize Homo Americanus bear the 
 relation to honest investigation that a humming mosquito 
 does to the patient angler. 
 
34 
 
 In Unape Land, as it is here defined and limited, the con- 
 ditions are all favorable for receiving and retaining, with- 
 out confusion, the records of man's presence as chance filed 
 them away in the sands and soils of the plains and valleys. 
 Such being true, the evidmce of age, comparative and 
 actual; advance in skill of fabrication and of inventive 
 activity should still be traceable where the in-vasion of the 
 landmark-effacing people of the present, has not reached. 
 Such is the case, and yet the Lenape were as much a people 
 of the present flora and fauna as ourselves. The forests 
 of their day are the forests of ours, save the difference in 
 extent. They were acquainted with the same lesser flora 
 and there is no evidence since their reaching this region that 
 one plant has become extinct or any new form come into 
 existence. One or more changes may have occurred with 
 reference to the fauna, as the evidence strongly points to 
 the conclusion that the elephant, mastodon, peccary and 
 giant beaver were known to them, yet extinct in this region 
 when the Lenape were first known to us. All this demon^ 
 strates how slowly Nature moves in at least some parts of 
 the world. Lenape Land has not been a cataclysmic region 
 since the dawn of humanity in mid-Tertiary time. It may 
 ihave dipped down into the ocean and come up again, but 
 never worse for its bath, the performance being so gradual 
 that its pre- and post-aquatic conditions were much the 
 same. It is a curious condition and apparently a contra- 
 dictory one that sand is at once so unstable and yet so fixed 
 a formation. If not violently disturbed it is as tenacious 
 as rock and holds with as tight a grip any intrusive object 
 .as the rock guards the fossil that has formed within it. 
 When at some prolonged period of rest, it is protected by 
 the vegetation that warmth and moisture quicken into life, 
 the sandy soil remains unchanged throughout the lapse of 
 centuries. Transient vegetation will sooner or later give 
 
place to tree growth and the roots will penetrate it to some 
 extent, but usually spread out an intertwining network that 
 acts as an effective support. Objects that were embedded 
 in sand when that containing bed was the exposed surface 
 are not likely to be disturbed. The bugbear of a root- 
 hole need not disturb even the dreams of an archaeologist. 
 They only disturb the objecting geologist who never saw 
 the empty space once occupied by a tap-root. Even sandy 
 soils are not like a jawbone with holes where the roots of 
 teeth have been. An overturned tree does not, in falling, 
 pull out such penetrating roots, but breaks them off, and 
 they slowly decay and the sand at the sides gradually fills 
 lip the space once occupied by living vegetation'. There is 
 no chance for an artifact to take an inconsiderate dive into 
 greater depths, that its subsequent discovery may put him 
 who finds it on a wrong scent. 
 
 The effect of deforesting is not very marked when the 
 -stimips of the fallen trees remain, but when these have de- 
 frayed and the ground has nothing to protect it but grass and 
 weeds, then rain has in time an eroding effect which must be 
 considered very carefully, for when the sod is broken, water 
 accumulates and then finds an outlet and a change has com- 
 menced that in a few centuries will effect a complete altera- 
 tion. In sandy soils, unless the herbage interferes, the wind 
 will steadily erode during the dry weather, thus continuing 
 the work of the rainfall. Fields with scarcely appreciable 
 slopes have, even in a century, become deeply gullied. 
 Traces of early man in such areas must necessarily be dis^ 
 placed. 
 
 During the Lenape occupation no deforesting was gen- 
 eral. The small areas cleared for village sites and for 
 ■cultivation were not sufficient to affect the country as a 
 whole, and forest fires, however extensive, did not alter the 
 •contour of the area burned, as the fallen trees, ashes and 
 
26 
 
 debris generally was an effective covering, and when de- 
 cayed but added to the soil that sustained vegetation as- 
 before. If the humus was destroyed and a barren resulted,, 
 it was so surrounded by forest that it did not alter as does 
 the sand immediately back from the ocean, where dunes are 
 made and unmade as readily as the political conditions of 
 an ungoverned country. As a whole, then, Lenape Land,, 
 though sand, was stable; but still Nature's operations were 
 not staid. The valleys widened and deepened, trees were 
 uprooted by tornadoes and undermined by water, and when 
 all these occurrences are considered, it is wonderful that 
 the traces of the Lenape are confined so exclusively to the 
 present surface. We find them in ploughed fields. Nia 
 systematic search is really necessary, but we must dig to 
 determine what the Lenape really was. As scattered relics,. 
 his handiwork has little suggestiveness beyond that of use 
 suggested by the pattern. An axe and a hoe, a spear and 
 a pipe, are easily distinguished, but there is a blending 
 of one form into another that puzzles us and light is thrown 
 upon them only — and not always then — when we find these 
 objects where the Indian left them, associated with other 
 forms. The associated objects of a village site are more 
 suggestive than single objects scattered over acres of 
 ploughed ground. But under the most favorable circum- 
 stances of discovery, much is still left to conjecture. 
 
 A variety of implements imply varied occupation, and 
 Lenape Land shows the possibility of such occupations. 
 These may be divided into hunting, fishing and agriculture. 
 War is not included, as it is a question if this was not an 
 occasional occurrence wherein hunting implements were 
 put to uses of offense and defense. The tomahawk was 
 not likely to have been fashioned solely for cracking skulls, 
 but was used far more as is our hatchet to-day. Long, 
 slender, sharply-pointed blades that we call spear-heads'. 
 
27 
 
 were as effective for thrusting into bears and cougars as 
 into human foes. To be always ready for a fight is not to 
 be always fighting, and the Lenape have been called a mild- 
 mannered people, which is probably correct, but upon what 
 authority the statement has been made I do not know. War, 
 if continuous, would have depopulated in time, and the 
 Lenape were a numerous people when at the height of 
 their prosperity. A word as to what would constitute a 
 "prosperous" condition. It calls for a fixed population of 
 sufficient numbers to create a demand for a wide range of 
 objects and specialization of activities. A few bands of 
 restless warriers^ would never have needed what we find 
 among their artifacts, preserved until now. The enormous 
 number of their simpler implements, if the property of but 
 a few individuals, indicates a prolonged period during 
 which the land was in the Indians' possession, or, if not 
 that, then thd population was large, that, for a shortdr 
 period, required stone axes by the thousands and arrow- 
 points by the hundreds of thousands. 
 
 So varied are the stone artifacts^ — and there were thou- 
 sands of wood and bone which have not been preserved — 
 that no one individual could have needed one of each pat- 
 tern, nor could any one man among them have proved equal 
 to fashioning these varied patterns. Everything points to 
 a certain amount of specialization of occupation. It is not 
 to be supposed that the able-bodied men only carried spear 
 and tomahawk about and when not on the war-path were 
 idle. This means that the women did all the work, even to 
 making the tools they needed. They did do more than their 
 share of household drudgery, but not everything that was 
 absolutely needed. These varied possessions tell another 
 story. The warrior may have delighted to load his person 
 
 ^ The Lenape and their Legends, p. 41. D. G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 
 i88s. 
 
28 
 
 with ornaments and carry a pipe that had been skillfully 
 ■carved, but were these the output of his own or his squaw's 
 industry? Far more likely there were artificers who were 
 skilled in but a single product. So, at least, I am inclined 
 to believe after gathering many thousands of their imple- 
 ments, weapons and ornaments. They suggest collectively 
 a wide range of interests and not merely war or hunting. 
 We should pay less attention to what people say of other 
 people and more to what these people say of themselves 
 through the proofs of their industry that have been pre- 
 served. Few are the evidences that objects were brought 
 here during any migratory movement, and some forms 
 •characteristic of more western regions once occupied by 
 these same people are here in New Jersey absolutely un- 
 known. As it was, Lenape Land supplied the materials, 
 -save two or three, of which all their possessions were made, 
 and foreign material can safely be referred to inter-tribal 
 commerce and communication that was established after 
 the Lenni Lenape were finally established where the Swedes 
 and Dutch and later the English found them. Catlinite and 
 obsidian and some shells from distant seacoasts are 
 examples. A survey of the whole field suggests, I main- 
 tain, a prolonged occupancy and a considerable population, 
 for aboriginal artifacts are still countless and do not all 
 occur under like conditions. So innumerable are potsherds 
 that if the vessels of which they were parts could be recon- 
 structed we should view them with astonishment. Nor are 
 these potsherds uniform in character. They vary from mud 
 that has been but lightly fired to tough ware that approacheSs 
 vitrification. It may be going too far to claim that manipu- 
 lation of clay-earths began here, but it certainly did improve 
 when the industry was established, and it is somewhat sig- 
 nificant that Lenapean pottery of the Delaware valley is 
 readily distinguished from that of other regions. If not 
 
29 
 
 artistic, on the one hand, it was, on the other, not crude, and 
 the attempts at decoration were often very pleasing arrange- 
 ments of Hnes, dots and small circles, and a near approach 
 to the Greek fret has been found. While utility predomi- 
 nated, evidences are at hand to show that among them were 
 skillful potters ; and while no artistic vessels have beejn pre- 
 served, at least one object of pure art has escaped destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Figure i. — American Sphinx.'' Terra-cotta head, by a Lenapean artist 
 
 For a unique object that called for a name, I adopted that 
 of "Sphinx" as highly appropriate. Found on an Indian 
 village site, associated with many objects of rare excellence 
 of manufacture, it stood so separate and apart from all else,, 
 was so un-Indian and so truly artistic, that it called 'for 
 study from other than the archaeological point of view. 
 Withholding all expression of opinion save that it is un- 
 
30 
 
 questionably, the handiwork of an unusually gifted Lenape 
 man, I quote herewith the| results lof its lamination and 
 study of the scholar to whom it was intrusted.^ 
 
 "The head is a sketch, and is modelled with the same 
 technique employed by the practiced sculptor of every 
 period. 
 
 "The suggestion that has been made that it was pressed 
 in a mould is untenable, as may readily be seen from a 
 side view. 
 
 "The re-entrant curve of the top of the head being such 
 that it would be impossible to withdraw it from a mould. 
 
 "It is not modelled by pinching up the clay, as were many 
 of the cruder images found among prehistoric objects, 
 but by sweeping strokes of the thumb or finger following the 
 contours of the face. 
 
 "This, upon a close inspection, is evident fitomi the fine 
 lines following the contours, which were caused by grains 
 of sand dragging under the thumb or finger of the modeller. 
 
 "That it is not a fragment of a bust or figure, or made 
 for an ornament to be applied to pottery, is proved by the 
 rounded and smoothed edges of the irregular back. 
 
 "By reason of its irregularities it would not even ap- 
 proach fitting to any plane or rounded object, and the 
 smooth finish of these irregularities, not from design, but as 
 they became rounded by contact of the fingers during the 
 manipulation of the clay, preclude the idea of its being a 
 fragment. 
 
 "The ear ornaments are, of course, mere flattened pellets 
 of clay pressed upon the sketch at completion, probably as 
 an afterthought, giving the final touch of character of the 
 man the modeller remembered. 
 
 "The head is unsymmetrical, but not in character, the 
 
 ' Evarts Tracy: Letter to author. 
 
31 
 
 right side is flatter, the beautiful modelling is not carried as 
 far as on the left, and there is an excess of clay on the 
 lower right-hand side. 
 
 "This is due to the natural fact that the modeller held the 
 clay in his left hand, using the lower prolongations as an 
 handle, and naturally the most finished work was done 
 where his more skillful hand worked to the best advantage. 
 
 "If one who had the artistic ability to do the wonderful 
 work shown on the left side of the face had desired to 
 make a finished object, it is inconceivable that he should not 
 have brought the other side to the same state of finish. 
 
 "If one states it may then be considered an unfinished 
 object, the answer lies in the ear ornaments, applied over 
 this less developed side, as the final touch, showing the work 
 had gone as far as its author intended to carry it. 
 
 "Considering it, then, for what it indubitably is, a sketch, 
 one asks what circumstances led to its making. 
 
 "I consider it an illustration ma,de to bring before the 
 minds of his companions the image of one the other had 
 seen, more vividly than he was able to do by verbal descrip- 
 ition. 
 
 "Sight preceded language; the eye is ever more accurate 
 than the ear, and the artist best translates his impressions 
 through the m;edium most familiar to him. 
 
 "It is a memory visualized for the benefit of those who 
 had not seen an individual or race like to it." 
 
 In an earlier communication Mr. Tracy gives an Impres- 
 sion of its origin in greater detail, which may well be put 
 upon permanent record, as there seems to be no flaw in his 
 ■argument. He writes: 
 
 "It is a true work oif art, but it cannot be the idealistic 
 fancy of a New Jersey Indian, historic or prehistoric, unless 
 in prehistoric days someone wandered down to that locality 
 hy way of Bering Straits, or its creator had traveled north- 
 
32 
 
 ward until he looked on the face of some Oriental wan- 
 derer. The creator of that head had seen a living face hav- 
 ing its characteristics. 
 
 "No racel, however imaginative and creative, has devel- 
 oped a human type from introspection. The history of art 
 and its examples from the earliest periods show that it was- 
 ailways their own race which they drew or modelled. When 
 imagination inspired them toward higher ideals they ideal- 
 ized their own type ; when their mood was pure fancy their 
 grotesques echoed the knowledge of the faces surrounding- 
 thdm. 
 
 "Grant that a New Jersey Indian of consummate skill as- 
 a craftsman could in his moments of fancy create one fea- 
 ture approximating racial characteristics he had never seen, 
 he could never complete a racial type in every feature so» 
 perfect as this head. 
 
 "The lofty and broad forehead, the full eye, the shape 
 and character of the lids, and, above all, the full and gently 
 rounded shape of the outer brow, not tO' speak of the indi- 
 cations of the nose and the full development of the lips, are 
 to me, at least, a proof of Oriental inspiration. It is almost 
 a Buddha head; it has the wonderful calmness of a philoso- 
 pher whose thoughts have risen far beyond those of the- 
 inhabitants of the land where it was found. 
 
 "You tell me that the Indians travelled far north of this- 
 region until they met and held traffic with the Eskimos, 
 who undoubtedly were of Asiatic origin and in, communica- 
 tion with Asia^ by way of Bering Straits. Why is it not 
 possible and likely that this sculptor had made this northern 
 journey and met an Asiatic wanderer who came down, withi 
 his northern friends to the meeting place? If so, with the-, 
 wonderf-ul Indian memory, what more likely than that on. 
 
 ^ Probably only in remotely prehistoric time ; but pottery is imperish- 
 able. C. C. A. 
 
33 
 
 his return he described among his adventures the man with 
 the strange face and, artist that he was, graphically illus- 
 trated that description with the clay." 
 
 That individual Indians were sometimes far travelled is 
 attested by Dti Pratz (History of Louisiana), and what is 
 of equal pertinence, types of implements distinctly Eskimo 
 occur on our seacoast in the oldest shell heaps and to less 
 
 Figure 2. — Crude attempt at human portraiture. Stone. 
 
 extent in the valleys of streams near their outlets into the 
 ocean. 
 
 Before dismissing- this subject it is well to consider the 
 
 ruder attempts at accurate representation. These vary to a 
 
 marked degree from the most child-like effort to those near- 
 
 ing artistic success and are of especial interest as showing 
 
 3A 
 
34 
 
 those who produced the better ones were well in the line of 
 advancdment to true artistic production, and it therefore 
 becomes less remarkable that such a face as the "Sphinx" 
 should be modelled by one of these people. 
 
 If the rudest efforts were the earliest, this, of itself, would 
 indicate a long period of occupancy of the Delaware Valley 
 by the Lenni Lenape, but there is no reason to think this, 
 but rather that skill was as rare among them- as lack of 
 it was common. Figure 2 represents an excellent example 
 of the attempt to depict a face by combination of lines and 
 deeper incised depressions for the eyes. There appears to 
 have been a perforation in the forehead so that the stone, 
 as an ornament, might be suspended and perhaps worn as 
 were the large silver medals of a later date. Even simpler 
 combinations of lines and dots, apparently intended to rep- 
 resent the human face, have been found, but so far as I have 
 been able to determine, these lines and dots, so characteristic 
 of the ornamentation of pottery, was never intended to be 
 othei-wise than purely ornamental and without suggestion. 
 The face, when carved, was usually in steatite, and oftem 
 was very small [See Volk, Arch, of Del. Val., Fig. 25, p. 
 186], or so large that the term; "mask" may be applied to it 
 [See Abbott, Primitive! Industry, Fig. 371, p. 394] carved 
 in sandstone. 
 
 'While, as thus appears, the face was a common object for 
 artistic effort, I have never seen the entire human form in 
 stone or clay, and it is partly because of this that so elab- 
 orate a grouping as that of the well-known "Lenape Stone" 
 bids one pause when asked tO' consider it as the work of a 
 Delaware Indian, and at so remote a date as when these peo- 
 ple were familiar with the mammoth and mastodon. Such 
 grouping appears to have been a late accomplishment, and 
 of the central western rather than the Atlantic coast people. 
 On the other hand, when we find that such an artist as the 
 
35 
 
 modeller of the "Sphinx" lived centuries ago on the banks 
 of a little creek flowing into the Delaware, the thought 
 arises, might not, after all, an artist, in grouping, picture 
 the tradition that we know was current concerning some 
 mighty and destructive beast? If this can be shown, the 
 objections to accepting the "Lenape Stone" as genuine are 
 reduced to a minimumi. My own opposition largely dis- 
 appeared when, for the first time, I saw the "Sphinx." 
 Figures 3 and 4 are the work of the Indian, and undoubt- 
 
 Pigure 3. — Miniature mask. Wood. 
 
 edly after the time of European contact, but do not suggest 
 any influence from that source. Carved in wood, and evi- 
 dently with a metal tool — ^bence post-European^ — ^the skill 
 of the carver is apparent. Figure 3 is, to me, the more im- 
 pressive, because it is a combination O'f the face of our com- 
 mon bam owl (Aluco pratincola) and that of a man. The 
 artist clearly had a sense of humor and the owl, GokhoB, 
 was prominent in their folk-lore. If this example of Len- 
 apean art was intejnded to caricature some prominent man 
 
36 
 
 of the tribe at that time, which is improbable, or was in- 
 spired by some current tradition, far more likely, it is cer- 
 tainly highly creditable. 
 
 Figure 4, on the other hand, is simply a human face, arad 
 by no means an attractive one. It is suggestive of the 
 Lenapean countenance, but not a portrait. That it should 
 have been looked upon as ornamental and the prominent 
 feature of its owner's personal decorations or "jewelry" 
 is not improbable. The vanity of the Indian was pro- 
 
 Figure 4. — Miniature mask. Wood. 
 
 nounced. He scouted the idea that Nature, when un- 
 adorned, wajs adorned the miost. His tastes, as we view 
 thdm, were barbaric. That such objects., as a class, had 
 some significance is quite possible, but unfortunately we 
 know nothing of the mental processes of the prehistoric 
 peoples of this continent. Their various rites and cere- 
 monies are an enigma to us. They had no "religion" as we 
 are supposed to understand that exceedingly indefinite term. 
 
37 
 
 Figure 5 is far more elaborate as a charm, ornament or 
 ■whatsoever we may be disposed to call it. It is antler, hard, 
 polished and, like the preceding, has been carved with a 
 metal tool. Jasper flakes might have been used, but the 
 
 Figure .5. — Carved antler. 
 
 specimen, like the two wooden faces [Figs. 3 and 4J, gives 
 the impression of the use of a single and more effective 
 tool than any stone implement could possibly be. The face 
 is modelled with comparative accuracy and the addition, 
 
38 
 
 admirably represented, Oif the tail of a rattlesnake suggests 
 that we have in it an object that meant more to its owner 
 than mere personal adornment. Speculation on this line, 
 however, is without demonstrable result. As in many an^ 
 other line of investigation, we can imagine a great deal and 
 prove nothing. 
 
 That the Lenni Lenapie were artistic in temperament, 
 however faulty the results, from our standpoint, is shown 
 by other products than such representations of the human- 
 face — excluding Fig. i, the "Sphinx" — for accuracy of or- 
 nate design is evidence in Figure 6. 
 
 Figure 6. — Potsherd showing artistic decoration. 
 
 If the initial markings on pottery was simply a line, or 
 two or three of them, as the lumberman's marks on his logs, 
 to denote ownership, it can be seen how this gradually be- 
 came not a mere matter of convenience, but of taste, and 
 that which _was eminently prosaic at the start became later 
 really poetical. Figure 6 illustrates this. It is a frargment 
 of the rimi or neck of a vessel probably of a gallon capacity. 
 One can readily see that this design continued around the 
 rim would have a very pleasing effect, and is far too elab- 
 
39 
 
 orate for mere ownership indication, and yet is of a char- 
 acter that puts aside all suggestion of significance of a 
 symbolic diaracter. It is simply Indian fancy and much 
 more artistic than the blue stripe encircling yellow earthen- 
 ^vare bowls that used to be common in the kitchen. 
 
 That the application of pigments to clay did not occur 
 to the Lenapean potter is the more strange, considering 
 how liberally they applied it to themselves. The source of 
 supply was near at hand, for in the Columbia gravel area, 
 particularly near the writer's home, are found thousands 
 of limonitic concretions, which are filled with an almost im- 
 palpable powder, white, yellow, vermillion, green, blue, 
 brownish-purple and black. These powders proved to be 
 excellent pigments, even if rubbed dry upon the skin, and 
 as I have found by experience, "pertinaciously persistent" 
 when mixed with grease. There is no more common relic 
 of the Indian on one-time village sites, and occasionally 
 among grave-contents than the "shells" of these concre- 
 t,ions, broken for sake of the contents. Yet these colors, as 
 applied by the Indian, were not permanent. I have never 
 found a relic that retained a trace of them, or detected its 
 evidence in any grave that I have examined. Many stones 
 utilized by them were sufificiently porous to have absorbed 
 the color and retain it, as would their pottery. Paint, 
 therefore, appears to have been applied only to the Indian's 
 person and his perishable effects. 
 
 Brinton [The Lenape and their Legends, p. 53] records: 
 "The paints and dyes used by the Lenape and neighboring 
 Indians were derived both from the mineral and vegetable 
 realms. From the former they obtained red, white and blue 
 clays, which were in such extensive demand that the vicinity 
 of those streams in New Castle county, Delaware, which 
 are now called White Qay Creek and Red Clay Creek, was 
 widely known to the natives as Walmnink, the Place of 
 Paint." 
 
40 
 
 The Lenape in quest of paint, dwelling here in the valley 
 of the Delaware, need not to go so far from home for his 
 colored clays, as they abound here of more than the three 
 colors mentioned by Brinton and are so near the surface in 
 places that no labor was needed to procure any reasonable 
 supply. [It is this exposed clay that supplied the material 
 for those "red bands" in the "ydlow drift" which are such 
 a suggestive feature in the problem of the antiquity of arti- 
 facts lying beneath them.j 
 
 Concerning Indian paints Brinton further states: "The 
 vegetable world supplied a variety of dyes in the colored 
 juices of plants. These were mixed with the acid juice of 
 the wild, sweet-scented crabapple (Pyriis coronaria; in 
 Lenape, tomibic' ancdl) , to fix the dye. 
 
 "A red was yielded by the root of the Scmguinaria Canch 
 densis, still called Indian paint root ; an orange by the root 
 of Phytolacca decandra, the poke or pocoon ; a yellow by the 
 root of Hydrastis Canadensis; a black by a mixture of 
 sumac and white walnut bark." [For further information 
 on this subject see Martin: Account of Principal Dyes 
 of American Indians. Transactions. Amer. Philosophical 
 Society, ist series, vol. III., pp. 222, et seq.] 
 
 Brilliant color, symmetry and fairly effectual accuracy 
 occasionally obtained, it is not strange that in time an artist 
 appeared among these people equal to the modelling of 
 the "Sphinx" and certain other creditable productions, such, 
 at least, as the carved antler described. 
 
 When we glance over a series of celts, or grooved axes, it 
 will be noticed that symmetry is characteristic of them as 
 a class. When the selected stone — ^usually a water-worn 
 pebble or cobble — ^had some trifling inequality that did not 
 interfere with efficacy it was pecked away, and frequently 
 the entire surface was polished, when the natural surface 
 was all that utility called for. Such expenditure of labor 
 
41 
 
 seems to have been to mieet the demands of the aesthetic 
 sense. Certainly the polished celt, that cosmopolitan form 
 of stone implement, never offends the eye by reason of 
 indifference on the part of the fabricator; yet given the 
 sharp, cutting edge and a comparatively smooth surface 
 and every requirement as a tool is met. They vary indefi- 
 nitely as to size and detail of finish, and while the type may 
 be said to be oval in section and sometimes nearly cylindri- 
 ■cal, others are flat and thin, such as figure 7, a pattern very 
 unusual in the valley of the Delaware. It was one of half 
 a dozen found buried together, and no one quite the dupli- 
 cate of the others. They were within the limit of the 
 ■"yellow drift," but a hole had evidently been dug for their 
 reception, as the character of the surrounding earth clearly 
 showed. The purpose of such an implement is not clear. It 
 bears no trace of having ever been been used ; no straise or 
 sand-scratches, showing contact with the ground, or any 
 abrasions from violent contact with any substance as hard 
 as itself. Fragments of celts like this I have never seen. 
 
 Somewhat similar, yet in one respect quite different, is 
 figure 8, which is of coarser material, not polished, and with 
 short wing-like projections from each side of the blade. 
 The purpose of this is not apparent. This is quite a local 
 form, I think. I have seen perhaps a dozen, all found 
 singly, associated with the ordinary forms of Indian imple- 
 inents. This, like the preceding, if originally chipped from 
 a mass of stone, has subsequently been so rubbed down that 
 no trace of the original work upon them is now traceable. 
 While abundant throughout the region here mentioned, the 
 Lenape Land of my researches, celts of the common pat- 
 terns or of any of the more aberrant forms, do not occur 
 associated with the forms that are characteristic of village 
 sites. They were not used, out of preference, instead of 
 the grooved axe, but had a place of their own in the Indian 
 
Figure 7. — An unusual form of celt. Sandstone. 
 
43 
 
 economy, which is not known and probably unascertainable. 
 Why buried ? It is probable that such implements as were 
 not in constant use were concealed in this manner as a pre- 
 caution against loss or unwarrantable appropriation. If so, 
 it would seem applicable to every form of implement, not 
 perishable, but these caches are not a feature of the distribu- 
 tion, at present, of all artifacts. I have knowledge of but 
 one cache of grooved axes. It is of some interest that 
 within a few rods of where figure 7 was found a very large 
 number of celts of the ordinary pattern, oval in section, were 
 discovered. It would seem as if the high land about the 
 first considerable creek south of Trenton, N. J., was the 
 home of implement makers. 
 
 Again, on this point, I quote Brinton (q. v. p. 43) : "The 
 Sanhicans occupied the Delaware shore at the Falls, near 
 where Trenton now stands * * * (they) were * * * 
 tindoubtedly Lenape. Campanius, who quotes the name of 
 the place in 1642, classes them as such. * * * Their 
 name has lost its first syllable. It should be assanhican 
 * * * from achsin, or, in the New Jersey dialect, assun, 
 a stone, and Mean, an instrument. They were distinctively 
 'the stone implement people.' 
 
 "This is plainly with reference to their manufactures near 
 Trenton." 
 
 Not only was it the manufacturers' headquarters, but 
 here were skilled craftsmen that produced artifacts of un- 
 excelled workmanship, and as the collector goes farther 
 and farther afield, the relics are of ruder finish, until in the 
 southern end of the state, or below Greenwich, in Cum- 
 berland county, a new field is entered, where excellence in 
 workmanship is again noticeable; but no one locality in the 
 state is as remarkable for general excellence of the stone 
 implements found therein as between Trenton and Borden- 
 town, on the New Jersey side of the river. This explains 
 
44 
 
 :■■'".■■■*? 
 
 
 
 ':■::& 
 
 'h:'t-( 
 
 Figure 5.— Celt or adze. Stone. 
 
45 
 
 why here was their most important town and why in the- 
 (to them) sad days of European invasion they still clung 
 to it, although the Dutch and Swedes were not ideal neigh- 
 bors from their point of view, and it was for this reason, 
 doubtless, that the so-called founder of Trenton, Mahlon 
 Stacy, came as late as 1680, and erected a mill near the 
 mouth of the Assunpink Creek. He came into no unbroken 
 wilderness, but a long-settled country, and as late as 1703, 
 Tedyuscung was born here, "that great chief" who was so 
 prominent at the Conference at Easton in 1757. 
 
 Figure p. — Ceremonial object — Baton head. Stone. 
 
 The eye of the artist, though untrained from our point 
 of view, is well in evidence when we come to consider a. 
 group of polished stone implements that are probably cor- 
 rectly described, though indefinitely, as "Ceremonial." The 
 term "Problematical," now in common use, simply asserts 
 the ignorance of those who use it. Figure 9 represents an 
 unusual form, as these objects occur in the valley of the- 
 Delaware. The "wings" are usually thin, broad, and not 
 so long as in this instance. If, as is probable, they are 
 derived from the double-edged axe of South and Central 
 America, their history is of much interest. If an invention 
 of the Lenape and other northern tribes, as such objects as 
 we now find, it is clearly evident they were put to no prac- 
 tical use, although the specimen here figured is of suffi- 
 ciently dense material to be effective as a weapon. The- 
 finest examples of the Ceremonial objects that I have seen 
 
46 
 
 from Lenape Land were collected in Atlantic county. The 
 beauty of the material, a chalcedony-like steatite, and ac- 
 curacy of outline were remarkable. As I have mentioned 
 elsewhere (Archceologia Nova Csesarea, II., p. 67), it is a 
 remarkable fact that no mention is made of these objects 
 by the early writers, suggesting that they were not in use 
 when the Lenape met first with the Dutch, then the Swedes, 
 and finally with the "devouring English." 
 
 In my own experience in collecting I have found, I think, 
 but five unbroken specimens and of fragments, mostly 
 halves, about one hundred. These did not, in any instance, 
 occur under such circumstances as to be suggestive in any 
 way; merely surf ace- found speciments. 
 
 If little can be said of the elaborate Ceremonial objects 
 because of our woful lack of knowledge concerning them, 
 the same is not true of natural pebbles of unusual shape 
 which quickly caught the eye of the Lenapean wanderer 
 and were gathered by him, and, it may be added with some 
 confidence, cherished by him. If small, these pebbles, 
 attractive by reason either of shape or color, were, to their 
 owner, amulets, for belief in the Evil Eye was universal 
 and in a modified fomi of superstition, these same pebbles 
 might have been carried for some specific purpose, just as 
 supposedly intelligent people now carry a horse-chestnut to 
 ward off rheumatism., or a rabbit's foot to ensure luck. 
 There probably has been no phase of humanity since the 
 lower horizon of the stone age wherein fanaticism did not 
 or does not figure, and strangely enough civilization, of 
 which we are so proud, only refines, but does not eradicate 
 it, albeit real knowledge, or that of Nature only, tends to 
 reduce it to a minimum. 
 
 That certain pebbles among contents of graves were 
 placed there as the belongings of the dead is practically 
 demonstrable because they are such as do not occur in the 
 surrounding soil, but were brought from a distance. 
 
■17 
 
 Larger stones that by reason of their shape might be 
 nade useful were selected from the gravel deposits and 
 ;arried to village sites. In no other w^ay can we explain 
 heir occurrence where no natural agency could have trans- 
 >orted them. So far as my experience goes, they are not 
 'ound unassociated with those varied forms of implements 
 
 Figure 10. — "Lap-stone.'' .L,imonite. 
 
 :haracteristic of a village site. Figure lo is an excellent 
 example of these natural forms selected for utilitarian pur- 
 Doses. It may have been an anvil or a lap-stone. It mat- 
 ers not, but the fact remains that it was found where, to 
 he very last, Indians dwelt on the bank of the river, near 
 rrenton. The specimen measures six inches by four at 
 :he base and the top four inches square and it is four 
 nches high. The weight is six pounds. As a lap-stone. 
 
48 
 
 held between the knees, for cracking nuts, it cannot be im- 
 proved. Perhaps that it was found very near an exten- 
 sive nut-orchard of the Indians may be a mere coincidence. 
 This possibility must never be overlooked. Graves were 
 shallow and the ground a:bove the bodies has been fre- 
 quently disturbed since the interment. Field mice bur- 
 row and the box tortoise buries itself beneath the roots of 
 the grass. Nothing strange then that a colonial coin or 
 one of England of pre-revolutionary date should be found, 
 among the bones of a buried Indian. It does not modern- 
 ize the burial. The wonder is that there has not been more 
 of this confusing or misleading commingling of objects old. 
 and new. Certainly, were the present surface of our fields 
 to be covered a foot or more deep with a new earth and 
 become a sandstone, the "fossils" in it would puzzle the 
 most painstaking paleontologist. Objects covering the 
 lapse of centuries from glacial man to campaign buttons 
 would be found in the same "horizon." It was not sO' 
 when the country was inhabited by children of Nature, and 
 Nature held her own and hence it is that the traces of the 
 man of the glacial gravel, of the "yellow drift" and of the 
 "black soil" have been kept, to so great an extent, separate 
 and apart. 
 
 That the occasional boulder, dropped from some ice-raft,, 
 and later, becoming a prominent object in the landscape, 
 should have been the source of folk-lore and the centre- 
 about which they gathered for superstitious mummeries, is 
 probable, and it is a surprise to me that I have never found, 
 any trace of intentional alteration of the surface, but in 
 one instance, the removal of the earth about the boulder 
 resulted in finding a compact ring of earth, blackened with 
 charcoal that suggested the Indians having been accustomed 
 to dance about the stone, with flaming torches, which would 
 explain the presence of charcoal in the well-trodden path. 
 
49 
 
 the other hand, no "standing stones," stone mounds or 
 ed areas occur in that portion of Lenape Land herein 
 sidered. For them, we must go up stream to near the 
 ction of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers. Here such 
 ditions are frequent and very naturally, considering the 
 :ndance of material. If anything akin to them ever 
 urred here, in the tide-water area, it was in the shape of 
 earth-work which has long since disappeared; and here 
 iistinction must be drawn between natural hillocks and 
 th-works. The former appear to have been used as 
 ial places, judging from the following in Barber and 
 wes' Historical Colleotions of New Jersey. Treating of 
 llingfboro, Burlington County, these authors relate that 
 1 the bank of the Rancocus stood an ancient tree which 
 V (1884) shows * * * the tumulus formed by the 
 ives of the Indians. There they used to be brought on 
 :kers, on men's shoulders, and were interred in sitting 
 itures, surrounded and defended by upright wickers." 
 is was a natural hillock into which the graves were made. 
 Mot wholly disconnected with consideration of the Lenni 
 lape and their art, as we understood the term, is their 
 itude towards so-called idols and their manufacture, 
 nton states "they rarely attempted to set forth the di- 
 ity in image. The rude representation of a human head, 
 
 in wood, small enough to be carried on the person, or 
 i-size on a post, was their only idol. This was called 
 mkhoalacan." The head chief's home has been stated 
 have had the face of a grave old man cut on each door 
 t. Brinton further states : "occasionally rude represen- 
 ons of the human head, chipped out of stone, are ex- 
 ned in those parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey once 
 abited by the Lenape. These are doubtless the wsink- 
 ilacan above mentioned." [Lenape and their I^egends, 
 68.] Zeisberger in his dictionary of the Delaware In- 
 4A 
 
50 
 
 dians gives Mesink as their word for idol, but is there suf- 
 ficient warrant for the belief that these representations had 
 any significance such as we give to our word idol? It is 
 so natural for us, with our anthropomorphic ideas concern- 
 ing the supernatural, to assume that the Lenapean attitude 
 towards this hopelessly undemonstrable subject, was the 
 same as ours. The Indian possibly was not concerned with 
 anything more mysterious than an attempt to retain the 
 goodwill of the ghost of his grandfather. 
 
 Figure ii. — Head of Idol, from Monmouth County, New Jersey. 
 
 Figure 1 1 represents an example of a so-called Idol from 
 New Jersey. It is carved from an indurated clay-stone 
 from the cretaceous plastic clay cliffs on the shore of Rari- 
 tan bay, near Keyport, New Jersey. The height of this 
 fragmentary carving is five and one-half inches; the 
 breadth, four and one-eighth. 
 
 Surprising skill in other directions was not uncommon, 
 but, because of the character of its product, is less likely to 
 attract attention. It is one thing to make an implement that 
 will meet its purpose, and another to so shape and finish it 
 that the object pleases the eye as well as fulfill the demands 
 made upon it. The manipulation of jasper and quartz was 
 brought to perfection by the Lenni Lenape. There were 
 those among them, did they see fit, who could chip this re- 
 sistant rock to any desired shape and give to it a sharpness 
 
51 
 
 ;)oint and a cutting edge that no mechanician of to-day- 
 Id approach. "Sharp as a needle" is no extravagance of 
 :ription as applied to many an arrowhead that I have 
 tiered. 
 
 Evidences of advance in skill, which did not so forcibly 
 >ress me when I penned an earlier publication/ more 
 tematic research shows may be traced in some localities 
 t have been practically undisturbed since Indian occupa- 
 1. Progress in such directions is impracticable unless a 
 pie are permanently settled, and when we survey the 
 idiwork of their several craftsmen — ^for specialization 
 occupation had become established — iwe can arrive at no 
 er conclusion than that these people reached Scheyichbi 
 ew Jersey) so long ago that all attempts to ascertain the 
 cise or approximate date are hopeless. 
 '.t is evident that the armature of the shafts of both spear 
 1 arrow might have been more simple than they were, 
 1 yet fully as effective. Much reason lies in the varied 
 ipes of arrow-points, if the original shape of the flake or 
 p of jasper, quartz or argillite had any determining in- 
 duce, but this does not apply with the same force to the 
 ar-head, -which was, I think, predetermined as to its form 
 the man who made it. There has been some discussion 
 to how far the Lenni Lenape were spear-men as well as 
 v-men. Every man was an archer, but was he equally 
 adept in thrusting a spear or launching a javelin with 
 :rring aim? Those who earliest saw the Indians are 
 nt on this point, although Brinton quotes Relatio Itineris 
 \^arylandiam to effect that the Susquehannocks employed 
 1 weapon "a strong and light spear of locust wood." 
 The reported use of the shield by Bishop Ettwein (Bulle- 
 of the Pa. Hist. Soc, 1848, p. 32) has more, or as much. 
 
 Vrchaeologia Nova Cassarea, I, p. 65. 1907. 
 
52 
 
 bearing on the use of the bow as of that of spears, yet spears 
 were once, if not always, in use, as the abundance of stone 
 heads testifies, and the Lenape language has its bearing on 
 the subject. Brinton speaks of the tanganadun in "Leg- 
 ends," and gives tanganikan and tangandikan in the Brinton 
 and Anthony "Lenape-EngHsh Dictionary." Zeisberger 
 has no word for "spear," but gives Pepachkhamatunk, a 
 lance. 
 
 As a large, sharpened stone attached to the end of a long 
 stick, and as a weapon, wielded by the hand, the spear, 
 being far the simpler, foreran the bow. If, then, it can be 
 shown that the use of the bow originated among the Lenape- 
 or their ancestors, on this continent, which is highly improb- 
 able, it might explain, in a way, the comparatively small 
 number of spears as compared with arrows; the proportion 
 not being, from any tabulation of relics, as found in New- 
 Jersey, quite one-tenth of one per cent. It would seem that 
 the spear was largely discarded for the bow and arrow for 
 a long time prior to the introduction of firearms. They 
 might, indeed, have become merely insignia of office, for 
 some specimens of chalcedony has been found that would, 
 illy withstand the brunt of conflict. 
 
 Figure 12 represents a less usual type of spear-head than 
 the larger and narrower blades, of which fragments are- 
 common in some limited localities, and wholly wanting in 
 others. It does not suggest a useful or effective weapon. 
 Even when newly-chipped, and sharper than now, the foe 
 or the bunted beast must have been very non-resistent to 
 be seriously wounded by it. 
 
 Interest centers in this specimen because of its being one 
 of a very large number, mostly broken, and confined to a 
 very small area — a field of about nine acres in extent. As. 
 little else of Indian origin was found with them, it gave 
 rise to the impression of a battle here. As there was no 
 
53 
 
 •other weapon found, and the contending "armies" must 
 have been armed identically, it is quite apparent that the 
 
 Figure i^.— Flint spear-head. 
 
 true explanation is that here had been a cache of some three 
 or four hundred of these spear-heads that had been scattered 
 
54 
 
 in colonial days, when the field was cultivated. Abandoned 
 later, it had its second growth of timber, which, being felled 
 and the land again put under the plow for the second time, 
 exposed these specimens. 
 
 It is well, here, to refer in some detail to the ascertain- 
 able history of the surface of the ground now under cultiva- 
 tion in the immediate valley of the river. The original 
 settlers were by no means intelligent farmers. They were 
 too eager to acquire wealth, and so took all they could from 
 the earth, and put nothing back. Many a clearing soon be- 
 came barren, was abandoned, and subsequently became over- 
 grown with shrubbery and some tree-growth. This was- 
 cut off in time, the shrubbery grubbed up, and the land re- 
 planted. Is it any wonder then that some fields, as they 
 now are, are exasperatingly contradictory from: the arch- 
 seological standpoint? An examination of some old docu- 
 ments with reference to land among the earliest cultivated, 
 shows that some fields were twice abandoned before intel- 
 ligent methods were adopted; all of which explains the 
 occasional discovery of Colonial pewter buttons when dig- 
 ging a well or a cellar, and which is always heralded by 
 the crass ignorance of the newspaper reporter as a proof 
 that no dependable trace of antiquity has ever been ob- 
 tained. O'f course, fanaticism clutches at all such "dis- 
 coveries" with childish glee. 
 
 It is only where the plough has never tuirned a furrow, 
 that the archaeologist is on absolutely safe ground, or when 
 he digs much deeper than the ploughshare ever reached. 
 The immediate banks of the inland streamis, which since 
 the day of the Indian have been protected by forest 
 growth, are "certain" grounds into which to probe, and 
 with abundant confidence, notwithstanding the forbidding 
 frown of the geologist, who is all enterprise and sanity, 
 when fossils are to be found, but listless and illogical when 
 there is a rumor of "relics" in the air. 
 
55 
 
 The one familiar form of aboriginal artifact, recognized 
 at a glance, even by those who know of Indians through 
 
 Figure IS. — Jasper arrow-points of ordinary patterns. 
 
 hearsay only, is the carefully clipped quartz, chert, jasper 
 or argillite arrow-point. Their name provides that knowl- 
 
56 
 
 edge which is necessary. They are evidence of the use of 
 the bow as a weapon, but more largely as a hunting im- 
 plement. Als relics of the one-time stone-age hunter, 
 enough has been written to meet the dem;ands of the most 
 insistent, and attention is here called to them with regard 
 to certain conditions of their distribution. Figure 13 rep- 
 resents a group of the common patterns. 
 
 Considering the use to which they were put, it is natural 
 to think of their fairly uniform distribution, but I have 
 not found such to be the case. It is true, that every acre 
 of land in New Jersey is likely to add at least a single 
 specimen to the collector's hoard, and if the ground could 
 be :run through a sieve, probably another or a couple might 
 be gathered; on the other band, I have gathered over a 
 thousand from a five-acre plot, nor exhausted the locality, 
 as crthers on the same quest, at other times, have gathered 
 from the same acreage two or three times as many more 
 As scattered points, lost by the hunter, in as much as all 
 ground except village sites and corn fields, was hunting 
 ground, I have always thought they should be more 
 abmidant, for as single specimens, here and there, they are 
 readily explained. 
 
 Only the head of an arrow, 
 
 Here in the barren sand; 
 What of the bow and archer. 
 
 This trifling weapon, planned? 
 
 Where in the forest fastness, 
 
 Where on the open plain, 
 Where in the river's valley. 
 
 Does trace of him remain? 
 
 Silent the shout of triumph. 
 
 Silent the dying groan, 
 Victor, alike with vanquished, 
 
 Long centuries a-gone. 
 
57 
 
 Only the head of an arrow, 
 
 Where is the game it slew? 
 Weary beast that bit the dust, 
 
 The swiftest bird that flew. 
 
 Only the head of an arrow. 
 
 But never the game it slew; 
 Only the sand about it 
 
 And air it hurtled through. 
 
 Only the head of an arrow, 
 
 So deftly wrought in stone. 
 But not the hand that shaped it 
 
 Or cunning tool of bone. 
 
 The sand here tells no story, 
 
 The arrow, too, is mute; 
 Let fancy weave a legend. 
 
 Though time the tale refute. 
 
 It is the marvelous abundance of arrow-points in cir- 
 cumscribed localities that is difficult to explain. If asso- 
 ciated with chips, unfinished and broken specimens, we have 
 evidence of an arrow-maker's workshop, but these are few 
 and scattered, while areas are known to me, as to others, 
 where only the finished point is fotind and in great abund- 
 ance, every year's plowing bringing a new "crop" to the 
 surface. A solution of the problem, not satisfactory to 
 myself, but the only one I can suggest, is, that the Indians 
 had here a treasury or storehouse of these points, which 
 was destroyed when the coimtry was deforested and by 
 subsequent up-turning's of the soil, in cultivating the land, 
 the scattering became more and more pronounced. That 
 this should happen is not impossible, certainly. I recall 
 finding' a half of a ceremonial object of unusual pattern 
 and material, and several years later finding the other half, 
 and the broken surfaces were not so abraded as to prevent 
 a perfect restoration of the specimen. On the other hand. 
 
58 
 
 while discoveries are continually made of "blades," discs 
 and oval "knives," I have never learned of the discovery of 
 a cache of arrow-points, or of those other small jasper im- 
 plements, the drill and the scraper. 
 
 In these, the drill and scraper, we have implements that 
 are wholly of domestic purport and supposedly, should oc- 
 cur only in village or wigwam sites. This is true of prob- 
 ably ninety per cent, of them. It certainly is in my own 
 
 Figure 14. — Jasper drills of ordinary forms. 
 
 experience in collecting. Figure 14 represents three ex- 
 amples of these objects as we generally find them, but there 
 are a dozen variations in the shaping of the base of the im- 
 plement. Of three or four thousand that I have found, 
 few are perfect, and not half a dozen that show any sign 
 of use. This fact has brought up the question whether 
 they really were what the comlmon name for them indi- 
 cates. That they had no other use is possible, and yet it 
 is difficult to see in the bases of some of themi anything but 
 a hindrance, and certainly none such could have been used 
 with the bow-drill apparatus. 
 
 As a domestic implement, even on the site of a village that 
 had been long occupied, we would expect to find but few 
 
59 
 
 examples, and these broken and therefore discarded. It is 
 otherwise in the valley of the Delaware, near the head of 
 tide-water. Small areas are, or were, known for the great 
 numbers of these implements, and it is again suggested that 
 these drills were made here for distribution. For drilling 
 thin discs of stone, such as we find in considerable abun- 
 dance, thej'^ do not possess any advantage that I can de- 
 termine, or any chance flake of silicious stone that has a 
 point. I have perforated many such pieces of slate and 
 steatite readily and quickly with a flake and always found 
 the carefully chipped drill rather an unsatisfactory tool. 
 
 Figure ij. — ^Jasper scrapers of usual patterns. 
 
 The scraper (Figure 15) is much more common than the 
 drill in the region whereof I have been treating. More 
 skins were cleaned for clothing than pebbles were per- 
 forated for ornaments, and so the scraper is almost as com- 
 mon as arrow-points where there has once been an Indian 
 village. As in the case of drills, their phenomenal abundance 
 in circiunscribed areas indicates they were made there, for 
 here, at the head of tide- water, was the grand centre of 
 implement manufacture. The variation in shape is pro- 
 
6o 
 
 nounced, and for this no reason is apparent, as the elaborated 
 forms possess no advantage over the simple flake with its 
 carefully bevelled edge. Occasionally a specimen is found 
 that distinctly shows signs of wear, but the vast majority 
 have no mark upon them suggesting they had ever been 
 handled since they left the workshop of the maker. Some 
 are very small, yet perfectly worked, and this is true also 
 of the jasper drills. Their purpose is problematical. While 
 the smallest drills often have an elaborate base, notched or 
 barbed, the diminutive scrapers are flakes only with such 
 secondary chipping as was necessary to give them a "scrap- 
 ing" edge. I have gathered specimens less than an inch in 
 length. 
 
 A word may well be added here concerning one form of 
 chipped implement, usually and properly referred to the In- 
 dian, which is quite as common as the arrow-point, but far 
 less frequently found in- unbroken condition. Figure i6 
 represents an average example of these "blades," as they 
 have been called, and their history linked to the "rejects" on 
 the river shore, or true palaeolithic implements. As "trim- 
 ming sites" never materialized and all other "missing links" 
 remain missing, the whole subject is now one no longer seri- 
 ously considered. 
 
 There are twO' conditions under which these implements 
 occur that are of interest. They are more widely spread than 
 ^ny other form, not excepting the axe, celt or arrow-point; 
 and they ocur in caches, and these deposits must have been 
 very abundant in pre-colonial times, if the scattered and 
 broken specimens are to be explained as the dispersion by 
 cultivation of the soil of a cache here and there. It was 
 supposed at one time that these blades had to do with the 
 cultivation of maize and melons, but since 1881, when this 
 view was expressed (Abbott, Primitive Industry, p. 220), I 
 have found so many hundreds of these objects that I am 
 
6i 
 
 now convinced that they were never put to any iise, as a re- 
 cent examination of over one thousand in collections made 
 by different collectors failed to show any unmistakable 
 traces of use. Not one was striated, worn away at any point 
 or was hand-polished. They are finished objects, it is cer- 
 tain, for no one has ever found a specimen that had been 
 modified in the direction of converting it into another form. 
 
 An examination of a series of these obj,ects, as cached, 
 shows that no collection in the valley of the Delaware is ex- 
 clusively of one material. The triassic red shale, slate, 
 chert, as well as argillite, was used, and in some caches ex- 
 amined what appeared to be argillite at first glance was in 
 no instance that material. Rock, much more easily chipped 
 than argillite, was usually used, and I have never found 
 one of these blades, or a fragment of one, that,, if argillite,. 
 was decdmposed to anything like the extent of many an 
 arrow-point, knife or larger implement. 
 
 It is highly probable that, as has been suggested (Hand- 
 book of American Indians, p. 179), these caches have to 
 do with mortuary customs or rites that became established 
 through the diseased imagination of some one-time leader, 
 but we know too little of the psycholoigy of the Indian to 
 venture further than to merely suggest. These bladesi, like- 
 some points in archaeology, had better be left for the future 
 student to ponder over. As it is, because so little is known 
 about them, so much has been said. 
 
 The polished slate knife, semi-lunar in shape and either 
 with perforations for attaching the blade to the handle, or 
 with a back of the same material, but twice or three times 
 as thick as the blade, is a form of implement so common in 
 the valley of the Delaware, from the head of tide-water to 
 the sea, that it calls for more than' passing mention. It is 
 essentially a domestic or household implement. It is desig- 
 nated as the woman's knife. In Rink's "Tales and Tradi- 
 
62 
 
 tions of the Eskimo," one is figured in the frontispiece of 
 this most interesting and instructive work. In 1881, when 
 I published my "Primitive Industry," I was inclined to be- 
 
 Figure 16. — Example of the "cached" argillite implements so common 
 
 everywhere. 
 
 lieve that these knives were more abundant in New England 
 than in New Jersey, but this is quite a matter of doubt now. 
 While found throughout the State, as I have seen examples 
 
63 
 
 irom every county, they are a prominent feature of the 
 ■coastal plain, and village sites near the sea or in the imme- 
 diate valleys of the main rivers never lack them. They are 
 not familiar to many collectors for the simple reason that as 
 fragments they have been overlooked. The suggestion that 
 they were largely used in cutting large fish or the blubber 
 from stranded cetaceans sounds well, but, as a woman's 
 knife, they seem to come as well under the class of house- 
 hold utensils for cutting anything that the material could 
 be made to cut. Figure 17 represents an average example 
 •of this form of knife. 
 
 x\s an Eskimo form of knife, the question may be asked, 
 
 Figure 17. — "Eskimo" pattern of slate knife, common in Delaware River 
 
 Valley. 
 
 "Were they introduced among the Lenni Lenape as a conse- 
 quence of the latter wandering as far north as the St. Law- 
 rence or beyond, or did the Eskimo range along the Atlantic 
 coast as far south as New England and New Jersey? If 
 the Lenni Lenape were once in contact with the Eskimo in 
 the distant northeast this knife might have been in common 
 use among the two peoples, but when the Lenape wandered 
 west and circled about, and some of them came eastward, 
 they do not appear to have carried this pattern of knife 
 -with them. It may, on the other hand, be an independent 
 Lenapean invention, or copied from Iroquois. It is useless 
 to conjecture, and now the most interesting fact connected 
 
64 
 
 with them is their abundance in the southern half of New 
 Jersey. Here they were certainly in constant use. I have 
 seen fragments of a dozen or more picked from a single 
 shell heap, and where they seem most abundant, there, ia 
 Indian times, fish were extremely abundant, and we know 
 that the Lenni Lenape had many devices for taking them. 
 
 We have but to glance at the map of New Jersey, or far 
 better at the old colonial maps of more than a century ago,, 
 to see how thoroughly watered was this Lenape land in the 
 days of their possession of the soil; and these people had 
 found not only every river and creek but modest inland, 
 forest-hidden brook and had given to each a name and- 
 finally left upon their banks, imperishable evidence of their 
 one-time presence. Pottery tells the story and the asso- 
 ciated ashes and charcoal and fragments of burnt bone are 
 eloquent oi other days, of another people and of Nature 
 in her glory. It is these traces of small, backwoods settle- 
 ments, as we may call them, that tell us a great deal more of 
 these people, in some respects, than do the traces of the 
 Lenapean metropolis on the Delaware at the termination of 
 the tidal flow of that stream. 
 
 If the historian to-day would gather from fountainhead 
 some knowledge of our colonial period, he must go to the 
 few remaining colonial houses and see there the furniture 
 and its surroundings in use when the Georges were our 
 kings. So, too, a village site on the bank of some name- 
 less inland brook gives us the handicraft of the people, who, 
 dependent on themselves, made what they needed and made 
 it well or shiftlessly, as they were indolent or ambitious. 
 All this was less the case at the metropolis, as the riverside 
 town surely was, for this was constantly visited by Indians 
 from a distance and was a centre of Indian interests, politi- 
 cal and commercial, long before it became the frontier 
 trading post of the Dutch settlers at Manahatta. 
 
On these smaller and in some instances nearly obliterated 
 inland streams, the traces of one-time settlement may be 
 scanty, consisting even of those of one family or of one 
 lonely hunter who preferred solitude to society- — the ex- 
 change, to-day, is often a wise one. Following the bank 
 of some of these wild streams, for they are to-day, in places, 
 as unaffected by civilized methods of torturing Nature as 
 during the Lenapean regime, we see no traces on the sur- 
 face, no clearing along the path, no suggestion of a pecu- 
 liarly fitting landing place for the absolutely necessary 
 canoe. It is only by chance that at some slight scarring of 
 the turf, perhaps it is the earth thrown out by a burrowing 
 animal, that an artifact is brought to light. A single ob- 
 ject dropped by its original owner, proves all the evi- 
 dence we need that here Indians had lived. All precon- 
 ceived notions, now, to the winds; it is a spade that is 
 needed, not a pen. The object is of first importance, and 
 when some wigwam site is thus exposed, what do we find? 
 Charcoal, burnt bone, potsherds and artifacts. These last 
 will be the same in pattern, if not in finish, as we have seen 
 a thousand times before, and removed from their resting 
 place, mean as little as the average label or the stereo- 
 typed generalities of a curator's report. 
 
 But when we come to consider how they occur, there is 
 a good deal of light thrown on the subject. They rest upon 
 clean sand that is darkened by exceedingly small grains of 
 charcoal and there is always one spot where the earth has 
 been burned until it is brick-like and it is over this that leaf- 
 mold has accumulated until it has become a compact black 
 soil and all tactual traces of vegetation have disappeared, 
 and this has progressed since the abandonment of the site, 
 until this turf is often many inches thick. Such soil accu- 
 mulation was in steady progress during the Lenapean occu- 
 pation and it is only during this period that the Lenape 
 5 A 
 
66 
 
 were present. When almost barren sands were the princi- 
 pal feature of the territory and tree growth limited to a 
 few evergreens, the Lenape had not begun their eastward 
 march and the name Scheyichbi was yet to be coined. Ab- 
 solutely all that pertains to him is now a feature of what 
 is to us, the present, vegetation-sustaining surface soil. 
 By this is meant the undisturbed conditions still remaining, 
 where white man's interference has been withheld. This, 
 by no means, modernizes the Indian. What geologists call 
 "recent," usually with a contemptuous sniff, is not so very 
 new as man calculates the centuries. It is somewhat sig- 
 nificant that geologists are very chary as to statements, ex- 
 cept in a very non-committal way, as to when the "recent" 
 began. At once we see the silliness of dealing with figures. 
 Soil makes slowly, if by this is meant decomposition of 
 rock and vegetation and their intimate commingling, and 
 accumulates at one spot very slowly, seeing how it is ex- 
 posed to the action of wind and water. The summer's 
 foliage turned to dust is so thin a film the eye cannot detect 
 it, yet this di:ist of ages has built up a "soil" that nourishes 
 all annual, and many a perennial, growth. 
 
 The decay of forest growths is also to be considered. 
 Peter Kalm,i in 1749, while sojourning in Lenape Land, 
 recorded concerning the "growth" of the "black soil," 
 writes : "Old trees die away continually, and are succeeded 
 by a young generation. Those which are thrown down ly 
 on the ground and putrefy, sooner or later, and by that 
 means encrease the black soil, into which the leaves are like- 
 wise finally changed." It is not then to be wondered at 
 that occasionally we read of the occurrence of Indian arti- 
 facts at depths that seem improbable. The ever-accumu- 
 lating "black soil" filled in the hollows as well as thinly 
 
 '"Travels into North America," by Peter Kalm (Forster's transla- 
 tion), I^ondon, 1771. Vol. II, p. 19. 
 
67 
 
 capped the higher ground and why not into some natural 
 •depression should have fallen aii artifact to be subsequently 
 covered, seeing that wind, even in a forest is an effective 
 displacing agent of soil in process of formation and water 
 •one of even greater power. There is nothing strange, 
 therefore, in Kalm's reference to a wooden spoon exhumed 
 from a depth of twenty feet and to "such a trowel (celt?) 
 as the Indians make use of." 
 
 Lenape land was far more up-hill and down-dale then 
 than now. Again it is fitting to quote Kalm, who was wise 
 enough to ask questions and not depend wholly on his own 
 observations. Old Swedes informed him of such changes 
 as they had knowledge of and the story of one is practically 
 the story of them all. 
 
 "One of the Swedes, called King, who was above fifty 
 years of age, was convinced that about this time (Novem- 
 ber, 1748) the little lakes, brooks, springs and rivers had 
 much less water than they had when he was a boy. He 
 could mention several lakes on which people went in large 
 boats in his youth, and had sufficient water even in the hot- 
 test summers; but now, they were either entirely dried up, 
 •or for the greatest part ; and in the latter case all the water 
 was lost in summer." 
 
 "Peter Rambo, a man who was near sixty years of age, 
 assured me * * * ^h^t the water in rivers was still 
 as high as it used to be, as far back as memory could reach ; 
 but little lakes, ponds and waters in marshes are visibly 
 -decreased, and many of them dried up." 
 
 This in 1748 when Lenape land had not been wholly 
 wrested from Nature, so it need not now, one hundred and 
 sixty-three years later, excite surprise when the statement 
 is made that no Indian, if resurrected, could find the site of 
 his old home, except it were on the bank of the river or the 
 largest of the inland streams, and often, not then. Ponds, 
 
68 
 
 brooks and springs dried up, and it was by them that many- 
 an Indian family lived. We know this, because, to-day^ 
 in localities apparently as level as a table top, we find faint 
 traces of a depression and a darker soil immediately about 
 and in it and here are potsherds and artifacts. To tell the 
 story of such a spot is no difficult task. A spring here, the 
 source of a tiny brook and hidden in the depth of the forest. 
 Perhaps it was an open glade, not an acre or more in ex- 
 tent and the site of an Indian home. Now we have a 
 sunny, treeless field with scarcely a trace of the original 
 depression in the general surface, and a slightly darker 
 tint of the soil, the sole evidence of other physical condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Since general deforesting, while the surface soil still 
 accumulates in one sense, it does not up-build the surface. 
 Wlind and water carry more to the river, where it is lost 
 forever, than any season can produce. We are slowly and 
 surely being washed and blown away, and many an area is 
 barren that was fertile when pressed by the moccasined 
 feet of a Lenapean hunter or warrior. 
 
 A change other than that already noted has also its sig- 
 nificance. Kalm^ writes : "All the old Swedes and English- 
 men born in America whom I ever questioned, asserted 
 that there were not near so many birds fit for eating at 
 present, as there used to be when they were children, and 
 that their decrease was visible. They even said, that they 
 had heard their fathers complain of this, in whose child- 
 hood the bays, rivers and brooks were quite covered with 
 all sorts of water fowl, such as wild geese, ducks and the 
 like. But at present there is sometimes not a single bird 
 upon them. * * * 
 
 "The cause of this diminution is not difficult to find. 
 
 • Vide, Vol. I, p. 28 
 
69 
 
 Before the arrival of the Europeans, the country was un- 
 cultivated, and full of great forests. The few Indians that 
 lived here seldom disturbed the birds. * * * g^t 
 since the arrival of great crowds of Europeans, things are 
 greatly changed : the country is well peopled, and the woods 
 are cut down : the people increasing in this country, they 
 have by hunting and shooting in part extirpated the birds, 
 in part scared them away." 
 
 It is not difficult to view in imagination the Lenape land 
 of these pre-European people. With consummate skill 
 Nature gradually brought it very near to the condition of 
 the garden of oriental fable, and no sooner had the Euro- 
 pean arrived than he started it at a rapid pace in the oppo- 
 site direction. To-day, the Lenape's Scheyichbi is well- 
 nigh shorn of all its glory, but not of its interest as viewed 
 by the archaeologist, for happily the Lenape left traces of 
 his sojourn here that have not lost their meaning. Rightly 
 interpreted, we are, as I firmly believe, warranted in con- 
 cluding that long, long ago these so-called Indians discov- 
 •ered the land and went up to possess it and that it was 
 during its latest formative stage as a wilderness, if we mean 
 by that a land whereon the forest reached that perfection 
 which it ultimately attained. The Indian was a witness 
 to as great a change towards what the Dutch and Swedes 
 found on their arrival, as these people witnessed in the 
 direction of the conditions that now obtain. This means 
 centuries and not years. 
 
70 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PREHISTORIC RIVER. 
 
 HECKEWELDER, in his "History of the Indian Nations," 
 informs us that the tradition of the Delawares was to 
 the effect that, migrating eastward — ^how long the journey- 
 took no man can tell. Centuries might have elapsed twixt 
 one stage and another — ^that "at last they settled on the four 
 great rivers (which we call Delaware, Hudson, Susque- 
 hannah, Potomack), making the Delaware, to which they 
 gave the name of Lenape-wihittuck^ (the river or stream of 
 the Lenape), the centre of their possessions." 
 
 We see from the above quotation that the Delaware river 
 played an important part in the career of these people — ^the 
 question of the identity of this river appears not to have 
 been exploited by the theoretical archseologists who have 
 never seen it — and so important a part that it is fitting that 
 the closest scrutiny should be given to every trace of early 
 man that has escaped the destructive tread of the invading 
 European. In the Indians' day this river was an important 
 feature in the scheme of Nature, as it is now in the scheme 
 of man. It drained the forests in the day of its glory as 
 it is now the_sewer,of "many cities in its day of shame. 
 
 It may safely be stated>that from the rocky barrier that 
 shuts out the tide aTTfenton, eastward to Cape May, there 
 is not a rod of shore or a landmark that an Indian, even of 
 Colonial times, would recognize were he brought back to 
 life. The river itself would not seem the same. Its filthy 
 waters, absence of aquatic life and general aspect of deso- 
 
 ' Heckewelder, Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc, Vol. Ill, p. 388. 
 
71 
 
 lation, would be as inexplicable to him as it would be 
 deplorable. It is the same river only in the sense that water 
 still flows in practically the same channel, and the tide 
 reaches, but cannot pass, the uplifted rocks at the "ffalles," 
 as the Colonists quaintly called it. It was sookpehellen one 
 day, perhaps, but for long the water has not had far to fall, 
 and when but little above its ordinary stage, the evidence of 
 any barrier is obliterated. That no marked change has 
 taken place at this point since or during the Lenapean period 
 is quite probable, and so, if anywhere, the revived ancient 
 redman might recognize these rocks as those upon which he 
 had stood when fishing, or against which he had unwittingly 
 run his canoe and had had to swim for his life as a con- 
 sequence. 
 
 Geologically considered, the river is now a remnant. How 
 much less so when discovered by the Lenape is an open 
 question. Many changes, perhaps, of minor consequence 
 are undeniable. Even a century ago it was hemmed in by 
 forests for many a mile from its source, and two centuries 
 ago it was between wooded slopes that it met the tide at 
 the "ffalles." In 1748 Kalm^ went from Philadelphia to 
 Trenton in "a small yacht" and was obliged to come tO' 
 anchor "about seven miles from Trenton." He records that 
 "the river Delaware was very narrow here." For at least 
 a century it has been very broad here, the river having 
 either carried off a good deal of the ancient shore line of 
 the Pennsylvania side or made serious inroads in the high 
 'bluff on the New Jersey side, where Crosswicks Creek 
 enters the river. The latter is far less likely the case, con- 
 sidering the formation; so a change has taken place of 
 much interest since Kalm's visit half a century earlier. 
 
 The condition to which Kalm refers applied later, a mile 
 or more up-stream, when Perriwig Island, now gone, was of 
 considerable extent and so narrowed the channel. It did so 
 
 'Vide, Vol. II, p. 220. 
 
72 
 
 until well within our own time. This unstable material, 
 sand and gravel, the sport of freshets, if not of the flowing 
 water at its ordinary stage was constantly exposed to re- 
 arrangement then as now; islands forming and disappearing 
 even in the space of an individual's life. Considering this, 
 how vain to attempt to associate the Indian with the river 
 except in the most general way. It is not strange, there- 
 fore, that it yields now practically no traces of the Indian, 
 even where the shores but a few rods inland show abundant 
 traces of wigwam . sites, camp-fires, and even of certain 
 industrial centres. Artifacts that may be a thousand years 
 old and intimately associated with those of William Penn's 
 day may occasionally occur, but they teach us nothing bear- 
 ing on the one question that is of real interest, the antiquity 
 of the people forerunning the European in this region. 
 
 To refer again to the islands in the tidal reach of the 
 river, it may be asserted positively that not all of them were 
 features of comparatively brief duration. The river always 
 has been and still is kaleidoscopic in its leisured way, but 
 some of its islands defied displacement for long periods. 
 Their origin was different. They were not at first sand- 
 bars that increased in volume until vegetation could take 
 hold and secure them against even the riotous treatment of 
 a flood. As their bases show, they were projections from 
 the main shore, cut off from it by water and moving ice 
 gaining a passage in its rear by such a freshet as still 
 occasionally occurs, when the ice of a winter gives way 
 under the pressure of melting snows. If, where an island 
 has been and there is now only a bar, and this bared only at 
 extremely low stages of the river, as often in August and 
 September, we find the compacted gravel sometimes contains 
 an artifact (always of paleolithic type), we are not to 
 assume that it is of necessity an Indian "reject" or wastrel 
 that had been gradually let down to its present resting place, 
 
73 
 
 while the soil, sand and gravel were removed little by little, 
 but may be exploited as an ancient artifact that was part and 
 parcel of the original deposit that was laid down as the last 
 act of the glacial drama or the dropping of the curtain as 
 the last act closed. Such artifacts have been frequently 
 found and their surfaces, when not greatly water-worn, is 
 akin to that of the surrounding pebbles ; a condition that has 
 been too generally overlooked in the study of what has been 
 claimed as relics of paleolithic man in the valley of the 
 Delaware. These island-base artifacts have been subjected 
 to the same conditions, had like experiences and for as long 
 a time as the day when they were left, by accident or design, 
 where they are found. All obtainable facts considered, we 
 have no more reason to reject an artifact found under these 
 conditions than to assert that one particular pebble was 
 other than the millions brought here by glacial floods in the 
 indeterminable long ago. They are as much in place, as a 
 part of the gravel whereon found, as any artifact from in- 
 land gravel overlaid by alternating strata of sand, clay and 
 g-ravel. It is claimed in the latter case, antiquity is demon- 
 strable, and so it is, but are there no other guides to a long 
 lapse of centuries ? The reasons I have given are sufficient, I 
 maintain, for why, if an artifact is ever conveniently floated 
 from off shore or down the river, is it always just such a 
 one as we recognize as the "paleolith"? When grooved 
 axes, arrow-heads and potsherds are found under like cir- 
 <:umstances, it is time to declare the views expressed unten- 
 able, and not till then. The truth is, we may be so ex- 
 cessively careful that we defeat our aims. Demanding un- 
 reasonable proof, that which is sufficient is not accorded its 
 value. Those who seek the truth they desire after such 
 fashion, never find it. 
 
 ' Vide, Vol. II, p. 220. 
 
74 
 
 No artifact in the Trenton gravel is as old as the pebbles- 
 that came from points miles distant up the river valley, but 
 are as old as the day when, as the new-found gravel stratum,, 
 they found a resting place and were gradually covered with 
 more and more sand and pebbles or some hug'e boulder from 
 the source of this deposit as a whole, the terminal moraine. 
 This is as absolutely certain as that the sun shines. There 
 has been criticism, as stated, of this assertion but not one 
 valid objection set forth. Mere denial and gross inaccuracy 
 have no argumentative value.^ Not all facts are evi- 
 dent at a glance. Some are very gradually unfolded, 
 but the average visitor ustially forgets this and so bases his 
 conclusions on a glimpse or a short season during a holiday. 
 
 Any region is a strange land until it has been dwelt in for 
 a lifetime and thousands of people die without really 
 knowing where they lived. To tread daily the surface of a 
 field or follow the winding footpath way of a tortuous val- 
 ley may ripen into an acquaintance with the more prominent 
 features of the place, but no intimacy is reached without 
 constant study all the while. Much that has been written 
 in archaeological and geological journals concerning the 
 Delaware river, in regard to evidences of man's antiquity 
 therein, are mere chapter-headings without illuminating 
 text and some of these "headings" are based on entire mis- 
 conception of the actual conditions. 
 
 The results of the recent extensive dredging of the river 
 at and near Trenton, to deepen and widen its channel, have 
 proved of much interest, as an examination of thousands of 
 cubic yards of sand and gravel was practicable, it being con- 
 veniently spread out on a level surface, as if for my benefit. 
 This material from the river did not, so far as I could dis- 
 cover, contain a single object not distinctly referable to the 
 
75 
 
 Indian and but very few of them, but an occasional pebble 
 was so far different from others that its peculiar surface 
 raised questions as to its origin. This discussion is de- 
 ferred for the present. 
 
 The one important point gained, as it seems to me, by the 
 study of the dredged material, is that the bed of the stream 
 had been gradually choked up since Indian times and the 
 sand and mud were practically all of recent depositing; that 
 is, deposited or accumulated within the period of the Euro- 
 pean settlements on the river's banks; but as the dredging 
 continued, cleaner and coarser sand and gravel were re- 
 moved that has other significance. The pebbles, water-worn 
 and of all shapes and sizes, but not noticeably large, all had 
 clean, semi-smooth surfaces that did not suggest having ever 
 been in contact with the foul water from which they were 
 taken, but rather from some of our great springs or the 
 ocean beach. There was nothing of that discoloration 
 characteristic of the gravel in situ, as where the bluff forms 
 the river's bank at the head of tidewater. This product 
 of the later dredging was the clean gravel brought hither 
 by clean water during glacial floods and paved the channel 
 from Trenton to Bordentown, some five miles, and was in 
 time covered with sand and organic matter, sustaining a 
 flourishing and varied aquatic vegetal growth, when the 
 river changed to a respectable stream and laid aside all the 
 reckless characteristics of its glacial youth. Now, in its sec- 
 ond childhood, its replies to the geologists' questions are 
 often wandering or confused, or it is the questioner that is 
 all this and the river gets the blame. At all events, if the 
 up-river gravel is steadily creeping downstream and pebbles 
 that were at the Water Gap in 1 812 are now at Bordentown, 
 in 1912, it may be asked why the contents of the crumbling 
 shores of Shawnee Island are not now scattered among the 
 sands of the flats at Bordentown or points up the river? 
 
76 
 
 If, too, as has been argued, or rather, brazenly asserted, 
 that the paleolithic artifacts from the river-bluff at Tren- 
 ton, had been carried down stream by the usual or some un- 
 usual volume of water, why is it that none should have 
 occurred in two years' search over millions of water-worn 
 pebbles, now spread out on Duck Island and the dyke a mile 
 or so below it ? 
 
 But this is not a subject that need be seriously discussed. 
 The abundant, or more strictly, not infrequent, argillite arti- 
 facts — paleolithic — from the river-bluff at Trenton, that 
 have been found in the talus and many in situ, where the face 
 -of the bluff was newly exposed through limited land-sliding, 
 came from the bluff itself, and not from its surface. It 
 should be remembered, too, that this surface is all gravel and 
 is a graded street, and the original surface, that of the 
 Indian and colonist, was removed many years ago. It is 
 really as sane to speak of the paleolith dropping from the 
 clouds as the surface. Of course, for reasons given, they 
 are not the jetsam and flotsam of unusual floods.^ 
 
 The study of the material dredged from the river and de- 
 posited on the adjoining shores, has led to the conclusion 
 that the bluff and gravel-based islands in the river were once 
 a continuous deposit, through which the river has, since 
 glacial time, cut its present channel and left an ancient one, 
 has exposed these traces of paleolithic man in its every-day 
 labor of eroding its unstable ,shores and not that it has by 
 unusual exertion gathered them, up from! distant points and 
 spread them in other localities, to the archseologist's confu- 
 sion. The lower or down-river portion of Burlington 
 Island is a case in point. This island, that has a "core" of 
 large boulders and is at its base that same gravel which is 
 the surface feature of the Pennsylvania shore opposite, and 
 
 ^ Archcelogia Nova Csesarea, III., p. 23. 
 
has a beach of pebbles not to be distinguished from the 
 gravel at Trenton, ten miles eastward, is a puzzle, geologi- 
 cally, in some respects. While detached from Pennsyl- 
 vania by a deep ship channel, it belongs thereto, structurally, 
 but is surfaced by sand and loam that are characteristic of 
 New Jersey. Archseologically, the problem of the island is- 
 dual. The ordinary Lenape artifacts are strewn over the 
 surface, and along the beach ; while in the gravel and on it 
 are paleolithic implements identical with those found in and 
 on the gravel at Trenton and on and in this same deposit at 
 various exposures in Pennsylvania, as will be noticed later. 
 
 The lower, i. e., down-river end of the island, is capped 
 with a deep deposit of "core" sand, apparently derived from 
 the New Jersey side of the river. It faces the river as a 
 bluff, twenty feet high. I can get no expression of opinion as 
 to the conditions that preceded and led to its deposition. 
 On September 25, 1892, I visited the island with R. D. 
 Salisbury and came away no wiser than when I went. Nat- 
 urally I was prepared subsequently to read his report on 
 the surface geology of the Delaware valley with a feeling 
 of having read and like Poe's "Raven," quoth I, "nothing- 
 more." If the "paleolithic" implements that have been 
 found here on the gravel, when exposed at low tide, were 
 only found here, it would be a fair presumption that they 
 came from somewhere else, if this "somewhere else" could 
 be located. Not from the surface of the island, surely, see- 
 ing they are not associated with the Indian relics that, until 
 recently, were so abundant. 
 
 The accompanying illustration. Figure 18, shows a sec- 
 tion of this great sand deposit and at its base, the true Tren- 
 ton gravel, paleolithic artifacts have been found. This 
 is only one of many instances that clearly show that to dis- 
 sociate these paleoliths from the gravel and associate them 
 with the surface soil and Lenapean time, is wholly without 
 vvrarrant. 
 
78 
 
 This conclusion, vigorously combated by students gen- 
 erally, which I reached in 1892,^ has been so amply con- 
 firmed by later studies of this locality, that if I had any 
 hesitancy at the time, it has completely vanished. It is 
 clear that Ahcient Man was familiar with the Delaware 
 river, here, before the spot was a high bluff facing the 
 
 Figure 18. — Section of sand at southwestern end of Burlington Island, 
 Delaware River. 
 
 Stream, then, as now, a wide expanse of water. A mighty 
 ■change took place betwixt man's first appearance and the 
 day of the arrival of the Lenni Lenape ; a change equal to 
 effacing the landmarks of the island as known to paleolithic 
 man ; a change that meant so much as the freshening of the 
 
 ' Arch. Explor. Del. Valley, 1894, p. 6. Ginn & Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
79 
 
 river water, and failure of the brackish water of the bay 
 from reaching so far inland, for bones of marine mammalia 
 liave been found in the eravel. 
 
 It would be a comfort to feel as confident in dealing with 
 ■some supposed evidences of man's antiquity as we well may 
 Ije in dealing with that now established fact. Ancient man 
 known to have been here thousands of years ago, there is 
 a tendency to refer to him as the author of certain objects 
 that Nature alone may have had a hand in fashioning. It 
 is marvelous what straqge shapes pebbles may acquire, 
 after a few centuries of hanging about rocks and then being 
 ■smoothed and made less angular by contact with sharp sand 
 •constantly in motion. From a large series of such unusual 
 forms, there may occasionally be selected two or three that 
 are very suggestive of other than a natural origin. These 
 are those miulti- faceted water-worn pebbles that in general 
 ■outline are of an implement-suggesting shape, and if the 
 separate facets we're defined by sharp edges, as in a spear- 
 head, then the artificial origin of the object would never be 
 •questioned. 
 
 If, as it seems to me, this is a warrantable assumption, 
 then we have in the present bed of the river, and it matters 
 not where they came from', the ordinary artifact of paleo- 
 lithic character reduced to a water-worn pebble, but with its 
 original (artificial ?) condition not wholly effaced. This 
 might not have been of much significance, considering all 
 other evidences of man's antiquity, but it is a curious co^ 
 incidence that after forty years of collecting and of famil- 
 iarity with many large collections made by others, I have 
 never seen a distinctly worn Indian relic, although thousands 
 of the artifacts attributable to the Leinape have been found 
 in the beds df streams, and the flat, notched pebbles, known 
 as "net-sinkers," from' the river have no trace of water 
 action on their chipped surfaces, yet the most recent of them 
 are more than two hundred years old. 
 
8o 
 
 Neither illustration or description is of much value in an 
 instance of this kind. The object must be held in the hand 
 and then its history is unfolded. Simply a water-worn 
 pebble now, one of millions that, to the untrained eye, varies 
 in nothing from them, but restored as has been suggested, 
 how eloquent of the past! The ancient river flowing be- 
 tween forests of Nature's fashioning; its banks resounding 
 to the cries of wild life; its waters shadowed by flights of 
 fowl ; its shallows teeming with glittering fishes ; its depths 
 concealing strange and savage forms, and man, yet as wild 
 as the beasts with which he lives. A pebble now, but, it 
 may be, a weapon then with which he was armed to defend 
 himself or wherewith to slay the creatures upon which 
 he fed. 
 
 Extreme caution may hold back many from; so bold a 
 flight of the imagination, but such a vision of the !past is 
 his, who, not rash, but rational, sees what has been as a 
 necessary condition forerunning that which is. The geolo- 
 gist cannot see fossils mierely as petrifactions. He realizes 
 that these stones were once alive, and soi may thel archseolo^- 
 gist look upon what we may call fossil weapons as once the 
 actual possession of a living man. 
 
 It is not to be overlooked that not all flood-plains are sur-^ 
 faced with a flood-plain deposit, for here in the Delaware 
 Valley, this flood-plain, at various points in its tidal flow, 
 consists of a deposit of coarse material, occasionally over- 
 flowed, that no flood in historic tim:es could have transported 
 to its present position. The periods of its submergence are 
 of short duration and at protracted intervals, so that vege- 
 tation has abuunant opportunity to secure a firm roothold. 
 If the water of any freshet is very muddy, as does not 
 always prove to be the case, a thin film of loamy sand is de- 
 posited, but succeeding rains carry much of this away and in 
 areas of many acres, like much of Penn's Manor, oppositer 
 
the New Jersey shore between Trenton and Bordentown, 
 there has not, since the deposition of the pavement-like 
 gravel, been sufficient silt accumulated to wholly conceal 
 the pebbles, small boulders and coarse sand. Now, an arti- 
 fact found here, if showing- the same surface characteristics 
 as the associated pebbles, is far more likely to be of equal 
 antiquity and not a modern or Indian impleinent because 
 found on the surface of the flood-plain of the river. It re- 
 quires something more than the mere presence of water to 
 account for the condition of the area over which that water 
 is to spread. When a freshet occurs and the volume of 
 water vastly increased, the material in the present bed of 
 of the river may be somewhat disturbed, but no freshet in 
 the memory of man has ever lifted a pebble and floated it 
 inland. To add to the pebble deposit of any flood-plain, 
 here, it would be necessary to lift a stone weighing from 
 one to five pounds at least ten feet and carry it fifty to a 
 hundred yards before it dropped to the ground. This hap- 
 pens to some light substances, perhaps, as anthracite ashes 
 or a bit of fossil coral, but not to any of the pebbles de- 
 rived from the rocks in place far up the river valley. Mud- 
 dy water, here, means nothinig, considering the effect of 
 rains and of wind when the surface becomes dry again. 
 Where there is a recent deposit dtte to excessive flow of 
 turbid water, it is always of such material as declares its 
 origin and cannot deceive, and so is really not a significant 
 factor of the! ordinary flood-plain. Sio, it is true, one "need 
 not consider them * * * except to say that anything dis- 
 closed in that field clearly belongs to the modern Indian 
 epoch" and as unnecessary as it is true, for no one ever finds 
 Indian relics in mud unless it is so old that it is indurated 
 and as much a part of the flood-plain here as are the pebbles. 
 Whatever may be true of rivers elsewhere, it is certain 
 that the Delaware has been reasonably methodical through- 
 6a 
 
82 
 
 out its career up to the date of the appearance of the Euro- 
 pean settler, when Nature resigned her charge and let the 
 river become commonplace and it has tended only in that 
 direction since that day. The flood-plain of the present 
 Delaware is the ancient bed of the pre-historic river, when 
 its waters were equal to continuously covering the area that 
 is now subject to overflow at long' intervals; and when it 
 was the bottom of a wide, lake-like expanse of water, it 
 might readily be that an ancient artifact was, 'occasionally, 
 dropped from the hand of its pre-historic owner, while he 
 was floating upon or wading in this old-time river. 
 
 An illustration di the possible respectable antiquity of 
 objects of artificial origin associated with a flood-plain is the 
 occurrence! of a series of net-sinkers or notched, flat, oval or 
 quadrangular, pebbles that have been left, after the net 
 rotted and are now firmly embedded among drift-pebbles. 
 Such a discovery is by no means uncommon, and yet theise 
 adjuncts of a net are found not on' the edge of the present 
 stream, but at a suggestive distance from it, and, bei it noted, 
 there is no more distinctly Indian implement than these 
 flat, notched pebbles. Their occurrence in numbers sug- 
 gestive of a net means the owner was fishing here and lost 
 or abandoned the net when the water covered the area to 
 such a depth and for such a length of tim.e as made fishing 
 worth the while. But why not that the net was carried in- 
 land and left at some wigwam site? If so, where aire the 
 other evidences of such site, the tell-tale charcoal especially ? 
 I have found many a dozen such net-sinkers on village 
 sites and many hundreds in the water or on flood-plains 
 where the water has been. It may be a case of "not 
 proven," but when considered with abundant other evi- 
 dence, it is more suggestive of antiquity than of a compara- 
 tively recent occurrence. 
 
83 
 
 No flood since 1680, when our records beg'in/ has made 
 fishing over a flood-plain practicable, and for how long a 
 timie befoire this the Indians were fishermen where the land 
 now is dry, can never be determined. As the material, as a 
 whole, that constitutes the periodically submerged area is 
 not to be distinguished from the glacial deposits next ad- 
 joining, to assert that all objects found in this area are re^- 
 cent or of unascertainable age, is simply absurd. Because 
 subject to overflow, it no more affects a compacted deposit 
 of gravel than it does a ledge of rock in .its proper place. 
 In a narrow gorge, tumultuous waters may play havoc with 
 Nature's orderly array, but not so on such a level, open 
 ■space as the tidal flood-plain of the Delaware river. 
 
 Flood-plains are not necessarily geologically recent, but 
 suppose those of this river are so, they may be archaeologi- 
 cally old and can rightly boast an age that should command 
 respect. Geologists may sniff at a thousand years as mil- 
 lionaires do at a nickel, but a nickel may mean a good deal 
 at times, especially when you do not possess one. 
 
 A flood-plain feature of the Delaware Valley that is of 
 much interest in connection with the question of the an- 
 tiquity of the traces of early man here, is that of such shel- 
 tered coves as were and are overflowed at times, after their 
 protracted and continued period of submergence. In such, 
 the flow of the water was always sluggish as compared with 
 that of the unobstructed and much deeper channel. These 
 •coves are now meadows, sustaining a rank vegetation and 
 vigorous tree-growth. The soil is a black, compact alluvial 
 •deposit, separable into find sand, a small percentage of clay 
 and a large proportion of decomposed vegetable matter. 
 The deposit varies from three to five feet in thickness. 
 
 ^ Letters of Mahlon Stacy : Smith's History of N. J., Burlington, N. 
 J., 176s, p. III. 
 
84 
 
 It is reasonable to suppose that when the volume of water 
 of the river decreased until only the present channel was 
 filled and the former bottom of the lake-like expansion was 
 laid bare, that traces of early man would be found thereon, 
 did man exist at that time. It has never been my good 
 fortune to discover any such traces, but in the stiff black 
 meadow miud itself, at all depths, traces, referable to the 
 Indian and his supposed immicdiate successor, ' do occur p 
 some of them at such a depth as to indicate that they date 
 back to the begiinning of the formation of the alluvium men- 
 tioned. How long it had taken this deposit to form is un- 
 determinable, but it must necessarily have been slow, for 
 periods of unusual flow of water would have a tendency to 
 carry off a portion of it, deposited when the conditions were 
 normiaJ. This accumulation of alluvium' has been in opera- 
 tion since the meadows became such and subject only to 
 occasional submergence. This accession of material is due 
 to the decomposition of the annual growth of transient vege- 
 tation, such as grass, weeds, sediges and foliage of deciduous- 
 trees, to which is added the film of mud that a freshet 
 leaves behind it when the water subsides. Such a growth- 
 of soil, gradually elevating the surface is extremely slow. 
 In October, 1903, there was, to give an instance, a phenome- 
 nal flood. The water was very muddy, and a measurable 
 film of m.ud was Idft on favorably exposed surfaces. This, 
 I estimated, after very careful examination of many such 
 "films," as not more than one one-hundred-and-twenty- 
 eighth of an inch. Did such a deposit occur annually and 
 suffer no' loss from: rain-wash or wind, it would require 
 1,536 years to build up a foot of deposit, but allow but one- 
 third of this deposit to be mud due to freshets and two- 
 thirds decomposition of vegetation, it would require 4,608' 
 years to bring the deposit to its average thickness of three- 
 feet. But the increase is not uniform and it is safe to con- 
 
85 
 
 elude that at least one- third of the material that goes to 
 make the meadow soil is lost. 
 
 One such meadow tract of about one thousand acres, with 
 which I have been long familiar, is traversed by a consider- 
 able creek and has innumerable springs, and the water flow- 
 ing from the one and trickling from the others carry some- 
 thing from the ground immediately about them, and the 
 creek was a much more considerable stream in Colonial 
 days, being then navigable. Now it is almost obliterated. 
 Also, the forest growth must not be overlooked, for there 
 were in times past trees of enormous girth that grew upon 
 the knolls, and one generation after another of shell-bark 
 hickories (Hicoria ovata) flourished here, and it is a long- 
 lived species. The knolls upon which these trees grew are 
 not the remaining vestiges of islands about which the pre- 
 historic river flowed, but indicate the general level of the 
 meadow at an earlier time, and the earth about them has 
 been washed away by occasional floods, but more by the 
 steady flow of rivulets that originate at the base of the high- 
 lands hard by and find their way to the main drainage creek 
 and to the river. 
 
 All things considered, this "modem" meadow, this un- 
 considered flood-plain, is old archseologically, if not geo^- 
 logically, if a goodly show of centuries is a recognized asset, 
 for through it are found artifacts, largely of patterns 
 ascribable to the Lenape, but deeper than the grass roots 
 are scattered objects of argillite O'f specialized forms. 
 
 It cannot fairly be assumed that all objects of human 
 origin in this meadow turf are intrusive. It is not a pelne- 
 trable soil, but decidedly compact. We have, I submit, 
 therefore, a further evidence that, because a flood-plain, the 
 artifacts embedded therein are not a negligible quantity 
 from an archaeologist's, or even a geologist's, point of view. 
 
 No adequate impression of the pre-historic river can be 
 
86 
 
 had without consideration, also, of its several inflowing 
 creeks, especially as the volume of water is very consider- 
 able. On the New Jersey side of the river there are many 
 such streams, of which but four out of more than a dozen 
 will be considered, for while all have been visited, but the 
 four uppermost have been closely studied, and what applies 
 to them is applicable in a general way to all. The creeks to 
 which reference has been made are the Assunpink, entering 
 the river at the "ff alles," or head of tide-water, and the only 
 one not affected by it ; Crosswicks Creek, Assiscunk Creek, 
 and the Rancocus. These are tide-water streams for sev- 
 eral terminal miles of their length. These four streams 
 may well be called "Indian rivers." Their valleys still bear 
 witness not only to a prolonged occupation by the red-man, 
 but of a populous community. Probably nothing so em- 
 phatically denies the modernity of the Indian and paucity 
 of his numbers as a careful, exhaustive, unbiased examina- 
 tion of the valleys of these streams. The north bank par- 
 ticularly requires the closest inspection, because these 
 streams flowing from their sources, westward, gives the 
 north bank a southern exposure, and therefore greater 
 warmth in winter, which is much more than an offset to the 
 greater heat in summer. 
 
 Looking over only the newly-ploughed fields of the two 
 sides of these creeks, I have found over four hundred arti- 
 facts in the course of a forenoon on the north shore and 
 only twenty on the opposite ground, and at the same time 
 innumerable potsherds on the north shore and not a trace 
 of pottery opposite. In some valleys, or sections of a val- 
 ley, for these streams all have a tortuous course, naturally 
 other considerations govern the location of the wigwams, 
 but no site selected that I have discovered had not protec- 
 tion from the storms of winter. 
 
87 
 
 It is difficult to judge of the conditions when the country 
 -was heavily forested, but at present many an attractive 
 glade that to us seems ideal as a dwelling site, yields no 
 trace of its having been occupied, even temporarily, by an 
 Indian family. Much was required besides shelter from 
 inclement weather.^ A sandy, absorbent soil, water, and, if 
 possible, sufficient water to float a canoe, was desired. There 
 is abundant evidence to substantiate the belief that the 
 Lenni Lenape depended more upon navigable water than a 
 wilderness, however easily traversed, for any considerable 
 distance from a watercourse now means a comparative 
 absence of aboriginal artifacts. 
 
 The Assunpink Creek, i. e. Stony Creek, is wholly 
 within the area of the Trenton gravel and the much older, 
 pre-glacial Columbia gravel and sand formation, and affords 
 comparatively little that has a bearing on the question of 
 the duration of occupancy of its watershed, so far as the 
 Indian or his immediate predecessor is concerned. Both the 
 artifacts of the Indian, jasper and quartz implements and 
 pottery, and the ruder argillite objects, are abundant, but so 
 far as the present surface of the region is concerned there 
 is little that indicates that a line betwixt the two elsewhere- 
 demonstrated occupations can be drawn. Occasionally ex- 
 tensive excavations have told a different story, but these 
 need not here be considered. 
 
 It is otherwise with the valleys, drainage areas or water- 
 sheds of Crosswicks Creek, the Assiscunk and Rancocas 
 river. Here all the conditions are materially different. 
 These streams flow through sandy areas. There is no rock 
 to keep measurably permanent the banks, and not much 
 
 'There is a tradition still current that the Indians dwelling some 
 thirty or forty miles northward annually migrated to South Jersey to 
 escape the rigors of the winter; the coniferous forest being noticeably 
 warmer than the deciduous forest of the highlands northward. 
 
88 
 
 resistant clay. It is safe to infer that since the deforesting- 
 of the adjacent territory these streams have been materially 
 altered by freshets, and are now wider and in places 
 shallower than when hemmed in by the one-time dense 
 coniferous forests for much of their course and by a no less 
 vigorous deciduous forest, in its tidal reach, as the river 
 was approached. 
 
 From their outlets at the Delaware, as far as their sources, 
 miles inland, these streams are dotted with still readily 
 recognized vestiges of Indian villages. Charcoal, pot- 
 sherds, broken flints, maize mills, and fragments of arti- 
 facts of obscure significance are abundant, and so frequent 
 are these traces of dwelling places that it may be held that 
 the creek sides were an almost unbroken settlement, where 
 permanently swampy conditions did not obtain, but they 
 did not extend far back from the stream, luiless in the 
 little valleys of inflowing- brooks. The relics are those of 
 the Indian, but not necessarily of the "historic" Indian. 
 A distinction should be drawn. As I pointed out, years 
 ago^, "when a considerable collection of the stone and 
 bone handiwork of the Delaware Indians hiad been brought 
 together, and with this material before us, we picture to 
 ourselves the people in possession of the country when first 
 visited by the Dutch and Swedes, and afterward by the 
 Knglish, the thought arises that considerable importance 
 must be giyen to a chance remark of Peter Kalm, who 
 spent the winter of 1748^49 in New Jersey, to wit: 'At 
 the arrival of the Swedes in this country, and long after 
 that time, it was filled with Indians. But as the Europeans 
 proceeded to cultivate the land, the Indians sold their land, 
 and went further into the country. But in reality few of 
 the Indians really left the country in this manner; most of 
 
 ' Popular Science Monthly, Sept., 1892, p. 586. 
 
89 
 
 them ended their days before, either by wars among them- 
 selves, or by small-pox, a disease which the Indians were 
 unacquainted with before their commerce with the Euro- 
 peans, and which since that time has killed incredible num- 
 bers of them.' Ag-ain, ouir author states, 'The Indians 
 formerly, and about the time of the first settling of the 
 Swedes, were more industrious and laborious in every 
 branch of the business than they are now.' In other words, 
 they were not known at their best, even by those who had 
 earliest opportunities of observing them, and what they 
 habitually used and constantly produced, perhaps, but a 
 century or twO' before the advent of the European, was far 
 superior to their cleverest handiwork in the seventeenth 
 century. The English settler had to do with a diseased, 
 discouraged and disappearing people. It is not hazardous 
 to assert that history, as pertaining to the Delaware valley, 
 would have been widely different had the Europeans been 
 forced to deal, not with the Lenni Lenape as they then were, 
 but as they had been. True, there were statesmen still 
 among them; intellects equal to any with which they had 
 to cope, but the spirit that once seems to have animated 
 the whole nation was broken. The Indians of the seven- 
 teenth century were livinig on the memory of departed 
 ^lory." 
 
 Their cleverest art-work and finest examples of their 
 flint chipping and pottery, as found in these valleys of af- 
 fluents of the Delaware, were that of the Indian as his best, 
 which was prior, by centuries, to the advent of the Euro- 
 pean, for no early visitor seems to have seen such handi- 
 work or refer to these people as really artistically inclined. 
 
 A's a whole, the "Indian" features of these creeks do not 
 vary from those at the site of the Lenapean metropolis, at 
 the "flfalles" of the Delaware; but these creek valleys have 
 one archaeological feature in common that is even more 
 
9° 
 
 pronounced than farther up the river, the evidence of a 
 people who practically depended upon argillite for their 
 chipped implements. Abundant as are argillite points and 
 knives at the head of tidewater, where they occur by the 
 hundreds, they are found in these tidal creek valleys by 
 the thousands. As a result of changes of the surface, due 
 to deforesting and subsequent cultivation, there is much 
 intermingling now of this argillite with artifacts of silicious 
 stone and with pottery, but at points where the sand is 
 still intact, as in ages ago, there occur such great numbers 
 of these argillite objects and often caches of them, and these 
 never associated with jasper and quiartz or pottery, that it 
 is best explained by these objects being the handicraft of 
 a pre-Indian people. These distinctly argillite areas are 
 farther inland than the unquestionable Indian wigwam sites, 
 in many places, and the territory as a whole suggests that 
 these argillite folk preceded the flint folk, and lived farther 
 back from the stream, or was the stream then much wider 
 than now, and so they were literally creek-side dwellers? 
 
 This is a question more readily asked than answered, but 
 it is an absolute certainty that the separation of these ob- 
 jects, as pointed out, better explains the conditions obtain- 
 ing over the whole area, rather than to call all traces of 
 early man "Indian" and, inferentially, devoid of all arch- 
 asological significance. 
 
 For my part, I have the conviction borne into me that 
 very much of this argillite antedates the days of arboreal 
 vegetation. We are now dealing with a region that was 
 unaffected by glacial conditions, unless the climate was here 
 decidedly cooler than now, and which was sparsely covered 
 with vegetation as compared with a later day. It is not im- 
 possible that the ancient "argillite" man was a dweller on 
 the shores of these little rivers, just as he preceded the In- 
 dian near the head of tidewater in the Delaware, as his more 
 
91 
 
 deeply buried objects have demonstrated to many who have 
 critically surveyed the region. 
 
 So far as I have examined the conditions governing the 
 small streams that flow in the opposite direction or directly 
 into the ocean, they are the same as to the distribuition of 
 argillite and flint, but the physical conditions of the im- 
 mediate coastal plain are very different from the correspond- 
 ing area adjacent to the river. There are, however, near 
 the ocean, areas where argillite occurs exclusively and with 
 no trace of pottery. This fact, of itself, convinces me that 
 these argillite objects are significantly older than the handi- 
 work of the jasper-clipping Indian, for I have never failed 
 to find pottery wherever jasper and quartz implements oc- 
 cur. It is very suggestive, too, that many of the argillite 
 artifacts found near the seacoast have undergone a degree 
 of weathering that is not so often seen in gatherings of 
 similar forms from the western or river side of the State. 
 Remarking on the absence of these argillite relics, in a large 
 collection of Indian artifacts, from the immediate vicinity 
 of Atlantic City, I was informed that they were abundant 
 "in spots," but so weathered they were not valued, and, 
 therefore, gathered, and were referred to, contemptuously, 
 as "rotten arrow-heads." The attitude of the collector 
 proved more valuable to me than any number of specimens. 
 
 Having pointed out the more salient features of the 
 present river and its tributaries, and suggested, if not de- 
 monstrated, what were the main conditions obtaining in 
 anciently pre-historic time, we are brought to consider that 
 most interesting event — ^the arrival in the valley of the 
 Dtelaware of the Lenni Lenape. Here Heckewelder is the 
 only author who can help us. He asserts on the basis of 
 a tradition that the Lenni Lenape were at one time a west- 
 em people that gradually (or part of them) migrated east- 
 ward, reaching first, of large rivers east of the mountains, 
 the Susquehanna. 
 
92 
 
 The story runs thus :^ "The Lenni Lenape (according to 
 the traditions handed down to them by their ancestors) 
 residing many hundred years ago in a very distant country 
 in the western part of the American continent. For some 
 reason, which I do not find accounted for, they determined 
 on migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set out 
 together in a body. * * * f[iQ spies which the Lenape 
 had sent forward for the purpose of reconnoitering had 
 long before their arrival discovered that the country east 
 of the Mississippi was inhabited by a very powerful nation. 
 * * * Those people (as I was told) called themselves 
 Talligeu or Talligewi." 
 
 The eastward passage being disputed by the occupants of 
 the territory invaded, "great battles were fought," and the 
 outcome was "that the Allegewi, at last finding their des- 
 truction was inevitable if they persisted in their obstinacy, 
 abandoned the country to the conquerors * * * the 
 Lenape took possession of the country to the south. For 
 a long period of time — some say many hundred years — the 
 two nations (Lenape and Iroquois) resided peaceably in 
 this country and increased very fast; some of their most 
 ■ enterprising huntsmen and warriors crossed the great 
 swamps, and falling on streams running to the eastward, 
 followed them down to the great Bay river, thence into the 
 Bay itself, ' which we call Chesapeake. As they pursued 
 their travels, partly by land and partly by water, sometimes 
 near and at other times on the great Salt-water Lake, as 
 they call the sea, they discovered the great river which we 
 call the Delaware; and thence exploring eastward, the 
 Stheyichbi country, now named New Jersey, they arrived at 
 another great stream, that which we call the Hudson, or 
 North river. •" * * 
 
 ^ Quoted by Brinton in "Lenape and Their Legends," p. — . Philadel- 
 phia, i88s. 
 
93 
 
 "At last they settled on the four great rivers (which we 
 call Delaware, Hudson, Susquehannah, Potomack), mak- 
 ing the Delaware, to which they gave the name of Lenape 
 wihittuck (the river or stream of the Lenape), the centre of 
 their possessions." 
 
 This rather mysterious folk, the Allegewi, Tsa-laki, or 
 Cherokee as we now know them, were not occupying a 
 region at the time of the migration that suggests that the 
 valley of the Delaware was in the scope of their possessions, 
 but one materially westward of it. The present Scheyichbi 
 (Nfew Jersey) may have been a terra incognita to the Alle- 
 gewi, and as the record runs, was untrod by the foot of 
 man since the closing days of glacial activity until re-dis- 
 covered by the Lenni Lenape. But, taken as a whole, this- 
 tradition does not debar the possibility of the remote 
 ancestry of the Allegewi from having reached the Delaware 
 Valley from some southern point and left behind them these 
 partly decayed and very old argillite objects that now are 
 characteristic of the region in certain portions thereof. 
 
 We would be venturing necessarily on uncertain ground 
 in attempting to unite that which is remotely pre-historic 
 with what is distinctly historic, but as we can only deal 
 with time relative and not time absolute, it is not con- 
 trary to such facts as we possess to look upon the Lenape 
 as pre-historic actually, if not to the same degree as the 
 people who appear to have preceded them in the Valley of 
 the Delaware. 
 
 We are brought then to consider the simple question of 
 whether what is now New Jersey was without inhabitants 
 at the time of the arrival of the Lenape, or was the territory 
 populated? It seems to me highly improbable that the tra- 
 dition as preserved by the Lenape and secured to us by 
 Heckewelder should have omitted all reference to the- 
 argillite people, as I have ventured to designate them, had 
 
94 
 
 they been in possession of the river valley when first sighted 
 by the Lenape. 
 
 A migratory movement on the part of a people, men, 
 women and children, is never akin to the onward march of 
 an invading army, with a definite purpose in view. Then 
 time is everything; but with these Lenape, with no fixed 
 plan, but yielding to a spirit of restlessness and love of 
 adventure, time meant nothing. How long these people 
 were "on the move" it is impossible to determine, and how 
 long a tradition can be handed down without losing all 
 traces of accuracy is an open question, but the Lenape, 
 treating of the past, used no definite phrases. Their past 
 was quickly chaotic, and so the best that we can do is to 
 sum up their expressions of that which has happened with: 
 "Once upon a time," as fairy tales begin. 
 
 It may be some prophet (no other people could boast of 
 better) had declared the land of the rising sun to be a hap- 
 pier hunting ground than any they had known, and the 
 dateless Lenapean hegira began, and here where the ocean 
 forbade further progress, it ended. Here, too, certain 
 changes were effected of a character that meant not a few 
 years, but many, 
 
 As recorded by Heckewelder: "Those of the Delawares 
 who fixed their abodes on the shores of the Atlantic — in- 
 cluding the Delaware valley — divided themselves into three 
 tribes. Two of them, distinguished by the names of the 
 Turtle and Turkey * * * chose those grounds to set- 
 tle on which lay nearest to the sea. As they multiplied 
 their settlements extended from the Mohicanittuck * * * 
 to the Potomack." * * * The third tribe, the Wolf, 
 * * * had chosen to live back of the other two."'^ 
 
 This, in brief, is what we know positively of the Lenni 
 
 ' Heckewelder, 1. c, p. 143. Prom Brinton. 
 
95 
 
 Lenape, and it admirably agrees with what their relics tell 
 us, and as we now find them scattered over the surface of 
 the country. This people were here long enough to effect 
 such a change as that of tribal division, and, what it appears 
 to me after many years of observation is unquestionable, 
 they improved greatly in their skill in implement fabrica- 
 tion. A rude and an elaborately chipped object of the same 
 pattern mean nothing as we find them side by side on a 
 newly-ploughed field, but gather, as I have done, tens of 
 thousands of such objects under infinitely varied circum- 
 stances and the rude and the elaborate tell another story. 
 
 The Dutch, the Swedes, and finally the English, on their 
 arrival changed the complexion of affairs. The pre-his- 
 toric river becamie historic, and the earlier condition of its 
 valley was gradually dissipated by the axe and plough and 
 settlements of the Europeans. But it is not difficult to see 
 what had been if we are not too occupied with the mere col- 
 lecting of objects. This is not the most important feature 
 of archaeological exploration. Nature had ruled with undis- 
 puted sway for incalculable ages. Primitive man was not 
 destructive in the sense that we are. Whether or not the 
 Lenni Lenape were invaders here because of another people 
 occupying' the valley at the time, or found it uttiinhabited, is 
 a problem so far that eludes our grasp ; but that it had been, 
 if not then, inhabited, is, I hold, apparent, if the traces 
 of early man still remaining can be accepted as a guide. It 
 is universally accepted that chipped pebbles in the deep-lying 
 gravels are indicative of glacial man, and unquestioned arti- 
 facts of a later period are not rejected as evidence of man, 
 but of what period? Were they as recent as the Lenape 
 or point to the prolonged occupancy of the region by a 
 iore-running people? 
 
 Leaving now the pre-historic river and its immediate 
 shores, let us consider, in the next chapter, those ruder traces 
 
96 
 
 of early man, widely specialized as they are, that we find 
 throughout that area which we call the upland fields; fields, 
 that were forests when the river was hemmed in by wooded 
 banks and its waters were disturbed only by the myriad 
 forms of wild life, and it may be, the rude craft that car- 
 ried the pre-historic hunter. 
 
97 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 A pre-IyEnapean people. 
 
 IT HAS been suggested seriously that all surface- found relics 
 of a people earlier than ourselves should be ruled out 
 of court because of the unfortunate circumstances of having 
 been prematurely unearthed. This attitude, distinctly aca- 
 demic, if not orthodox, has at least one merit : It indicates 
 that the relic oame from' somewhere, and had not always 
 been lying exposed to the light of day and the vicissitudes 
 of summer's heat and winter's frost. It came from^ some- 
 where, a locality not easily defined and charted on no map ; 
 but not so great is the difficulty as might be supposed. To 
 say "I don't know" is too often tacit acknowledgment of 
 inability to acquire knowledge. Where could a weather- 
 worn, half-decayed, rudely-shaped argillite knife or arrow- 
 point, for example, come from, if not from the ground? 
 It did not fall from' some passing clcud. It was not shot 
 from illimitable space, as are mieteorites. It was not blown 
 hither by some over-sea or over-land tornado. It did not 
 result as the fruit of a concatenation of circumstance, such 
 as physicists wot not of. So it is that we are left to the 
 sole alternative of concluding that it came up out of the 
 ground, and how much that little word "up" means in 
 such a case. Surface-found relics do have a value, and the 
 High Priest and petty priestlets in their Sanhedrim, gather- 
 ings should not be so severe. If they tempered their deci- 
 sions with more thought of logical conclusion, and less of 
 their personal importance, the wayfaring man, though a 
 fool, would be wiser. 
 
98 
 
 It must be remembered that a sandy soil is more or less 
 an unstable one. Here, in this part of Lenape Land, at all 
 events, were it not for the quick growth of weeds, when it 
 is exposed to the sun and rain, that hold it back, the change 
 of surface would be very rapid and the underlying clays 
 and coarse gravel would, in many places, be exposed. 
 Where fields are now slightly undulating, when forest-clad, 
 they were up-hill and down-dale to a far greater degree. 
 This is shown by acres of woodland that have been cleared 
 in recent years and were familiar to the writer, both before 
 and since deforestation. In their natural or forested con- 
 dition these acres were a long series of hills and hollows, 
 none very pronounced, but not to be overlooked. However 
 dry and sandy the "hills" might be, the "hollows" were 
 either with a pool of water that never entirely disappeared 
 or the depression, as a whole, was a miniature swamp. De- 
 nuded of tree-growth, these originally uneven surfaces be- 
 come more nearly level and are uniformly dry when under 
 cultivation. Old deeds and other ancient documents refer 
 to conditions of which, now, no trace remains. The 
 English settlers who came here in 1675-80 would not now 
 recognize any o'f the present features of the land they 
 "took up" on their arrival. The single distinction of up^ 
 land and meadow alone remains. It is not strange then 
 that the argillite artifact and the jasper implement should 
 now be associated, and if we had no means of determining 
 the original condition, to draw any distinction between them 
 as to their archjeological significance would be a hopeless 
 task. 
 
 It is easy to see how objects that have been exposed to 
 the washing of the soil, even by ordinary rains, and much 
 more so by the effects of an occasional torrential down- 
 pour, should be brought to the newly-created surface in 
 this way. They are either sim(ply uncovered, or, it may 
 
99 
 
 happen that they are in the course of a temporary rivulet, 
 which carries or rolls them to a considerable distance. 
 This, of course, happening only where the ground slopes. 
 In just this manner I have known round pebbles to be rolled 
 to the edge of a permanent brook, and so were speeded well 
 on their way, to be carried by the next flood far down the 
 brook, and perhaps to the meadows and the river level. 
 The ordinary operations in the tilling of the fields tends to 
 •cover and uncover and mingle objects that are on the sur- 
 face with those underneath, or those left by the Indian and 
 now in the soil, and other objects, in the sand beneath, which 
 the Indian never saw. In a sandy field, a little gully, a 
 foot or eighteen inches deep may be the result of a single 
 rain, and objects may fall or be washed therein, and so be- 
 ■come buried by the obliterating plough that removes all 
 traces of such temporary channel of a rain-fall stream. 
 
 Assuming that argillite artifacts are characteristic of the 
 ■"yellow drift" as it has been called^, it must be remembered 
 that this "yellow drift" is but a few inches below what we 
 ■call the soil, or that surface which is discolored by decayed 
 vegetation and sustains the growth of grass and minor 
 weeds. The two "deposits" cannot escape being intimately 
 associated. It is a matter of color rather than constitution 
 and in endless ways all lines of demarcation are likely to 
 be obliterated, and so, obviously, small objects such as- flakes 
 of stone and artifacts not larger than average arrowpoints 
 would be brought together. This ground for the most part 
 lias been vigorously stirred for two centuries, yet evidences 
 of a certain sequence have not been destroyed. Like pot- 
 tery, not all the pieces of a vessel are necessary for us to 
 reconstruct the vessel. We can tell with certainty what has 
 
 ' Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, by Ernest Volk, p. 84 ; Papers 
 of Peabody Museum, Vol. V., Cambridge, Mass., 191 1. 
 
lOO 
 
 been, from what is. Were it not so, archaeology would be 
 a waste of time. 
 
 Here a word as to the conditions obtaining with refer- 
 to the ordinary Indian implemicnts. They are distinctly a 
 feature of the surface. They are turned up and turned 
 down by the plough, and in the two centuries, and more, 
 since cultivation of the land began, they have been inhumed' 
 and unearthed yearly, till it is a wonder they have not been 
 broken beyond recognition. When they do occur at some 
 unusual depth, their deep inhumation can be readily ex- 
 plained. The earth itself always shows evidence of acci- 
 dental or intentional disturbance. It may be pertinently 
 asked : Why, in the course of centuries, has not the handi- 
 work of the Indian gotten deeper into the soil ? Why have 
 not the operations of earthworms buried them; and buir- 
 rowing animals and the uprooting of trees led to their 
 reaching greater depths than the present average of less 
 than twelve inches? It may be well, here, to attempt a; 
 reply by asking a question : What were the precise condi- 
 tions when the object was lost ? It fell on moss or grass, 
 and, as this decayed, sank into the dust that formed. The 
 wind carries other dust and fine sand and rain brings 
 coarser sand and soil and traces of clay, and in time the 
 object is covered. Years pass and slowly but steadily the 
 soil accumulates. The one-time relic, lying exposed upon 
 the surface of the ground, becomies embedded in it. The 
 annual fall of forest leaves add to the soil a modicum of 
 dust, for the accumulation of a century turned to powder 
 miakes but a thin film of mould. Who shall say how long 
 the leaves were making soil before the devastating Euro- 
 pean came upon the scene? So, may not many a posses- 
 sion of the migrating Lenape have been a "relic" to the 
 later Lenape, who knew of his "grandfathers" only through- 
 tradition? We cannot ignore the possibilities in investiga- 
 
lOI 
 
 lions of this kind. We cannot hope to draw aside the veil 
 that shuts in the past, but the mind can image that which 
 is behind it by close scrutiny of that which is before. 
 What Nature is now doing, she was doing in the ages that 
 have passed. 
 
 Then comes a change. The trees are felled, the ground 
 ■exposed to the direct action of frost and rain. The surface 
 of the ground is stirred and overturned. We have seen 
 how this surface suffers where unprotected. The relic that 
 for centuries, it may be, was lying in one spot, and in all 
 that time only covered to a depth of a few inches, is now 
 exposed again. Our soil, as we see it and walk over it, is 
 not the soil that was pressed only by the moccasined foot 
 of the Lenape. That soil was washed away years ago. 
 We call the Indian relics of to-day a feature of the surface 
 soil, but that does not mean they have had no other history. 
 Still, with all the aid of a rig-htly-used imagination, this 
 is a difficult subject to handle, as the field archaeologist 
 knows to his sorrow. Of course, all is readily made plain 
 in the library or in conclaves of savants, but — suffice it 
 here to state that Indian relics, jasper and quartz spear- 
 heads and arrow-points, axes, celts, agricultural imple- 
 ments, pipes, amulets and ornaments are all still on the 
 surface. Would they not be beneath it if Nature had still 
 Tier own, and the forest flourished as of yore? I think 
 so. As it is, we give the soil no chance to grow, and so 
 relics of our own colonial period are mingled with those 
 of the Indian, instead of slightly above them. 
 
 So far as my own observation extends, when a woodland 
 is cleared, if any relics are found they are distinctly a 
 feature of what we consider the surface. They show all 
 the effects of their embedding that characterize the pebbles, 
 and none of the features of the surfaces of stones from 
 the deeper sands. There is no distinct patina such as forms 
 
102 
 
 on flint, but a condition of surface that is readily recognized 
 by the initiated ; a condition that is annihilated when speci- 
 mens fall into the hands of the collector and are cleaned. 
 The adherent dirt is often as valuable to the archaeologist 
 as the object itself. 
 
 It must not be supposed that traces of the Indian are 
 equally distributed. They occur where Indians^ dwelt, and 
 were left or lost on ground that they had cleared and culti- 
 vated. Beyond these limits their occurrence is accidental. 
 This fact does not make for the recent origin of the Lenni 
 Lenape in this region, but indicates how very slowly Nature 
 operates in the matter of inhumation. Where vegetation 
 has protected the surface fromi rain-wash, the soil has re- 
 mained in statu quo, beyond its slight centennial increase. 
 A monument set by a surveyor in 1700 stands precisely as 
 it did when erected. The soil has not accumulated about 
 its base to any noticeable degree. The same is true of our 
 colonial cemeteries. Stones set twoi centuries ago have 
 not sunk, or rather had soil accumulate about them', until it 
 encroached upon the lettering, which, at first, was only a 
 foot or less above the ground. The uplifting by frost and 
 settling when frost disappears seems to have had no effect, 
 and certainly in such an instance as this we have some guide 
 to conclusions as to the career of stone implements left, 
 centuries ago, on the surface. Nature is so deliberate, even 
 when handling her shifting sands, that it will need millen- 
 niumis to so bury the artifact of the redman that it will 
 occur only, hereafter, in deep excavations. 
 
 More to the purpose, perhaps, is the wigwam site oc- 
 casionally brought to light. Here it is not so much the 
 objects found as the condition of the soil. It is compact, 
 discolored, mixed with charcoal dust and sometimes baked in 
 places. I have sometimes found the fire-place well defined. 
 A few fire-cracked stones of uniform size are still in posi- 
 
103 
 
 tion, as if the fire was still burning and they had been so 
 arranged as to prevent its spreading. Such a fire-place or 
 wigwam site now is never on the actual surface, but not 
 far from it. Unquestionably the last cooking-site, village 
 fires and camp-fires of the Indians were destroyed by the 
 European settlers and only those are found which were old, 
 abandoned and concealed during the close of the Indians' 
 career. It is a liberal estimate to give to the surface soil, 
 the "black soil," an average depth of twelve inches. This it 
 has been for many years. At the time of deforesting it 
 undoubtedly was greater and far less compact. It is safe to 
 assert that Nature has not inhumed the relics of the Indians 
 to the depth of twelve inches, measuring from the surface, 
 except incidentally and accidentally, and man's violent dis- 
 turbance of the surface has not affected such a change as 
 might be expected. The handiwork of the Indian is still a 
 distinctly surface feature of our ordinary fields. A mere 
 scratching of the ground is all that is necessary to bring 
 them to light. 
 
 The above remarks, of course, apply only to the uplands. 
 In the meadows that constitute the present flood-plain of 
 the river there is a wholly different set of conditions. Here 
 the deposits, at irregular intervals, of mud from the waters 
 of freshets is to be considered. Soil is accumulated more 
 rapidly than on the uplands, but not so rapidly as to modern- 
 ize traces of man found in it. Nature unbuilds as well as 
 upbuilds, and the current of receding waters may carry away 
 as much or even more than it brought. The gain is not 
 uniform, such as a fraction of an inch to every flood, but 
 there is a gain, year in and year out, as the deposit consti- 
 tuting the surface soil of the meadows now shows. The 
 Indians loved the spot, as the abundance of relics shows, 
 and braved the occasional high water that must have put 
 them to much inconvenience, but such occurrences were 
 probably less common than now, for the evidence all goes 
 
I04 
 
 to show that the village or wigwam sites were permanent, 
 as permanency of occupation was looked upon by these 
 people. 
 
 On removing the soil of the upland fields we find that it 
 rests ordinarily upon a thick stratum of sand of uniform 
 color, and examined closely is found to be not materially 
 unlike the "body" of the surface soil when washed until free 
 of all trace of vegetation. We have now to deal with this 
 underlying sand as a distinct archaeological horizon, or as 
 one having nothing in common with the soil above it. Let 
 us suppose that the soil and the sand beneath it were con- 
 verted into sandstones; the lower lighter in color and with 
 but a few traces of organic remains and the upper one black 
 and heavily charged with fossils. By a paleontologist the 
 differences would be recognized at a glance, and the two 
 "rocks" referred to an earlier and later horizon, and the 
 differences would be more marked than is often the case 
 with Eocene and Miocene formations and decidedly better 
 defined than is the merging of the Pleistocene, the Quater- 
 nary and the recent. In the case of our supposed sandstones 
 the "fossils" will be a rather abrupt transition from extreme 
 simplicity to pronounced complexity. In the lower, light- 
 colored "sandstone" these "fossils" will consist of ninety 
 per cent, argillite chips^ and some few specialized imple- 
 
 ^ Examples of these "chips" of argillite, taken from suggestive depths 
 in the "yellow drift," were submitted to Profs. Putnam and Wood- 
 worth, of Harvard University, and were pronounced "natural" or flakes 
 due to frost action. In this I do not agree. The frost-detached flakes 
 liave not such shapes, and show they have been detached along the lines 
 of least resistance, but these sand-embedded flakes are detached across 
 such lines, showing they are due to percussion. It must be remem^- 
 bered, too, that there are no argillite boulders in the Columbia Gravel, 
 and as these "yellow-drift" chips are derived from such boulders, now 
 on the Columbia Gravel area, even if detached by frost, hark back to 
 the artificial agency that located the parent blocks. A fragment of a 
 stone which man had once laid his hand upon is as much a "relic" of 
 man as the most elaborate artifact. 
 
I OS 
 
 ments of the simplest types. With them will be shells of 
 both fresh-water and marine species, and noticeably, both 
 water-worn and sand-polished pebbles. This lower horizon 
 will also show variation in its structure and give evidence 
 of different agencies operating in the laying down of the 
 sand. 
 
 Examination of the upper layer or horizon shows at once 
 far different conditions have operated to effect its forma- 
 tion. For wide areas there is little to be seen but sand and 
 shapeless organic matter, but this all changes in circum- 
 scribed localities where "fossils,'' almost as abundant as 
 shells are crowded in some cretaceous marls; and these 
 "fossils" are not such as we found in the older, underlying 
 deposit. The material is not the same to the same extent. 
 The percentage of argillite is but ten per cent, of the whole, 
 while jasper, quartz, chert and other silicious mineral makes 
 Tip the ninety per cent. In the earlier sand specific variation 
 was very limited, but in the later sand (i. e., the soil) there 
 is not only a wide range of "specific," but of "generic" 
 variation. The transition has been from a low and ex- 
 tremely simple form to that of a high and very complex one. 
 It is not an instance of evolution, slow, halting and un- 
 certain, but of abrupt succession. The conditions corrobo- 
 rate the Lenape tradition and contradicts the suggestion — 
 insistence of some ethnologists — that the Lenape was the 
 argillite man who later became what he was. 
 
 In this, our paleontological view of the actual conditions, 
 there has been had under consideration not the ordinary 
 long-tilled fields, where lines have been obliterated and 
 hopeless confusion exists, but those few localities that I 
 have been able to examine where such disturbance of origi- 
 nal conditions had not occurred. No geologist would 
 question for a moment my reading of the assumed "rocks," 
 now strata of sand, but the archaeologists of to-day, usually 
 
io6 
 
 those who have never visited the locality, or those who pre- 
 viously charged their hearts with murder and so gave it but 
 a superficial and biased glance, are now given to criticisnt 
 and are full of wise saws inapplicable to this instance of 
 archsological plain progress. If these countless millions of 
 grains of sand were cemented nobody would doubt, or could 
 doubt if so inclined, but lacking cementation nobody be- 
 lieves, or until recently, nobody did believe. 
 
 We are brought now to consider the origin, and inci- 
 dentally the age of these sands, practically the same, which 
 have been separated for convenience of study and now 
 known as the surface soil and the "yellow drift." Modesty 
 forbids my going further than venturing a few sugges- 
 tions. Certainly I have no desire to be dictatorial, but if 
 an opinion is not set forth vigorously it can never gain 
 attention, and probably does not deserve it. There has cer- 
 tainly been no suamter in wiodo in the treatment of my 
 archaeological views, so I feel that in venturing into the 
 geological field I must follow the usual methods of fortiter 
 in re. 
 
 It has been suggested by some, and confidently asserted 
 by others, that at the close of the maximum activity of 
 glacial floods, when the coarse gravel and many large boul- 
 ders were transported from the upper Delaware valley — 
 largely derived from the terminal moraine — and deposited 
 here at the inland limit of tidewater, where, because of this 
 tide, the downward flow of the water was effectually 
 checked periodically, that there followed periods of flood 
 when no large boulders were moved, except an occasional 
 one embedded in a still more occasional mass of floating ice, 
 but that sand was still borne hitherward in enormous quan- 
 tities, and this up-river sand, deposited now above the 
 glacial gravel, is now that "yellow drift," the intrusive or 
 accidental objects in which indicate the presence of man as 
 
I07 
 
 long ago as the time of its gradual accumulation. This is 
 strictly in accordance with the ordinary lines of geological 
 procedure and is so far reasonable that it will probably be 
 accepted for a long time to come ; but another origin of this 
 same "yellow drift" is to me the more probable, because a 
 far simpler one and with less assumption in it than in the 
 glacial flood explanation of its origin. 
 
 A survey of this "yellow drift" shows that it lies at a 
 considerably lower level than the surrounding formation, 
 known as the Columbia Gravel. The former is about fifty 
 feet above the river, while the latter ranges from seventy to 
 one hundred. It is significant, too, that where this "yellow 
 drift" has been scrutinized most closely^ in the Trenton 
 Gravel area or limit of the tidal flow of the Delaware river, 
 the Columbia Gravel area is drained by creeks that flow 
 directly across the "yellow drift" and on into the river. The 
 river, the "yellow drift" and the Columbia Gravel are like 
 three steps, and just as a marble rolls from the top step to 
 the bottom, so it seems probable that the "yellow drift" was 
 washed from higher ground to where it now is, consider- 
 ing that the washing, or rather transportating, agency ex- 
 isted, as it still does, in the days immediately succeeding 
 glacial activities, and even before them so far as known. 
 There is no one feature of earth history that is so hopelessly 
 out of reach as the date and circumstances of the birth of a 
 watercourse. Suffice it in this case to know that the Colum- 
 bia Gravel here is, as it indefinitely long has been, drained 
 by creeks, and these now flow through the "yellow drift," 
 having cut an ever-deepening channel until tide-level was 
 reached, but once flowed over it, as before then it had washed 
 the underlying clay and coarse gravel. These creeks are 
 older than any exposed area, except uplifted rocks, in the 
 Trenton Gravel region. 
 
 ' Lalor Field : Arch. Del. Val., Volk, 1. c. p. 84. 
 
io8 
 
 If this suggestion of derivation is worthy of considera- 
 tion the "yellow drift" and Columbia Gravel must be the 
 same in general features, the former showing only such 
 difference as the "washing" during transit in the creek 
 waters would bring about. This is true. The "yellow drift" 
 is washed Columbia sand, so far as can be determined by 
 microscope and other means of determining its character 
 and origin. The Columbia Gravel brooks and creeks are 
 even now equal to the task of carrying much sand and sur- 
 face debris when swollen by heavy rains and in winter, when 
 a warm south rain breaks up the ice, even pebbles as large as 
 pigeons' eggs are carried a considerable distance. This 
 bears the relation to Nature's activities of other days that 
 the laboratory demonstration does to the operations of some 
 great law in the world at large. Geologically we are now in 
 days of littleness, for extremes, as we call them, were the 
 commonplace occurrences of undeterminable centuries ago. 
 The annual rainfall, now some forty and odd inches, was 
 greater then, and so the streams were larger, and this, too, 
 we know to have been the case, because when a cross sec- 
 tion is made of the present valley of a little brook there is 
 shown to what extent the present stream has diminished; 
 and in some instances brooks that were once permanent and 
 of considerable volume have wholly disappeared. 
 
 One small brook with which I have been familiar all my 
 life is now usually dry in August and September, and yet I 
 have known it to be four or five feet wide and six or eight 
 inches deep for months together, and one cloudburst 
 (August 24, 1877) made of it a river for several hours, 
 about ten feet deep and nearly one hundred feet wide, and in 
 that time, some five or six hours, it loosened from stiff soil 
 large stones weighing ten to twenty pounds and rolled them 
 down a gully its entire length of about five hundred feet 
 and deepened this ravine from three to five feet, removing 
 
109 
 
 all sand and coarse gravel and bringing the bed of the brook 
 down to a stiff, unyielding clay. Now, if such excessive 
 activity as that of one August afternoon was a frequent 
 occurrence some thousands of years ago, or more recently, 
 it is evident that a depressed area like that of the restricted 
 acres of the "yellow drift" might readily be covered with 
 such a material derived from the immediately adjacent terri- 
 tory and the up-river valley not be called upon to supply any 
 deficiency. 
 
 This "yellow drift" is not merely an iron-stained sand. 
 There are intrusive objects^ scattered through it, few in- 
 deed, like the raisins in a boarding-house rice pudding, but 
 they are there and have a significance that is not archseologi- 
 cally insignificant. These objects are sand-polished pebbles, 
 water-worn pebbles and shells, so far as my own collecting 
 has resulted. The last, valves of Unio and Mya, one a 
 fresh-water and the other a marine species. It happens 
 that in the Columbia Gravel area we have streams in which 
 mussels are still found, both Unio and Anodonta ; and when 
 the "yellow drift" was deposited the Delaware river was 
 salt at the head of tide-water, and the recent dredging of the 
 river has demionstrated that Mya, Ostrea and other marine 
 shells were as distinctly a feature of the fauna then as Unio, 
 Anodonta, Limnea, Planorbis and Goniobasis are at present. 
 We have, therefore, a source of supply for all objects found 
 in the "yellow drift" near at hand, and some of them could 
 not by any possible means have been brought here from 
 miles up the river. That the pebbles should be both smoothly 
 polished and water-worn is not surprising, as pebbles of 
 both varieties are extremely common on the surface and m 
 the strata of Columbia Gravel. 
 
 'Intrusive in the sense of having been gradually embedded in the 
 original deposit and brought to present position by some agency that 
 brought the sand, or dropped by man during the gradual accumulation: 
 of this "yellow drift." 
 
no 
 
 With these natural objects, — fossils and pebbles, — are cer- 
 tain flakes of argillite and a few undoubted artifacts, some 
 as well defined as any surface-found arrow-point or knife. 
 These at once suggest the association of man with this "yel- 
 low drift" in the sense of contemporaneity. So far as my 
 own observation extends, there is not a trace of man in these 
 sands that is not a superabundant feature of the adjacent, 
 far older, and more elevated Columbia Gravel areas. The 
 agency that carried the sand, the shells, pebbles and argillite 
 flakes and artifacts to where we now find them was the same. 
 They could all readily have been transported by water and 
 man might have wandered over these sands, but only oc- 
 casionally, for the higher ground, with a dense forest and 
 more attractive and habitable, was near at hand. On the 
 other hand, if all we find came from the river valley it should 
 be characteristic of that valley, and this it distinctly is not. 
 
 It seems, therefore, unnecessary to look to the floods due 
 to the melting of the one-time glacier that filled the up- 
 river valley for an explanation of this "yellow drift.'' If 
 from up the river it should be a sand of a very mixed char- 
 acter and like the present sand that accumulates in such 
 vast quantities in many parts of the river's channel, but more 
 importantly, we are relieved of the necessity of having the 
 river at this point flowing at a height of more than fifty feet 
 above its present level, which would have inundated thou- 
 sands of acres and made swamps of many an area that gives 
 «very assurance now of having been dry land when the 
 glacial floods were busy with what we call the glacial 
 gravels. 
 
 A study of the Columbia Gravel area with reference to 
 the origin of the "yellow drift" is suggestive. Almost any 
 sectional view of the Columbia Gravel will show an excess 
 of pebbles — mostly white opaque quartz — and small oval 
 boulders near the present surface, while beneath it, some two 
 or three feet, they are scattered and often wanting over a 
 
Ill 
 
 considerable area. The condition likewise suggests that rain- 
 wash has lowered the area of Columbia Gravel by removing 
 the sand and allowing only a sinking to a lower level of the 
 coarser material, and shallow inhumation in the gullys 
 formed by temporary flowing of collected water. In days 
 gone by, when all the surface variations were much more 
 strongly marked, this Columbia Gravel sand was slowly 
 spread over the low-lying areas of older deposits, until the 
 plain was materially nearer to that of the Columbia Gravel, 
 the original plain of which was correspondingly lowered. 
 The chance visitor regards the whole region to-day as a 
 -uniform, continuous plain, with but trifling variations of 
 ■elevation above tide-water, but this is more apparent than 
 real, a condition responsible for most of the world's ignor- 
 ance. The difference is really considerable, as already stated 
 in approximate figures, and as all these variations are from 
 higher Columbia Gravel to lower "yellow drift," and as the 
 streams that could have afifected the changes described are 
 still existent, and now, with every rain, carry away this same 
 Columbia Gravel sand, although no longer spreading it over 
 an upland area, but through the deep gullies these streams 
 Tiave worn into the old surface until the tide-level was 
 reached.^ Columbia Gravel sands are now lost in the 
 
 'An interesting instance of this is shown at one point in the valley 
 of Crosswicks Creek. For centuries the "Abbott Spring" (named for 
 •my ancestor in 1695). which now supplies Bordentown, N. J., with 
 water, gushed from the base of the bluff facing the channel of the 
 creek, carrying with it a small quantity of sand, which was deposited 
 in the creek and distributed by it as the tide ebbed and flowed. The 
 result was the formation, in its underground passage, of a cave whose 
 walls had no stability such as rock would give it. This under-wash 
 was carried finally to such an extent that the supporting, weakly- 
 cemented sand gave way and the spring was temporarily checked, but 
 burst forth at last and spread many cubic yards of Columbia Gravel 
 sands on the black mud in the bed of the creek, forming an island 
 there. It was, on a small scale, very much of a repetition in a :few 
 days of what took place gradually and during centuries, when the 
 •"yellow drift" was being spread over such areas as "Lalor Field." 
 
112 
 
 meadows or reach, when the volume of water is much in- 
 creased, the river. 
 
 It is such a sequence of local event that best explains, so 
 it seems to me, the paucity of intrusive or incorporated 
 objects in the "yellow drift," for, while in course of deposi- 
 tion, this "drift" was often exposed, and probably at such, 
 intervals traveled over, but not in any sense permanently 
 dwelt upon. Traces of fire, had any ever been built on these 
 sands, would not have been absolutely annihilated, and no 
 trace of fire has yet been detected. It was certainly never 
 forested, but always a natural, treeless meadow adjacent to 
 the Columbia Gravel, as the present low-lying tract along- 
 the river is the meadow to the now elevated "yellow drift." 
 
 Fortunately there were no eye-witnesses to the activities 
 of the Delaware Valley during the glacial period who re- 
 corded what they saw. Had there been we would know 
 less than we do now of the particulars. Nature's own testi- 
 mony can be taken unreservedly, but that of a man, even an 
 eye-witness, never; although it is hardly fair perhaps to 
 insist, as has been done, that man is the master of misin- 
 terpretation. 
 
 What the up-river glacier did to the down-river valley 
 will be considered later. Suffice it to remark at this point 
 that did the "yellow drift" bear any direct relation to such 
 activities as those of the Ice Age, it would be, to say the- 
 least, but a sorry denouement of the grand glacial drama. 
 
 To describe a problematical people in hypothetical terms 
 is not so easy a task as the layman might suppose. The 
 popular idea that anything "goes" when no one has posi- 
 tive knowledge of the subject is a fallacy. The improbable 
 may pass without challenge, but seldom does the impos- 
 sible escape detection, and an explanation is demanded. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have frequently and perhaps 
 somewhat vaguely referred to a people who preceded the 
 
113 
 
 Lenni L,enape, accepting then and there the suggestion of 
 such a man as an established fact. But what do we really 
 know of him? Painfully little — nothing, according to one 
 school of archceologists — ^but that little seems to me quite 
 as satisfactory evidence of this existence as a foot-print indi- 
 cates the creature that left it. behind him. Can we deny the 
 one-time existence of a plant, tree or shrub, when we find 
 the fossil impression of a leaf in clay or slate? Does not 
 the shadow in our path indicate the presence of substance 
 somewhere 'twixt it and the sun! We hear the song of a 
 bird, and though we do not see it, that bird is as much a 
 reality as if it were perched upon our hand. In much the 
 like manner, even when we cannot demonstrate the fact, that 
 the past is never wholly unrepresented in the present. This 
 is one of those truths that are felt by the individual, but 
 beyond his powers to communicate. It is the outcome of a 
 thousand conditions, not of one ; the grand finale of endless 
 acts and incidents which no one person has seen in their 
 entirety. To place the outdoor world on a printed page has 
 been an aim of authorship for centuries, and not even 
 Thoreau wholly succeeded. Nature will not suffer an inter- 
 preter to intervene. She speaks direct, and it is only when 
 the upland fields of the Columbia Gravel, the lower lands 
 within the limits of the Trenton Gravel, and the flood-plain 
 of the present river are wandered over, with an eye to every 
 possible trace of early man, that the truth slowly dawns 
 upon you. It is only after you have gathered, not a dozen, 
 or a hundred, but thousands of artifacts of an ancient 
 people that it becomes reasonable to draw a distinction 
 betwixt one thing and another and at last, as the fruit of 
 years of observation, are warranted in separating one whole 
 group of objects from another and say these are older than 
 those. 
 
 Many the discouraging days, when the supposed results 
 8 a 
 
114 
 
 of one week's or one month's work was completely negatived 
 by some quite unanticipated discovery, but not one O'f these 
 apparent contradictions but ultimately proved apparent only, 
 and I am now unreservedly willing to champion the cause of 
 that pre-Lenapean people, to whom I have been referring 
 more or less pointedly in preceding pages. He may never 
 be real to any of my readers, but he is not only so to me, his 
 discoverer, but as much an actuality as any personal 
 acquaintance. He sticks much closer than any brother. He 
 is in some respects more like a poor relation we cannot get 
 rid of. I am living where this man of the Columbia Gravel 
 lived, and his ghosts seldom' let go an opportunity to let me 
 know the fact. His bones are considerate and seldom ob- 
 trude upon me, but his artifacts are scattered over every 
 field and I cannot escape them. 
 
 Your acquaintance who admits nothing is your bete noir 
 on such occasions. He is insistent where satisfaction is not 
 possible because the evidence is of a character that must be 
 realized by the individual through his personal experience as 
 an archaeological observer. I cannot make more plain the 
 faith that is in me. 
 
 Not long ago I was present at a candy-pulling and one 
 mass of the melted sugar was drawn out to so fine a thread 
 that I could scarcely detect it, yet that thread was as much 
 sugar as the parent mass, and as much a part of the mass as 
 any other portion of it. So it is with the evidence of the pre- 
 Lenapean people. Following the fine threads of evidence we 
 find them attached at the other end, not to the surface soil, 
 but to the substantial underlying sands, and are, or ought 
 to be, satisfied. It ought to satisfy even the carping critics, 
 who decline to visit the locality, to know that on and in the 
 Colmnibia Gravel there are localities where all the handiwork 
 of a people has a "family likeness" running through it, that 
 separates it, at a glance, from the readily recognized handi- 
 work of the historic Indian. 
 
lis 
 
 We know too little of the career of the American Mongol, 
 or better, Homo Americanus, to be dogmatic. The precise 
 method of his appearance on this continent, and intellectual 
 status at the time, are problems to be solved. How far there 
 was an unfolding of faculties, as the nomad proceeded in any 
 direction from his starting point, has not yet been deter- 
 mined, but this much we do know : no facts have been dis- 
 covered which promptly put out of court the suggestion that 
 the pre-Lenapean chipper of argillite was not an "Indian" 
 comparing fairly well with his Lenapean successor. Our 
 older man had no grooved axe, no polished celt, and almost 
 certainly no pottery, but the one material for implements 
 upon which he depended met his several needs, as is shown 
 by the vast quantity of them he left behind him. 
 
 These implements, of themselves, however, must not be 
 our sole reliance in the conclusions reached as to their sig- 
 nificance. The circumstances under which some of them are 
 found must confirm all other considerations, and the fact 
 that in many instances these circumstances favor a greater 
 antiquity than jasper and quartz implements seems to me to 
 settle the matter forever. No other explanation can be given 
 to such an occurrence as the discovery five feet below the sur- 
 face, in gray "river sand" — not "yellow drift" — of a group 
 of argillite knives and spears without any trace of pottery 
 or silicious stone of any variety is certainly a telling fact. 
 
 Argillite is certainly a disturbing factor in the archseology 
 of the Delaware Valley. It is quite as assertive as jasper 
 and quartz, and a great deal more obstinate. No one has ever 
 quarrelled over a jasper arrow-point, but an argillite knife 
 has been known to cut friendship. "It is all Indian," is the 
 war-cry in one camp, and "it's older than Indian," the cry 
 of the opposing amiy. An innocent expression of opinion 
 on my part, years ago, "set the woods afire," and by the light 
 of the blaze that still flickers, I ask leave to introduce a new 
 
ii6 
 
 witness, in the illustration, Figure 19, of a group of argillite 
 knives found so deeply in the ground that antiquity is at once 
 
 Figure /p.— Group of rude argillite artifacts found beneath an undis- 
 turbed deposit of sand. 
 
117 
 
 suggested. But a host of objections are at once raised. I 
 did not find them myself, and how am^ I to know that the 
 story told of them is true? Let me reply by asking a ques- 
 tion, which is always the most effective way. How could a 
 man invent such a story when he did not know what the 
 objects were, and only recognized their peculiarity by being 
 the sole objects beneath a bed of "sharp river sand," as he 
 called it, and no pebbles in sight. If that is not evidence, 
 go over into the modernists' camp and sing "All's Indian" 
 to your heart's content. 
 
 'Not one of these eight specimens is in any way peculiar, 
 and can be duplicated on any field where traces of man occur. 
 They are scattered all over the Columbia gravel surfaces 
 and are in the "yellow drift" of a later date, as well as 
 mingled with jasper and quartz on the "black soil" surface, 
 where there has been a breaking up of the original condi- 
 tions. The single fact remains that deep in the ground they 
 were, and where there had not been at any previous time 
 any disturbance by digging or uprooting of primeval forest 
 or other petty cataclysm upon which the modernists depend 
 for an occasional crumb of comfort. It is, on the other 
 hand, as clear an evidence of man's antiquity as the discov- 
 ery of his bones in a field a mile or two distant that has been 
 exploited as of unusiml interest and forced painful admis- 
 sions from those who deny man's paleolithicity. 
 
 Figure 20 represents a series of those long, narrow, taper- 
 ing "fish-spears," as they are now called, since I gave them 
 that name, becauses of their occurrence in the alluvium along 
 the tidewater creeks. Certainly they are better adapted to 
 such a purpose than the ordinary patterns of jasper points. 
 Throughout southern New Jersey this form is distributed in 
 a way that dissociates them with any one set of physical con- 
 ditions. I have latterly found them in fair abundance, and 
 so often where no other than argillite obj.ects are found. 
 
ii8 
 
 that the feeling is one of assurance that they are of an older 
 date than the Indian artifacts. They are all weathered. I 
 have never seen one, among thousands, that had anything- 
 like a fresh surface, and some are so far gone that the 
 original shape given to the object by the maker is almost 
 obliterated. Argillite does not decay rapidly, and when one 
 of these slender points is picked from; the crumbling sands 
 of an exposure of the "yellow^ drift," or even from the sur- 
 
 Figure so. — Argillite points. The culmination of skill in stone clippings 
 of the pre-Lenapean people. 
 
 face, the mind naturally reverts to a distant past, and to say 
 of it, as has been done, that it might have been made when 
 Penn was treating with the Indians at Shackamaxon, is not 
 only absolutely impossible, but the statement was known to 
 be incorrect when made. 
 
 One of these implements is so scratched that we can 
 only conceive of such a scar arising from its being at one 
 
119 
 
 time embedded in ice and slowly shoved over a sharp point 
 of flinty rock, or itself held fast in an unyielding matrix,, 
 the cutting edge of a splintered stone has passed over it. If 
 this be true, we can only think of a time when local glacial 
 conditions on an humble scale here prevailed. Such con- 
 ditions prevail to-day on a still humbler scale, when, at the 
 time of writing these lines (February, 1912), there is ice in 
 the Delaware river twenty inches thick, clear as crystal and 
 almost as hard, that inight well hold Avith sufficient grip a 
 broken stone and scar any smooth surface over which it 
 slowly passed. Certainly the present winter, with its un- 
 usual ice, affords many an illustration of those major activi- 
 ties, when, in all likelihood, the seasons were more pro- 
 nounced in their chief characteristics and left indelible 
 traces, where now but little is descernible that marks the 
 passing of the ice. 
 
 It matters nothing in this instance, that, in removing the 
 surface soil, the ordinary Indian artifacts were found. 
 Pour feet of undisturbed sand between them at once pro- 
 claimed the greater antiquity of the one over the other. 
 
 The Lenni Lenape recognized the value of argillite as a 
 material for certain forms of implements, but this fact no 
 more conflicts with the claim of the one-time existence of a 
 distinctively argillite-chipping man that the continued use 
 of bronze contradicts that we are living' in the Iron Age. 
 
 In the chapter devoted to the pre-historic river so much 
 has been stated concerning the relation of argillite to 
 silicious stone (jasper and quartz) that we need now but 
 consider the one question of who was this assumed Argillite 
 man, this pre-Lenapean, or "Man of the Yellow Drift," as 
 described by Volk.^ 
 
 If the only open door at the time to North America was in 
 the extreme Northwest, and man entered while in the paleo- 
 
 "Arch. Del. Val., p. 
 
120 
 
 lithic stage of "culture" — which I do not unreservedly ad- 
 mit — it is intensely improbable that wandering down the 
 Pacific coast and then crossing the continent and wandering 
 up the Atlantic coast, there should have been no advance in 
 culture, no specialization of artifacts ; or, following the first 
 river he came to, tracing its course from its mouth to its 
 source, directly across the northern part of the continent, 
 that man's descendants, betimes the Atlantic coast was 
 reached, would undoubtedly have advanced to a degree that 
 led to the discarding of the paleolithic type of artifact and 
 establishing the use of neolithic patterns. 
 
 If North America was peopled from some Asiatic foun- 
 tain-head of humanity, the time required to even very 
 sparsely populate so vast a territory as North America must 
 have been enormous. We can conceive of man so nearly 
 primitive as concerned only with his immediate wants and 
 not curious about extra-limital regions. So long as those 
 wants were supplied, he would remained a fixed species, 
 much like our box tortoise that outlives a century on the 
 same acre. Migration would only take place as necessity 
 required and certainly with no definite purpose in view. 
 Such uncertainty as to change of base means the lapse of 
 centuries before a continent would be explored. 
 
 We know that the L,enni Lenape were an advanced people, 
 with well-developed art when they undertook their sys- 
 tematic eastward migration, of which we know somiething, 
 through a tradition that cannot be lightly set aside. This 
 tradition refers in some detail to the opposition they had 
 to contend with, but all such opposition appears to have 
 been overcome before they reached as far eastward as the 
 Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers. Their troubles appear 
 to have then been over. Had the argillite folk been in the 
 heyday of their glory in the Delaware Valley when the 
 Lenape came, would there not have been some reference 
 
121 
 
 to the fact, even if they had been absolutely submissive 
 and their identity lost in the hosts of the invaders. The 
 Walam Olum gives no hint that Scheyichbi (New Jersey) 
 was populated when Lenni Lenape came. If not, then this 
 argillite folk had become extinct. It is difficult to come to 
 any other conclusion. 
 
 Thirty-two years ago, when "Primitive Industry"^ 
 was written, I thought otherwise. The transition from the 
 general use of argillite to that of silicious stone seemed 
 demonstrable and the Indian was supposed to have passed 
 from; the use of the one material to the other. The result 
 of more thorough examination of evidence on this point, in 
 the last decade, has been to convince me that the association 
 of the argillite man was with a Glacial precursor — the 
 asserted man of the Trenton Gravel — rather than with the 
 Lenape, who held their own in the valley of the Delaware 
 until ousted by the Europeans. 
 
 It would greatly simplify matters were two distinct con- 
 ditions of burial found and crania were so associated with 
 jasper and argillite that all that applies to artifacts, applied 
 equally to osseus remains. Unfortunately but few crania are 
 known that are not undeniably Lenape, but fragments of 
 crania, and some other parts of the human skeleton have 
 been found at various depths in the underlying sands. 
 These, the "professors," without expression of any cogent 
 reason, have relegated to the dust bins of the unimportant, 
 and why? Because not distinctly different in twists and 
 wrinkles from corresponding bones in skeletons of unques- 
 tionable Indians. This, of course, simplifies matters 
 through retention of ignorance, which is less onerous than 
 the acquisition of additional facts. Why it is easier to say 
 we do not know than that we do, is to most of us a puz- 
 zle, but probably it lightens the labors of the professors. 
 
 ""Primitive Industry"; Salem, Mass., 1881. 
 
122 
 
 As a matter of fact, no difference need be looked for be- 
 tween older and later bones of pre-historic Americans. 
 Years ago, three crania fromi the valley of the Delaware 
 were submitted to specialists as possibly not Indian. One 
 was found deep in coarse gravel, and could under no possi- 
 bility have gotten where found subsequently to the depo- 
 sition of the containing bed, which dates as far back as the 
 forces that operated to the present arrangement of the sands 
 and gravel in the ancient flood-plain of the river. It was 
 decided^ to be modern and Lenapean. The other two 
 were decided not to be Indian by A. Hrdlicka, and so might 
 be examples of crania of argillite man, but this admission 
 [The Crania of Trenton, New Jersey, and their bearing 
 upon the antiquity of man in that region. By Ales Hrdlicka. 
 Bulletin Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. XVI, 1902] was re- 
 called later, ^ and these curious crania were perched upon 
 European shoulders. It is rather significant that at this 
 time and at that place (Washington, D. C.) official archse- 
 ology did not approve of man's antiquity in the Delaware 
 Valley or elsewhere unless the discovery was made under its 
 auspices. For others to be more fortunate was not within 
 the scope of its plans and the locality, because of others' 
 activities, had been only perfunctorily visited by prejudiced 
 observers, and therefore misrepresented by some and 
 stabbed with reckless statements by others. 
 
 These crania and certain fragments of crania and bones 
 reported from, time to time are quite as conclusive of man's 
 antiquity as the femur from gravel reported by Volk, 
 which, if so very old, is pecuJiar in that it is declared to be 
 the handle of a knife. I have had an opportunity of seeing 
 this specimen since its discovery and have grave doubt as 
 to its having ever been put to any such use. If so, would 
 
 'American Naturalist, Vol. XXXIII, Zab., iSgg, p. 143. 
 "Bulletin, Bureau of American Ethnology, XXXIII, pp. 35-47. 
 
123 
 
 it not argue that its one time possessor was in an advanced 
 stage of neolithic cuUure? The unrestrained imagination 
 of the osteologists, like uncurbed enthusiasm, wanders 
 sometimes too far a-field for its own good. It would be 
 quite as warrantable to declare the frontal human bone from 
 Columbia Gravel that I discovered years agC' was the bowl 
 of a spoon or a drinking cup, because of its water-worn 
 edges and apparent evidences of much handling by man. It 
 is, in all such cases, the circumstances of discovery that de- 
 cided the question of antiquity. If intrusion is shown to 
 have been impracticable and the containing bed has a de- 
 monstrable origin and ascertainable geological age, then this 
 must apply to the bones as well as the pebbles found in it. 
 There is certainly no reason why objects as fragile as the 
 tabular bones of human crania should not be a constituent 
 part of a deposit of gravel, even if floods suggestive of de- 
 struction are the depositing egencies. It must be remem- 
 bere that masses of frozen sand and pebbles even now float a 
 long distance and lodging are slowly disintegrated by melt- 
 ing, and without destructive force subsequently operating 
 upon them. I once found an unbroken duck's egg that 
 from its position must have come from some distant point 
 up the river during the freshet incident tO' the breaking up 
 of the ice at the close of winter. In August, 1891, with 
 Professor Albert Gaudry and M. Boull, of Paris, and the 
 late Thomas Wilson, of Washington, D. C, I visited an ex- 
 tensive exposure of Trenton Gravel, east of Trenton and a 
 mile fromi the river. Prof. Gaudry remarked upon the 
 absence of molluscan fauna, thinking it strange that I had 
 never found any trace of shell in the sandy strata of the 
 deposit. Three weeks later, I visited the same locality with 
 Mr. Volk, to procure a series of photographic views and 
 in one of the strata of sand found the valve of a fresh- 
 water mussel which Mr. Volk photographed before it was 
 
124 
 
 removed. If, therefore, so fragile an object as a shell could 
 escape destruction, there is no reason why human bones 
 should not have remained intact, v^rhen brought from some 
 distant point to where they were discovered, ten thousand 
 years or more later. 
 
 If it was very necessary to render conclusive the associa- 
 'tion of man in this region and the closing activities of the 
 glacial conditions once obtaining; that bones should be dis- 
 covered as well as artifacts in situ, then the bones already 
 reported are sufficient to set the matter at rest. To wave 
 them aside because essentially the same as bones of more 
 modern Indians is neither scientific or sensible. If intru- 
 sive objects, why then in these g-ravels which have been 
 searched so persistently for scores of years, have not bones 
 of the horse, ox, sheep and dog been continually exposed? 
 But such is not the case, except where intentional burial 
 occurred, and these disturbances from the surface down- 
 ward can always be recognized without possibility of being 
 misled. If the bones of the elephant, m,astodon, walrus, 
 musk-ox and caribou occur, as has been demonstrated time 
 and again, then the occurrence of human remains, of man 
 living the life very suggiestive of the Eskimo, is to be ex- 
 pected. It would be far more strange, did they not occur, 
 than that they do. 
 
 The pre-Lenapean man then is not a myth. That which 
 we find and refer to him. as its originator cannot with equal 
 reason be referred to the historic Indian or his immediate 
 ancestry, but to a precursor, when the Lenape "dwelt far 
 to the northeast, on tidewater, probably at Labrador" and 
 later, "journeyed south and west, till they reached a broad 
 water, full of islands and abounding in fish, perhaps the 
 St. Lawrence about the Thousand Isles. They crossed 
 and dwelt for some generations in the pine and hemlock 
 regions of New York, fighting more or less with the Snake 
 
125 
 
 people, and the Talega, agricultural nations, living in sta- 
 tionary villages to the southeast of them, in the area of 
 Ohio and Indiana. * * * The Lenape, now settled on 
 the streams in Indiana, wished to remove to the east" and 
 after an undetermined period "they did clear the road and 
 reached the Delaware Valley."^ Who shall say how 
 many centuries this calls for? Events moved slowly then. 
 We have nothing to guide us in any estimate as to lapse of 
 time. In a sense, we are hopelessly in the dark. "Lost is lost 
 and gone is gone forever," and yet a crumbling bit of stone 
 here and a decaying fragment of bone there, leads the waA^ 
 to the simple fact that man was a witness tO' events in the 
 Valley of the Delaware of which all knowledge is irrecov- 
 erable beyond that of his existence. 
 
 There is nothing in the tradition of the Lenape that de- 
 nies the one-time existence here of a pre-Lenapean people, 
 and when all that bears upon the question is considered, the 
 probabilities are in favor of such a people. It is not a 
 "most lame and impotent conclusion." 
 
 But where did this pre-Lenapean come from? That is 
 a problem for others to solve. It has only been my en- 
 deavor to demonstrate his one-time occupancy of the Dela- 
 ware Valley, and this does not make it obligatory on my 
 part to set forth in detail the beginning and end of his 
 career. 
 
 ^ Brinton, 1. c. p. 165. 
 
126 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOMO DEI.AWARE.NSIS 
 
 Figure 21. — Map of Delaware River so far as treated of in present 
 
 volume. 
 
 ADAM was wise in this, that he did not endteavor, after 
 he was evicted — so the fable runs — to face the flaming 
 swords that guarded the entrance to Paradise and seek to 
 reinstate himself. Perhaps it would have been wise if I had 
 taken a hint fromi the story and not again ventured to en- 
 ter the Valley of the Delaware on a paleolithic quest, hav- 
 
127 
 
 ing been evicted, years ago, by certain learned expositors 
 of archseologic lore. 
 
 To be rash is not to be brave, but the weapons of the 
 evictors prove to be, and to have been, more sho\vy than 
 effective, only equal to annoying, but not to placing hors du 
 <:ombat any one who sees fit to differ from those who 
 wielded them. 
 
 Real courage is shown in attempting to explore the liter- 
 ature of the subject. Not far can one plunge into this 
 jungle before he realizes the hopelessness of progress. No 
 two steps are pointed in the same direction. The "Mystic 
 Maze," known to our popular summer resorts, is simplicity 
 in comparison. All that I have been able to determine, 
 after several such attempts, is that the authors are only 
 positive on the one point, that I, who restored Paleolithic 
 Man to his rightful place in history, did nothing of the 
 kind. Why attempt to foist such a myth upon them? they 
 demanded. The myth to me has always been real, and 
 -certain broken stones lying exposed on heaps of gravel, re- 
 stored my earlier courage, or, shall I say, increased my lack 
 •of discretion ?(^) 
 
 Those who dwell in this region frequently hear of some 
 project being brought before our legislature to dam the 
 Delaware. So far, this has never reached beyond the 
 initial, wordy stage of suggestion ; but those in quest of 
 the river's archaeological story have succeeded in damning 
 •the Delaware in another sense, and little wonder. Geolo- 
 gists have wandered up and down its valley, jwssting tres- 
 pass notices: ArchcEolo gists Keep Off! This impudent 
 ■exercise of an assumed right of eminent domain I resented, 
 and have been trespassing on this territory again. 
 
 The river still flows to the sea. Its confining shores and 
 
 ^Of course, there were some notable exceptions, and I modestly 
 -except my own contributions to a very unnecessary wrangle. 
 
I2« 
 
 its bed are still paved with pebbles, and monumental boul- 
 ders are scattered here and there, as if landmarks indicating" 
 where incidents of unusual interest have occurred. These 
 must be left toi the imagination, but the question, often 
 asked, was there such an ancient man here ? can, I maintain,, 
 be answered in the affirmative. 
 
 We associate man with terra firma, but now we are called 
 upon to think of him as a feature of the river more than of 
 the adjoining shores. Not at all, that this particular man 
 was in any sense amphibious, or more so than those savages, 
 that are at home in and on the water, as many are, but, 
 having disappeared from; off the face of the earth, has left 
 behind himi, all unwittingly, traces of his career in and 
 about the river. 
 
 It is because these traces, which even the most cautious 
 geologist does not doubt are such, are so intimately asso- 
 ciated with the river that they are refused recognition, and, 
 he demands instead that the unquestioned reliquiae of ancient 
 man must be found so' far from the river that their one- 
 time owners may never have seen the stream. It is because 
 they are so intimately associated with the river that I hail 
 them' as the possessions of this ancient race, to whom I 
 shall refer, henceforth, as Homo Delawarensis. 
 
 Because an artificially-shaped stone, an implement of some- 
 sort, rolls from the river bank to the water's edge, it has 
 been claimed that it has no archaeological significance, but 
 what of a tooth or portion of a tusk of an elephant rolling 
 from the same bank ? Are they, too, to be discarded as evi- 
 dence of this great beast once living in New Jersey, because 
 a pick and shovel did not unearth them, a mile back from 
 running water? Unless the object found in loose gravel, 
 the level spread base of a talus, and along the edge of the 
 stream, bears undeniable evidence of modern origin as peb- 
 bles of brick, bits of metal and fragments of articles in com- 
 
i2g 
 
 mon use, or, objects recog-nized as the characteristic handi- 
 work of the historic Indian, then they cannot be logically 
 separated from the gravel, of which all evidence points to 
 their being a constituent part, and what, in case of argillite 
 artifacts, is of greatest significance, these have the same 
 time-worn surfaces as the pebbles about them. This fact 
 warrants us in concluding that we have a perfect right to 
 maintain that they have had a similar career and have been 
 brought tO' where they are found by the same agencies as 
 brought sand, pebbles and boulders, or dropped among' them 
 so long ago that they have had time to acquire the same 
 general characteristics of surface. 
 
 It has been suggested that they rolled from the surface, 
 or top of the bluff facing the river. This would have some 
 force, if the surface in question was the ordinary soil of 
 the nearest fields, but it is nothing of the sort. The soil 
 was long ago removed. The gravel is as pronounced there 
 as deeper down. It was all removed, with much surface 
 gravel, when the street of a village was graded. If any 
 patches o^f soil remained, they were long ago washed away. 
 If the surface was the SEime as when the Lenape were in 
 possession, why have not examples of the many forms of 
 Indian handiwork also rolled down this bank and from its 
 base, river-ward, until at the edge of the water? I have 
 never found such, and I have tramped this river shore for 
 fifty years. It is only the one type — ^the paleolith — and these 
 are rare.^ Again, it has been suggested that they have, 
 comparatively recently, been washed down stream from the 
 Indian argillite quarries, twenty odd miles away. If so, 
 supposing they came from the nearest argillite outcrop, 
 would they not be fresher of surface and bear some marks 
 
 ' The assertion by Holmes that they are common, and not found in- 
 land, is incorrect. They are very nearly equally distributed over the 
 area of the gravel. 
 
 9A 
 
I30 
 
 of their recent rough-and-tumble experience? Would they 
 not bear comparison with those recent up-river specimens, 
 and they do not resemble them. Argillite does not float 
 and more are found at Riverview, high or mid-way on the 
 bluff than at its base. The simple truth is, the river for 
 many years, before the bank was protected, was wearing it 
 away and at brief intervals there was a new exposure and 
 the deposit was spread out in the most favorable manner 
 for closely scrutinizing its contents. The artifacts could 
 not well be overlooked, and their relation to the gravel, as a 
 veritable part of it, is confirmed by the commonplace fact 
 that excavations in the area of the deposit, anywhere back 
 from the river, occasionally brings a typical specimen to 
 light. 
 
 It may prove of some interest to briefly sketch, at this 
 point, the history of the examination of this gravel, not 
 only along the river but inland, by others than myself, but 
 whom I accompanied on the occasions mentioned. 
 
 Earliest of these visits is that of the late Thomas Belt, 
 author of the "Naturalist in Nicaragua," and a competent 
 observer. It occurred October 4, 1877. While clambering 
 over the loose /gravel on the face of the very steep escarp- 
 ment, Mr. Belt found a typical paleolith in such a position 
 as to preclude the possibility of its having fallen from the 
 surface or near it. The subject, then and there, of such 
 objects being intrusive or later in origin than the gravel as 
 then deposited, was vigorously discussed, I taking the 
 affiTmative side of the question, for sake of argument. Mr. 
 Belt insisted, arguing from his own "find" of that after- 
 noon, that it fell to the lot of those who opposed antiquity, 
 to show how it could be otherwise than a constituent part 
 of the deposit, and it must be admitted, this has not yet 
 been done, although a continuous effort has been made to 
 do so, for the succeeding thirty-five years. 
 
131 
 
 November i8, 1880, Prof. Wm. Boyd Dawkins, the 
 late Henry W. Haines and Prof. Geo. Frederick Wright and 
 and myself visited the various exposures cf gravel in and 
 near Trenton, N. J., and along the river bank, where, as else- 
 where, a search was made for ancient artifacts. Three 
 such specimens were found, and the fact that being in the 
 talus rather than in situ did not appear tO' impair their 
 archaeological significance, as these gentlemen then ex- 
 pressed themselves. The inabiHty to declare the original 
 position of the artifacts in the bank did not seriously lessen 
 the value they placed upon the "finds." Prof. Dawkins 
 expressed himself as "convinced" that I had discovered 
 traces of paleolithic man in America, and was the more 
 ■emphatic when I called his attention to the conditions on 
 the surface, which is wholly the same gravel, dotted over 
 •with boulders of large size and which must have brought 
 liither by immense floating rafts of ice.^ 
 
 April 16, 1881, Prof. Edward S. Morse and I went 
 •over the same ground, and where the Pennsylvania Rail- 
 road had made an excavation in the gravel, a mile east of 
 the river, and about one thousand yards long. Prof. Morse 
 found in situ a chipped quartzite pebble that was as clearly 
 artificial as an arrow-point. It is needless to add that he 
 was convinced of the occurrence of these disputed paleo- 
 lithic implements in the gravel. Our visit to the river bank 
 was equally fortunate, as I called his attention there to an 
 argillite object in the bank, where the gravel was compact 
 and had never been disturbed. Although such "finds" 
 were nothing new to me, this was memorable because made 
 in the presence of a most competent observer, who was 
 inclined to be exceedingly critical. 
 
 '■ It is necessary here to state, in justice to Prof. Dawkins, that he has 
 recently, in a review of Wright's "Ice Age in North America," declared 
 that there is no evidence of glacial man in America. As an instance of 
 paleontological contortion, this is more amusing than important. 
 
132 
 
 September 12, 1884, I again visited the various gravel 
 exposures with Prof. Edward B. Tyler, of Oxford, Eng- 
 land, and he found a typical paleolithic implement on an 
 exposed surface and not in any sense, in situ. It was lying 
 on the surface of a public road that had been graded down 
 to the lowlands, or present flood-plain of the river. The 
 nearest "surface" of the blufif, still retaining soil and vegeta-. 
 tion, was thirty yards distant and twenty feet above the point 
 where the object was found. In other words, the artifact 
 that Dr. Tylor found was twenty feet from the original sur- 
 face and fifty yards back from the river; conditions which 
 were sufficiently pronounced to be very suggestive of other 
 than recent time, even geologically considered. As a matter 
 of course, as I then suggested, cavilers might claim that 
 the specimen might have been carried here from^ a distant 
 point and dropped. If so, and how highly improbable, it 
 would have shown some evidence of such an occurrence. 
 Prof. Tylor expressed only pleasure at his success in find- 
 ing the specimen and took it with him, saying he highly 
 valued it. Any thought that it was intrusive, recent as to- 
 its position where found, as, in any sense, other than a 
 paleolithic implement in the common acceptation of that 
 term', did not occur to him. 
 
 It is not necessary to go further into such wearisome de- 
 tails. There were other visitors. Professedly skeptical, to 
 a man, and some intentionally blind to the most obvious 
 facts. The result was ever the same. They came, they 
 saw, and the gravel conquered. 
 
 It happened, in the minds of some geologists, who were 
 open to conviction, but preferred to be non-commital as to 
 the testimony of the talus at the river shore, that to discover 
 in situ artifacts in the gravel at a distance from flowing 
 water was necessary. At that time, most excellent op- 
 portunity was afforded by the enormous excavations being 
 
133 
 
 made by the Pennsylvania Railroad, east of Trenton, a mile 
 from tlie river and reaching to the junction of the Glacial 
 Gravel with the Columbia deposits. Millions of cubic yards 
 of gravel were removed and for years, almost daily, new 
 exposures were made. I paid hundreds of visits to the 
 spot, spending hours at a time, in search of traces of early 
 man. It was very rarely that I was successful, considering 
 the frequency of the visits. The restilts have b^en recorded 
 in the various annual reports of the curator of the Peabody 
 Museum of American Archaeology, Cambridge, Mass. 
 Others than these were found in excavations in the city for 
 cellars and later, when extensive sewer trenches were dug 
 in many of the principal thoroughfares. These trenches 
 •could not, fro'm their nature, be examined as systematically 
 as was desired. They were too narrow, too deep, and 
 usually the sides were dripping with muddy water that 
 coated the sides of the trench, so as to obscure the real 
 character of every partly-exposed pebble. Furthermore, 
 the texture of the gravel was Oiften so loose that planking 
 was needed as soon as the necessary amount of material 
 had been removed. The most that could be done, or was 
 done — all statements to the contrary, notwithstanding — 
 was to examine the material that extended parallel to the 
 trench and thrown out from it. Naturally, that which 
 capped the ridge came from- the bottom^ of the trench, and 
 under such conditions I found several pieces of artificially 
 <:hipp€d argillite. The chances would not be one in ten 
 thousand of their having fallen from! the surface, and what 
 if they did ? This surface is that of a graded street from 
 which all soil and considerable gravel had been removed. 
 Finally, if these argillite artifacts are "Indian relics," why 
 are they only found ? What of the axes, celts, agricultural 
 tools and some spear-heads as massive as a paleolith? 
 These ne\rer occur under such circumstances. I had the 
 
134 
 
 hearty cooperation of the contractors who had this excavat- 
 ing in charge and I know that no traces of the Lenape were 
 brought to Hght. I was continually on the ground, and I 
 failed to meet that, Richmond in the field who boasted so 
 vehemiently of his negative results. 
 
 It is opportune, here, to call attention to an expression of 
 opinion concerning the argillite artifacts that I forwarded 
 to the Peabody Museum, thirty-six years ago. It seems to 
 have Iseen overlooked by many who joined in a discussion 
 with a maximum' of zeal and minimum of erudition. 
 
 Insisting that the Delaware river paleolithic imple- 
 ments spoke effectively cf their antiquity, here is what an- 
 other decides concerning them. I quote Dr. M. E. Wad- 
 worth, as follows: 
 
 "Certain of these specimens were placed in my hands in 
 1876 for examination, their lithological character then be- 
 ing unknown. They were found by macroscopic and micro- 
 scopic examination to have been made from argillite, greatly 
 indurated, and breaking with a conchoidal fracture. The 
 specimens were weathered tO' a greater or less extent and 
 showed plainly that the fractures must have been made 
 long ago. This secondary chipping evidently took place 
 long after the original fracturing, but also long ago, as is 
 shown by the weathering of the surfaces of both the pri- 
 mary and secondary fractures. The few secondary frac- 
 tures are probably natural, and could easily occur if sub- 
 jected to the action Dr. Abbott supposes. The original 
 chipping could not have taken place by any known natural 
 causes acting upon rocks, so far as the writer has any 
 knowledge. 0|f course it then brings us to the only agency 
 that could do the work — ^man. The characters of the 
 specimens, petrographically, bore out the statemients made 
 to me by Mr. Putnam-, of the conditions under which they 
 were found, whether upon the surface or in the gravels. I 
 
135 
 
 do not see how it is possible that such correspondence of 
 characters could exist unless the specimens were found un- 
 der the conditions reported. 
 
 "The lithological characters then show that the specimens 
 are not natural forms ; that being composed of a slow weath- 
 ering rock, they must have been made long years ago ; that 
 many years later they were subject to other conditions, 
 probably natural, by which part have been modified; that 
 since then, they have lain for many, many years exposed 
 to weathering agencies; some showing that they have been 
 subject to this action while lyin,g on or near the surface, and 
 others while buried tO' some depth. 
 
 "Their weathering corresponds to that observed on peb- 
 bles of similar composition in gravels elsewhere. It is to 
 be remem'bered that all the weathering has taken place since 
 the Abbott specimens were originally chipped. 
 
 "The term weathering, as here employed, means the 
 alteration and decay that have taken place on the surface 
 of the specimen, but does not imply that it has been exposed 
 on the surface of the ground; it may or may not have been ; 
 the weathering itself with greater or less dea,mess shows 
 whether this occurred from surface exposure or not. 
 
 "Part of the specimens shown me bore evidence that they 
 had originally been exposed to weathering on the surface 
 of the ground and been covered since, but the covering evi- 
 dently took place ages ago, if the weathering that they have 
 been subjected to since is any criterion. 
 
 "The term 'argillite,' as employed by me, is used to 
 designate all angillaceous rocks, in which the argillaceous 
 material is the predominant characteristic; slate or clay- 
 slate, clay-stone, etc., are simply varieties, of it, the term 
 slate being only rightfully used when slaty cleavage is de- 
 veloped. The argillite out of which these specimens were 
 made has no trace of cleavage." 
 
136 
 
 It does not seem that the above leaves anything more to 
 be said. The ebuIHtions of ignorance in various symposia 
 of which I have heard, but in which I have never joined, 
 are painful reminders of the fact that most is said where 
 least is known. Let certain of our archseologists take 
 up their abode on a gravel bed and honestly swear off 
 from preconceptions and the desirability for learned dis- 
 cussions will vanish, and journals and State geological re-' 
 ports will not have their pages marred by recklessness of 
 assertion that is little short of criminal. 
 
 The Delaware river was long since shorn of its nobility. 
 It is essentially commonplace in every detail. There are 
 no majestic falls, frolicsome rapids or wide lake-like ex- 
 pansions, with m-ythical depths or shores that are legend- 
 laden. It is simply a moderate stream flowing between low 
 hills in as unaffected a manner as the average individual 
 goes in and out unnoticed among the crowds of men. 
 
 Were it not, however, in a sense, a sleeping giant and 
 occasionally is roused tO' real activity, it would have no 
 claim to distinction beyond being the boundary line 'twixt 
 two states. But, given such a phenomenal rainfall as in 
 October, 1903, and its volume proves equal to flooding many 
 feet deep the lowlands along its course and returns to 
 ravines the water that once poured through them on their 
 way to the ancient river. 
 
 Again, if during our uncertain winters, there is an un- 
 tisual accumulation of ice — ^as in 1892-93 — ^there is also apt 
 to be, in consequence of grounding in the shallows at the 
 junction of tidal and non-tidal flow, a damming of the 
 stream' and such serious accumiulation of water above the 
 ■obstruction that ordinarily dry land is inundated until the 
 pent-up waters have strength sufficient to move the barrier, 
 when the river becomes mildly destructive, not so much to 
 its own bounds as to the perishable objects in its reach, as 
 the trees along the water's dge. 
 
^?>7 
 
 What may be claimed to be exceptions to this monoto- 
 nous round of events, is where, as in 1691, the river is 
 turned fromi its old bed, by a barrier of ice and finds an 
 outlet in some new direction, and cuts awa}- a slice of its 
 shore and f onns an island, as that opposite Trenton ; and 
 later or earlier when the series of islands farther down the 
 river were formed ; also, in the rapid or gradual destruction 
 of islands, as when a long, narrow nameless one was re- 
 
 Fignre 25.— Delaware River, ice-bound, March i, 1893- A return to the 
 glacial conditions famiUar to paleolithic man. 
 
 duced to a bar, exposed in part only durin,g extremely low 
 stages of the water; and at Perriwig, which sixty years ago 
 was a considerable island, with a growth of heavy timber. 
 This meant a distribution of coarse gravel over a some- 
 what wider area, but probably not a pebble of it ever was 
 moved a mile from' its former resting place, and if such 
 islands were very, very old, then their destruction means, 
 too, the distribution over the present river bed of any arti- 
 
138 
 
 facts in or on themi. What, so far, is the result, in study- 
 ing the outspread gravels where practical? Rude argillite: 
 objects, the artificiality of which no one doubts, have been 
 found, but no trace of pottery of the neolithic or "Indian"' 
 forms. Bkit we know that Indians were frequently on 
 these islands and must have left some traces of their so- 
 journ there. What has become of them, I do not presume 
 to say, but the argillite artifacts that were there also and 
 there before the others, are now in the river bed. The 
 floods that swept the surface of the island must have washed 
 them off, and if not carried away, then they would be 
 buried by the later distribution of the body of the island. 
 This would explain why now the older objects are exposed 
 and not the later ones. 
 
 These islands, once in the very middle of the present 
 stream and the general features of the river's shores, were 
 in all likelihood more firmly fixed in the days of the Lenape, 
 as every few rods had a name, just as, later, the fishermen 
 knew these samp shores by quaint or characteristic names. 
 The heavy growth of timber, to the water's edge often, was 
 certainly a protection, and threatening as were freshets, 
 whether with or without ice, the river remained essentially 
 the same, and the up-stream water brought nothing from the 
 hills 'twixt which it flowed except sand and that sorry mix- 
 ture of indefinable substances which collectively is mud. 
 There has been no transportation of heavy gravel sufficient 
 to make any impression in a down-river direction. The 
 heaviest ice has seldom any adherent sand and less fre- 
 quently an encased pebble. The cobbles and boulders that 
 are now here came so long ago that definite information 
 is not ascertainable and the Gordian knot of the gravel 
 problem is unceremoniously cut by the off-hand expression, 
 "O, they're glacial." 
 
 To those who have a reason for definite information, this 
 is much like asserting the Trenton Gravel consists of frag- 
 
139 
 
 ments of the rocks that are in place elsewhere. Of course 
 the modus operandi of their transformation has been as- 
 sumed and on the assumption, ex cathedra statements are 
 to be found in journals, technical and others, within reach 
 of the inexpert. All that is necessary, for instance, is to 
 sink South Jersey into the depths of the sea and let the peb- 
 bles roll down hill from the mountains above. That is 
 easy. Then, all that is needed is to lift South Jersey up 
 enough to give vegetation a show to breathe, and there you 
 are. Then, we are told of great floods, due to unusual 
 causes, raising the water to such a height, after the coarse 
 gravel was all spread out, that ice rafts, acres wide and 
 many feet thick, were considerate enough to record their 
 passage to the sea by dropping the substantial hint of their 
 transient visit, in the shape of a rock weighing from two to 
 twenty tons. So, it seems, there were giants in those days 
 in the course of terrestrial events, and all that happens now 
 is but a petty reminder of the good old times when things 
 really did happen. Let it go at this. The gravel is here. 
 Floods transported them. There is no other explanation 
 available. B^t glacial floods or glaciers that build up a 
 moraine are not gravel-makers. Pick up any pebble, unless 
 very soft, and it is evident that the process of wearing off 
 its angles, giving it a surface that is smooth but not polished, 
 shaping it often in accordance with its composition if two 
 or more rocks have been cemented together. All this is in 
 steady progress where the sea, to-day, rolls to and fro the 
 pebble on its beach, and since I have been walking over thou- 
 sands of tons of gravel dredged from the river and now 
 heaped to form a breakwater, and have seen other acres 
 of pebbles spread over islands and low ground in the course 
 of the efforts to permanently deepen the river, I have ccme 
 to the conclusion that the lowermost of the so-called Trenton 
 Gravel did not come during the latest glacial condition, from 
 
140 
 
 up the river, but was fragments of rocks converted into 
 pebbles long antecedent to that period. This does not ac- 
 cord, I am told, with orthodox geology, but it has this merit, 
 that in such material matters, as in matters belonging to the 
 world of whim, heterodoxy and true happiness are in- 
 separable. 
 
 That some of this gravel was derived from; the terminal 
 moraine can scarcely be questioned, but it is that which has 
 every appearance of being the "most recent," as pointed out 
 by geologists, but to the uninitiated there is a suggestion of 
 obscurity in the language used that suggests a distinction 
 where no difference exists. 
 
 That from' the fateful day when the great ice-sheet began 
 to recede upitil it was lost in the eternal ice of the arctic circle, 
 there was many a momentous movement and changes on a 
 scale the magnitude of which we can scarcely realize, may 
 well be accepted, but the attempt to restore in a rational 
 way, the sequence of events from then until now, is not a 
 success. There is a moraine sixty miles up the river, and 
 a deposit of gravel down here at tidewater, and perhaps the 
 least said as to the two, the soonest mended. The condi- 
 tions were favorable and there doubtless was local and occa- 
 sional distribution of gravel, that in time was gradually 
 brought this whole distance of sixty miles, but be chary 
 of going into details. 
 
 All this presents no difficulty to certain archsological 
 views, provided the depression at the line of juncture of 
 North or South Jersey, or tidal and non-tidal portions of the 
 state, was not so great that no habitable land was in exist- 
 ence. If we separate the two natural divisions of the state 
 and in a deep and narrow depression between them, let 
 this moranic gravel drop, all is well, but, if this could not 
 have been, the weak-kneed archaeologists, as has already 
 happened, rush frantically into the arnns of Holmes, ex- 
 claiming, "All's Indian." 
 
141 
 
 I am not disposed to do so. South Jersey, I believe, was 
 
 not the bed of a shallow sea when the Trenton Gravel i. e., 
 
 the morainic gravel— was deposited. It had then hills that 
 sheltered a fauna and was capable of sheltering and did 
 shelter man when he discovered it, and that was almost as 
 far back in time. 
 
 Time, happily, does not enter into the equation and the 
 last of the gravel reached its resting place in the course of 
 events and then, being no further disturbance of magnitude, 
 the region took on its present aspect and the familiar and 
 methodical processes of Nature were undisturbed. 
 
 It was now, not earlier, that Homo Delawarensis affected 
 these gravels in a way that has not been provocative of 
 serenity of temper or accuracy of statement, during the past 
 twenty years. That man was elsewhere on the continent 
 before glacial conditions prevailed is established, but this 
 is a^ question that does not concern us at this time. If man 
 was here, i. e., on the spot, during the deposition of the im- 
 plement-bearing gravel, there is now no evidence of the 
 fact, but after the gravel was in position, then he invaded 
 the territory and his artifacts became mingled with it, not, 
 as I believe, because of floods that rushed down from' the 
 mountains, but because of local disturbances of a violence 
 that did not obtain later, when the sand and soil covered 
 the gravel. I maintain this, because there were then and 
 still are streamis that could gully, obliterate and reassert this 
 gravel in a mianner that renders it plain enough how such 
 artifacts could become deeply embedded. It should be re- 
 membered that we are dealing here wholly with unstable 
 material, and the wonder is that it preserves so miuch of the 
 semblance of permanency. The original condition can only 
 be surmised. We can no more decipher this, seeing how 
 frequent have been debacular disturbances than we can read 
 the original text in the ashes of a book. 
 
142 
 
 Here it is fitting to state, as has been done, time and time 
 before, that if such artifacts as have been designated as 
 "paleolithic" are of Lenapean origin, then the local debacle 
 that caused the argillite implement to be buried would have 
 buried also the neolithic implements of a later day. Suffice 
 it to say, this has never been shown to have occurred. As 
 the archaeology of the region stands to-day, it is gravel and 
 gravel implements — ^Htano Delawarensis ; the later sands 
 and sand implements — Man of the "Yellow Drift" ; the 
 surface and surface implements — the historic Indian. 
 
 To consider a river as it is to-day and reach to conclu- 
 sions as to evidence of the antiquity of man in its valley, 
 without duly considering the river as it has been is equal 
 to assuming that the present bears no relation to the past, 
 and this is just what has been done by some visiting geolo- 
 gists, and often while in statuesque pose on the river bank, 
 for some unaccountable reason — at least, they never state 
 it — ^they exclaim, "Not here, but there!" and point inland. 
 As an archaeologist, I humbly submit that the front of a 
 house, facing on the street, has as much and as interesting 
 history as the rear entrance or any lesser structure in the 
 backyard. 
 
 Looking at the accompanying map of a few miles of the 
 river's length, fromi the head of tidewater, flowing sea- 
 ward, it will be seen that the stream is very crooked. The 
 reason is apparent, when we consider the impassible bar- 
 rier to a direct course is the high eastern or New Jersey 
 shore. But closer inspection — not of the map, but the lo- 
 cality — shows that the Pennsylvania shore is not a serious 
 hindrance to the water flowing pretty much where it would, 
 so slightly is it above the present level of the stream., and 
 therefore not very long ago, geologically, permanently sub- 
 merged and now, in part, the flood-plain, for in unusual 
 freshets, the artificial barriers are broken down and con- 
 
143 
 
 siderable areas are covered. If further inspection is made, 
 it will prove possible to trace, at or near the junction of the 
 present gravelly plain and the ancient beach line, some miles 
 inland, a somewhat tortuous depression, presenting the ap- 
 -pearance of a dry river-bed. This was at one time the 
 -channel of the river. The present one may also have been 
 in existence, but probably not, and even with only the map 
 before us, we can imagine, if not literally "see," that the 
 river, bending abruptly, as indicated by the dotted portion 
 of the map, might become choked with ice and a new chan- 
 nel formed, i. e., the present one; just as in recent years, this 
 present channel has been closed completely and the river 
 ■sought to re-occupy the ancient one, the low ground on the 
 Pennsylvania side being in places deeply submerged. 
 
 The archaeological significance of this locality and condi- 
 tion is, that at certain points, rude argillite implements, 
 paleolithic in pattern, occur in limited numbers, and twice 
 there has come to my knowledge, the discovery of a surpris- 
 ing number, gathered within the boundaries of a very lim- 
 ited area, while over the territory indicated as a whole, or 
 that between the river and the one-time stream — Penn's 
 Manor, as locally known^ — these argillite artifacts are prac- 
 tically wanting, if my own careful search without success is 
 an indication of the actual condition. This is a condition 
 •of distribution quite in accordance with the surface-found 
 relics of the Indian. In a given area of a few acres, these 
 occur by the hundreds and I have known thousands to be 
 gathered, and then a much larger area on which they are not 
 found. There does not appear to the collector any reason 
 for this feature of localization, but usually the archaeolo- 
 gist can point one out that is satisfactory to himself if not 
 to the uninstructed relic-hunter. Homo Delawarensis or 
 paleolithic man, was a creature much like ourselves in his 
 inaterial aims and had wit enough to choose those sites for 
 
144 
 
 sojourn, temporary or permanent, best fitted to his needs. 
 Usually we can see that the localities where the artifacts 
 occur are such sites by reason of the relation at that point 
 of land and water. This is shown tO' be where the ground 
 was at the time of occupation, the highest and dryest and 
 margining deep and rapid water, where the chance of secur- 
 ing aquatic life for food was greatest. It is for these rea- 
 sons that near Tullytown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and 
 at Bristol, four miles distant, down the river, where the 
 gravel is and always has been at the surface, if net always 
 actually exposed, that a number of argillite implements of 
 paleolithic pattern have been found and just where, to all 
 appearances Homoi Delawarenses left them. Soil, it is pre- 
 sumed, gathered about them as the centuries rolled by and 
 a forest protected them.; but with the removal of the latter, 
 the soil, too, would disappear and the gravel be again ex- 
 posed. I can see no reason why this should not occur when 
 we consider the conditions under which European paleolithic- 
 implements occur, as in England, for instance.^ It is 
 for similar reasons that the antiquity of the original paleo- 
 lithic implements found by me in 1872-76 along the bluff 
 facing the river, near Trenton, and on the gravel where ex- 
 posed, later, on opposite side of the river, is claimed. The 
 one difficulty to be met is to- explain their presence in the 
 bluff at such great depths as have been reported. Such 
 occurrence, in situ, seems to demand that their presence 
 dates back to the original deposition of the gravel, and so 
 calls for an enormous antiquity ; but I have many reasons for 
 believing in the modification of the gravel since deposition. 
 There is evidence, I think, of the mass, as a whole, having 
 been deeply gullied at various points, and so artifacts then 
 on the surface have been inhumed. 
 
 'Proceedings, Pre-historic Society of East Anglia, Vol. I, igo8-io; 
 W. A. Sturge. 
 
145 
 
 This bluff or riverside termination of the plateau that ex- 
 tends eastward until it reaches an older formation — Colum- 
 bia Gravel — appears, at one time, and geologically con- 
 sidered, very recently, to have extended across the present 
 stream, sloping gradually to the surface of the islands oppo- 
 site, as Biles Island and others, half a mile or more away. 
 There is now no evidence that the bluff was cross-sectioned 
 by brooks or considerable creeks, but this must not be held 
 as of much importance, for elsewhere and near by, streams 
 existent in historic time have absolutely disappeared. 
 
 As I am now wholly convinced^ that the "paleolith" 
 is an intrusive object, but intruded when the gravel was 
 but recently laid down and the objects were made and 
 lost by man who saw the river ages before the man of the 
 later sands — ^Yellow Drift — I can only look upon the burial 
 of many of these implements as due to rains or swollen 
 brooks, crevicing the deposit. This seems the more prob- 
 able because, as the result of one vast volume of water being 
 checked in its flow parallel to the river, it quickly cut across 
 channel and flowed over the bluff and washed out a deep 
 gully that extended nearly twenty feet into the bank and 
 wide enough to have buried a maker of paleolithic imple- 
 ments, to say nothing of the artifacts themselves, had they 
 been within the reach of this transient flood due to an un- 
 usual shower. On the contrary, while none were then in- 
 humed, several were exposed in the sides of the new-born 
 ravine. 
 
 Wherever, strictly inland, as running water is new dis- 
 tributed, artifacts have been found in situ, there was still a 
 
 ' At the time of publication of my work, "Primitive Industry," I con- 
 sidered paleolithic implements as old as the containing bed, but a study 
 of the conditions in Pennsylvania during the past ten years has led me 
 to conclusions reached in these pages, but the implements are, none the 
 less, ''paleolithic." 
 
 lO A 
 
146 
 
 permanent stream significantly near, as the Assunpink Creek, 
 or else the gravel showed by its arrangement that it had 
 been re-arranged since its original deposition. The Assun- 
 pink Creek, now about equally dividing the city of Trenton, 
 was not the only stream that had its course through what is 
 now city territory. North of the Assunpink was Petty's 
 Run, and south of it, a nameless "spring-brook," which was 
 really an underground stream for some distance and had 
 outlet into a meadow-like depression. Its water was cele- 
 brated for its purity and its course as open water a favorite 
 spot with the Indians. Now the streami is obliterated. 
 Swollen by rain, melting of snow and ice, it may well have 
 played an important part in di-splacing the gravel through 
 which and over which it flowed. Is it not a fair inference 
 that when Nature held her own, her forces operated even 
 more effectively than they now do? Nor must it be for- 
 gotten that there is no time limitation in all this. How 
 long? is as easily asked as it is impossible to determine. 
 
 Another condition that favors my suggestion of cata- 
 clysmic gullying, is that the land, as it nears the river, slopes 
 towards it and the rain naturally runs off in that direc- 
 tion. Did not the city guard against such rain-wash, one 
 whole street would disappear. In the days of the Indian, 
 when the region was generally forested, the rain must 
 necessarily have gullied the ground and resulted in pebbles 
 and any artifacts on the surface being buried. Every con- 
 dition was favorable, but such inhumation, because of the 
 protecting influence of the forest, would be shallow; but 
 prior to the tree growth, or, when an open, gravelly plain, 
 as in the days of Homo Delawarensis, the effect of rain- 
 wash would be far greater, and this the more true of sudden 
 thawing of a winter's accumulation of snow. Every con- 
 dition, it appears to me, was favorable, soon after the de- 
 position of the gravel, for the disappearance from' its sur- 
 
147 
 
 face of any artifacts that man left behind him. Certainly 
 most of them were inhumed, for persistent search for them 
 on the surface, where there is nothing- but gravel and scant 
 trace cf soil, has resulted in finding but four specimens in 
 a shallow cellar excavation, and twice as many more were 
 thrown out from deeper excavations. Here, it may be well 
 to state, boulders thickly dot the surface in every direction. 
 
 When the Pennsylvania Railroad was taking away the 
 .gravel east of the Trenton station, it removed material that 
 clearly had been affected by a considerable stream running 
 \^'estward and at right angles to the river, as the Assunpink 
 Creek now dees, and when this reasserted gravel was re- 
 moved and the originally deposited or undisturbed gravel 
 was reached, the paleoliths disappeared.^ 
 
 Surveying the whole field, not only in New Jersey, but in 
 Pennsylvania, on opposite side of the river, I think no other 
 conclusion can be reached than that the earliest traces of 
 man are all to be associated with the gravel as influenced 
 by streams that operated upon them in such manner as to 
 result in marked displacement and rearrangement since post- 
 glacial floods brought the material to the tidewater region. 
 This, it seems to me, goes far to explain the total lack of 
 general or systematic stratification of the Trenton Gravel 
 as a whole, for no excavation of any significant dimensions 
 will show a continuance of any given stratum: of sand or 
 pebbles. Excavations for cellars or other purposes vary in 
 this regard indefinitely and the condition at a given point. 
 
 ' Homo Delawarensis, in all probability, had other forms of imple- 
 ments than the carefully-fashioned argillite implements to which I have 
 so frequently referred. One of these is a hammered pebble, its claim 
 to artificial origin being the battered surface. Natural forces may 
 bruise a pebble, but when it is "pecked" and definitely shaped, then the 
 agency of man must be called in. The two forms are very alike, but 
 ■can be distinguished. This is the art of the archaeologist. The existence 
 of an ancient man does not depend, however, on pebbles, the character 
 of which is open to discussion. 
 
148 
 
 whether stratified or unstratified, with reference to an arti- 
 fact in situ is not of the slightest importance. The pri- 
 mal force, laying down the gravel direct from some up-river 
 source, did not necessarily exercise a stratifying influence, 
 and a rough and tumble mass of coarse and fine gravel, with 
 a boulder or two, may be older than layers of sand and peb- 
 bles arranged with mathematical precision. What is of 
 more interest and importance is the general direction or tilt 
 of layers of flat pebbles. Their position at various ex- 
 posures show that they were laid down by streams or cur- 
 rents flowing to the river, as well as influence by water flow- 
 ing in the direction now taken by the non-tidal river; and 
 again, the tilt is sometimes in the opposite direction, or up- 
 river ; but I have never found any pebbles that pointed east- 
 ward, or away from the river. 
 
 Much has happened since the Trenton Gravel was laid 
 down; so much that the date of the initial occurrence is 
 vastly more ancient than has been stated by some whose 
 opinions are entitled to profound respect, and late in the 
 career of this gravel as a great deposit, was the appearance 
 of man. Homo Delawarensis is no less a man of the 
 paleolithic stage of culture because in all probability he did 
 not witness any of the major activities of the Glacial period 
 here in the Valley of the Delaware. He did see the country, 
 however, when it bore a far different aspect than now and 
 when probably the climate was as preposterously pluvial as 
 ever in the tropics. 
 
149 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 NOT YET have all the problems in North AJmerican arche- 
 ology been solved, and the outlook is not promising 
 that they ever will be to the complete satisfaction of every 
 student. The one-time universally accepted impression that 
 our "Indians," ready-made, reached the continent by way of 
 Behring Strait and g-radually spread over the country, is 
 so plausible, especially when we consider the superficial re- 
 semblance of this race to the Asiatic peoples, that it seemed, 
 in years gone by, to meet every need, and a few paragraphs 
 in school geographies, or as a preface on American history, 
 was all that wias required to sum up our knowledge of the 
 subject. That antiquity, such as centers about European or 
 Asiatic populations, was applicable to conditions that obtain 
 here, was held to be preposterous, and indeed, still is by 
 many who have given the subject sincere consideration. 
 Why this should be has never been made clear, and yet the 
 fact remains that the antiquity of man is not popularly 
 looked upon as a feature of the history of this continent. 
 Nb array of indisputable facts avails, and yet it is as clear 
 as noon-day that however North America was peopled, it 
 must have been so long ago that it is a geological question 
 rather than one purely archaeological. 
 
 The evidences of man's presence, prior to the colonization 
 ■of the country by civilized Europeans, point to activities in so 
 •many directions, to a succession of cultures, to rise and fall 
 of people long occupying a limited territory, to extensive 
 migrations, to a final scattered peopling of a continent from 
 
ISO 
 
 ocean to ocean and from the farthest north to the tropics, 
 that such a period muist have elapsed that the present reaches 
 back far into pre-historic time. 
 
 Whatever the ancient home-land and whenever the date 
 of initial arrival, sufficient time has elapsed to warrant the 
 ethnologist to speak of the American race as he does of 
 those of other continents. 
 
 In the preceding pages, I have dealt with a long array 
 of facts and drawn certain conclusions. The former 
 are available to all. For the latter I alone am responsible. 
 What may be the purport of the former or value of the lat- 
 ter, every student must decide for himself. 
 
 While summarizing, I propose also to deal with the many 
 views of ancient America that have been expressed, and do 
 so with that freedom that is inseparably connected with mat- 
 ters that are purely speculative. From its very nature, it is 
 evident that the questions which arise are never to be seit- 
 tled beyond controversy. Given sufficient time and Nature 
 wipes out every trace of m'an's one-time presence. No one 
 can reconstruct a bone from) a pinch of dust. 
 
 Limiting my researches to a few thousand acres, it may 
 be claimed as presumptious to go so far as I have done and 
 spealc in such confident terms of three distinct horizons, i. e., 
 of an early, an intermediate, and that people whose career 
 practically ended when the European gained control. On 
 the other hand, the conditions obtaining on this limited area 
 could not have become what they are if the area had been 
 forever uninhabited until the arrival of the Lenni Lenape. 
 On this assertion, and all that it implies, I took my stand 
 nearly forty years ago and have not budged since and see 
 now, in the light of other discoveries, no reason why I, 
 should. Certainly no new-comer in the field; some bent 
 not upon discovery but upon some flimsy reason for protest, 
 has exercised any influence on myself, nor upon others, so 
 
151 
 
 far as I am aware, except among a few who have never 
 visited the spot and were only too ready to accept any coun- 
 ter-statement, however unwarranted, because my discoveries 
 disturbed their preconveived impressions. 
 
 What is needed, if it can be given, is another explanation 
 of the conditions I have described and not more questioning 
 that they are real conditions and not accidental occurrences. 
 The latter do not confuse us or wholly deceive us by reason 
 of their mathematicial precision. Nature has methods of 
 her own and more is the pity men did not follow them more 
 closely in the matter of consistency. 
 
 Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of field 
 impressions. The artifact, lying where the "vicissitudes of 
 fortune" have finally brought it, means to the observer what 
 no pen yet wielded can make equally impressive. Archae- 
 ology is the product of the spade — pre-historic archaeology 
 in North America is here referred tO' — and not oif the pen, 
 and he who digs a trench and shaves down its sides, inch by 
 inch, finding here a trifle and there some more striking ob- 
 ject, knows more at the end of the day than any theorist in 
 library or museum, who wears out his life amid confusing 
 volumes or misleading specimens. The exhibition solely of 
 "attractive pieces," as an exposition of the archaeology of 
 any region, is about as monumental an instance of misrepre- 
 sentation as the perverted ingenuity of the theorist is likely 
 to invent. 
 
 That a long-cultivated region, only its surface being ex- 
 amined, can confuse even those who are right-minded in 
 their quest, is not surprising. The commingling of the 
 artifacts characteristic of the three horizons, as in this part 
 of the Valley of the Delaware, must necessarily often have 
 taken place, since the surface has been turned down-side 
 up and up-side down so frequently and many an earth- 
 wound has been deep as well as long. The real cause for 
 
152 
 
 wonder is that opportunity has been afforded occasiionally 
 to see the earth intact and so realize that sequence of event 
 which I long ago set forth and which has been temperately 
 opposed by some and maliciously misrepresented by more; 
 but let that pass. 
 
 To express the difference in a homely way, the two 
 claimants to archaeological accuracy are those who dig, 
 and those who, rather than face this labor, "dig out.'' One 
 represents work ; the other, words. 
 
 The invasion of a continent by civilized man is a very 
 different proposition from the same movement on the part 
 of very nearly primitive humanity. The latter follows pre- 
 cisely the same impulses that influenced such mammalian 
 life as in time reached America from foreign shores, if, as is 
 asserted by the paleontologists, this continent is indebted 
 to other continental areas for certain ancient features of its 
 fauna, for man, in what we may consider as quite or nearly 
 his primitive condition, was less purposeful than those 
 mammals which had completed their evolutionary growth. 
 Man, even those in the paleolithic stage of culture, was 
 yet in an indefinitely formative stage rather than in one we 
 may consider as definitely fixed. He still mumbled and gib- 
 bered with brutish delight at each new outlook, much as a 
 child with a new toy, provided food was more readily ob- 
 tained, when he gorged himself and then curled up, like a 
 kitten, for a nap, after a saucer of milk. S'uch phases of 
 humanity were explorers of a Continent only by accident. 
 It is exceedingly improbable that the soaring eagle, disap- 
 pearing from sight, ever suggested to them there was a land 
 of promise in the indefinite beyond. Doubtless his eye- 
 sight was keen and, of equal importance, his senses of smell 
 and hearing were beyond ours in acuteness, but the animal 
 predominated, and it requires intellectual faculties well ad- 
 vanced to migrate systematically or with a pre-determined 
 or fixed purpose. 
 
153 
 
 The foundation of that wandering propensity, which it 
 ultimately becomes, was the overcrowding of the original 
 home-land, with its diminishing food supply. The large 
 maminals, outnumbering man, felt this sooner than they did, 
 and took the initiative. It is more than probable, therefore, 
 that man followed, not led, certain mammals into America. 
 But, have we sufficient data, that cannot be questioned, to 
 venture into this still debatable province and proceed to 
 populate any country that was not ab origine self-popu- 
 lating? The labors of the paleontologist are not yet over 
 and until the pre-human world is set before us in greater 
 detail than at present, will it be safe to be positive. 
 
 That North America derived its quota of humanity from 
 Asia or Europe, one or both, is highly probable, but from 
 which we cannot be said to "know," in the sense of knowl- 
 edge absolute, whatever we may believe. The chasm be- 
 tween actual knowledge and general acceptance has ever 
 been wide and deep. The paleontologist has not yet shown 
 that it is absolutely impossible that this continent — or this 
 and South America — could not have evolved what we call a 
 human type. Such claim' has been made and cannot be set 
 aside because of the mere twist of an American monkey's 
 nose. That this continent or South America did so, I do 
 not pretend to claim, but if we are warranted in unqualified 
 assertion on this point, which I still question, are we equally 
 so on that of the precise route by which man entered 
 America from elsewhere? 
 
 A valued correspondent writes me: "In a symposium 
 at Washington, on the origin of the American a;borigines, 
 •every paper favored his migration from northeastern 
 Asia." Very possible, even probable, but when and what 
 manner of man was he? Two very important questions. 
 I do not know what were the expressed or implied opinions 
 of those constituting the symposium, but the general state- 
 
154 
 
 ment suggests a great deal of exceeding interest to the stu- 
 dent of the archaeology of the Delaware Valley. 
 
 Was the initial migration that of what we may call 
 paleolithic mtan? This assiunes that such men were equal 
 to arduous journeys, not in the sense of having an objective 
 point in view, but equal to removing from a region with 
 which they were familiar to one the nature of which they 
 could know nothing. Such a migratory movement was 
 more likely to have been one per force of circumstances 
 over which they had no control rather than voluntary. In 
 fact, the term "migration" is not a happy one. This means 
 a definite purpose and previous planning and preliminary 
 preparation, readily conceivable of advanced neolithic man, 
 who was one of fixed purposes, but was paleolithic man 
 of mental calibre equal to this? Rather, the spread of 
 primitive man was like that of his mammalian contempo- 
 raries of a lower stage of evolution, or, without other 
 purpose than satisfaction of physical needs, as he proceeded. 
 
 Aissuming then, that, as a paleolithic hunter — ^perhaps 
 aimless wanderer, man reached North America from north- 
 eastern Asia, would he, as such, have spread over the entire 
 continent, without advancing from the paleolithic stage of 
 "culture" to that of a higher grade? To explain the pres- 
 ence of paleolithic artifacts in the valley of the Delaware, 
 he must have done so, and what unnumbered centuries must 
 have elapsed to have covered so vast a territory and why 
 not these imperishable paleoliths found wherever he chanced 
 to be? They are by no means unknown elsewhere, but 
 that man, unchanged, wandered from northeastern Asia 
 to North America by the assumed sole available route and 
 finally, as merely a transplanted Asiatic, dwelt long, as such, 
 in the Delaware Valley, staggers belief. Yet, given the 
 seon required, it perhaps is possible, for geologists measure 
 time without stint. With them, a century is no more than 
 
155 
 
 the tick of a clock. But is it not possible that some other 
 route may have been open to this wandering savage in, of 
 course, pre-glacial time? In i88i,i I quoted Mon. Mor- 
 tillet.^ He says of a series of argillite paleolithic col- 
 lected by myself and forwarded to him: "These stones do 
 not chip so well as those of the somme, because the latter are 
 of silex, and silex is easily chipped. On the Delavarde 
 (Delaware) river, there is no silex; m,en were then obliged 
 to use a different stone — the trap, a sort of volcanic rock, 
 slightly argillaceous, and very hard and difficult to chip. 
 For this the axes * * * are not as perfectly made 
 as those from St. Acheul. 
 
 "In many parts of France rocks other than silex are em- 
 ployed and they are no better than (those from Trenton) 
 * * * . M. de Semolle has presented us with axes in 
 quartzite which came from Bretagne, and although our col- 
 league assured us that he had carefully chosen them from 
 many that were not so marked, it is certain that they are 
 chipped rudely enough, because in fact quartzite is exceed- 
 ingly difficult to break as youi wish it. * * * 
 
 "It is interesting to see that the same epoch has produced 
 similar industries in such different countries. This makes 
 it more probable, that there was formerly a great bridge 
 between America and Europe. The similarity of a great 
 number of animals and of plants common to the two coun- 
 tries shows the existence of this communication. Still it 
 may be supposed that certain kinds of birds could have 
 crossed the ocean; seeds of plants may have been trans- 
 ported by the wind; but this explanation is insufficient for 
 insects and is altogether inadmissible for terrestial shells. 
 How can it be imagined that snails and slugs, unable to live 
 
 * "Primitive Industry," Salem, Mass., 1881, p. 490. 
 ''Bulletin de la Societie d'Anthropologie de Paris, Tome Deuxieme 
 (III Serie), p. 439- Paris, 1879. 
 
156 
 
 in water, could have passed from one continent to the other 
 if there had been no (means of) commiunication between 
 the worlds? Perhaps this communication may have taken 
 place in the northern part of the ocean, in the latitude of 
 New Foundland." 
 
 Dr. A. H. Keane, treating of this subject, asserts that 
 climate could present no difficulty at the time of man's dis- 
 persion (Inter-glacial), and adds: "From the Eastern 
 Hemisphere the New World could at that time be easily 
 reached either from' Europe or from Asia."^ 
 
 Further citations are not necessary. The subject is in 
 the realm of opinion and until the Atlantic is dry and the 
 Pacific, a continent; it will remain so. Argument falls 
 short of its effort and has done so always, but has never be- 
 -come disheartened. The omniscient geologist is abroad 
 and flaunts suggestion from others than himself. This pos- 
 sibly retards knowledge, but in this instance, it matters not 
 at all, as the charm of our science is the uncertainty of its 
 minor details. The fact that paleolithic man did come to 
 America, if not bom here, is unassailable, and so let those 
 who feel an interest in him, be at liberty to wonder concern- 
 ing his day and generation as they will. 
 
 There is really little more that need be said. As I, for 
 one, find the stone implements distributed over the area that 
 I have so exhaustively explored, I find that this distribu- 
 tion is best explained by paleolithic man, or, if possible, 
 a more primitive type, having reached this continent in pre- 
 glacial time — how far back is as yet unascertained and may 
 forever be unascertainable, but this matters not — and that 
 his last stand as such a man was at the border-line of that 
 -continuous ice-sheet which geologists assert extended well- 
 nigh across the continent. 
 
 "Ethnology," by A. H. Keane, Cambridge, England, 1909, p. 231. 
 
157 
 
 That he followed its retirement northward and the Eski- 
 mo of to-day is his representative, we have scant reason 
 for believing, there being no trace of this northward trend 
 of Homo Delawaxensis. On the other hand, it is demon- 
 strable that this people, so far as they remained here, chang- 
 ing their habits with the changing conditions of the coun- 
 try, were still fabricators of argillite implements, but of 
 specialized forms; the change in fauna doubtless having^ 
 largely to do with the discarding of their forefathers' 
 paleoliths, and substituting the knife, the spear and arrow- 
 point; if i'ndeed, they were acquainted with the bow. 
 
 Tlien, for causes unknown, possibly this people disap- 
 peared and for undetermined ages the land was uninhab- 
 ited, and so remlained until the L,enni Lenape first sighted 
 the Valley of the Delaware. 
 
 It is now too late to attempt to reconstruct the daily life 
 and current thought of the Lenni Lenape when the proud 
 possessors of Scheyichbi, to say nothing of those who went 
 before. Try to reconstruct a sentence from small frag- 
 ments of letters and if you succeed to your own satisfaction, 
 it means only that your enthusiasm and self-confidence are 
 about equal, and equal only to leading you, it may be, to 
 ultimate confusion. 
 
 In Ten Years' Diggings — ^really four times ten — I have 
 had occasionally what I believe to be a glimpse of what ha& 
 been, but only a glimpse, and I remember, the while, that if 
 it is possible for a man to blunder when dealing with appar- 
 ent probabilities, he is prone to do so. 
 
 An old man once remarked, "Every day is the anniver- 
 sary now of some absurdity on my part." The archseolo- 
 gist, at seventy, is too wise, let us hope, to make so honest a 
 confession, but has not some such thought ever passed 
 through his mind ? 
 
158 
 
 It is something that soothes the soul, to think that if 
 wrongly interpreted the imperishable relics are still avail- 
 able for others "to try their hand." May they be more 
 successfuil and think only with pity on the unhappy guesses 
 of those who went before. 
 
159 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Pebbi^e-transportation in Brooks. 
 
 1 HAPPENED, recently, to notice a little brook that flows 
 • over a nearly level bed of small pebbles of nearly uni- 
 form size. The water was checked by a board set edgewise, 
 making- a fall of about six inches. Beneath this, the peb- 
 bles had been pushed out until a pool of ten inches in depth 
 and two feet six inches in diameter had been formed. The 
 displaced pebbles were heaped up, a conical mound, opposite 
 the fall and on the edge of the pool. 
 
 An unusual rainfall, about two inches in ten hours, 
 caused the brook to become, for a time, a considerable 
 stream and the on-rush of the water moved the mound of 
 pebbles down stream, bodily, about three feet and some- 
 what dispersed them. As the waters diminished in bulk, 
 the sand they carried did not fill the basin beneath the fall, 
 but formed a bar a little beyond the accumulated pebbles, 
 and this condition held, unaltered, until a second and greater 
 rainfall removed the sand, and further dispersed the peb- 
 bles. One large stone, six inches by eight and approaching 
 a cube in outline, was undermined and tumbled into the pool 
 at the fall. For weeks following, normal conditions have 
 prevailed and the pool is slowly filling up with sand. Were 
 the board removed, no trace of present conditions would 
 remain for half an hour. 
 
 I cite these trifling particulars because they appear to me 
 to have a bearing on the generally confused character of the 
 Trenton Gravel. Local disturbances on a scale commen- 
 surate with the volume of waters of the ancient creeks flow- 
 ing into the Delaware might well have re-arranged and 
 
I DO 
 
 wholly obliterated all traces of the original deposition by- 
 floods occurring in the river and due to glacial conditions. 
 If true, then the occurrence of artifacts in this gravel is 
 nothing more than we should expect, and most significant 
 is the fact, that where the greater number occur, i. e., have 
 been found to date, is where the evidence of recent disturb- 
 ance is the most marked. This, of course, does not mod- 
 ernize them, for if of same origin as the handiwork of the 
 Indians, then every form should be represented in the 
 gravels, and this we know is not the case. 
 
 In the early morning of March 29, 1912, there was a. 
 heavy rain, lasting for about four hours. The brook cross- 
 ing the lane was enormously swollen. When I first saw 
 the water, it was turbid, carrying considerable sand, but 
 later was heavily charged with yellow clay and this condi- 
 tion lasted for about two hours, when the water was com- 
 paratively clear again. Here we have an explanation of 
 those narrow bands of reddish clay so characteristic of the 
 "yellow drift." A larger stream, like Crow Creek, propor- 
 tionately swollen, running as it does over exposures of clay, 
 would deposit precisely such thin layers of this material that 
 we now find. , 
 
 Later in the day, of this date, this stream — i. e., Crow 
 Creek — ^was swollen to an extent that its banks were over- 
 flowed and a portion of the "yellow drift" area, so exten- 
 sively exploited by Volk and others, was under water, and 
 the water was heavily charged with both clay and sand, as 
 examination proved. 
 
 Post-glacial, local, fluviatile displacement of the material 
 derived from the moraine before man's appearance upon 
 the scene, explains, too, as nothing else will, the occasional 
 occurrence of a number of artifacts in a comparatively lim- 
 ited area. When a field, fairly evenly studded with Indian 
 relics, is gullied by a violent downpour, and the water is 
 
i6i 
 
 carried off by a channel of its own digging, it will be found 
 that arrow-points, potsherds and small objects, with the 
 pebbles and modern articles will be gathered from a wide 
 space and collected along and at the mouth of such a channel 
 as I have mentioned. Objects whose known whereabouts 
 were scores of yards distant, have been transported in this 
 way, and what was supposed to have been stolen, found un- 
 expectedly where it seemed impossible it could have reached 
 by any natural means. We all know the disastrous results 
 of a dam' breaking away. Long after the Trenton Gravel 
 was originally deposited, for centuries upon centuries, it 
 was subjected to just such local expressions of violence. 
 Dammed for a day, a week or a month, by some obstacle, 
 and then breaking through the barrier, the accumulated 
 water was equal to moving boulders and pebbles and sand, 
 just as the little brook that crosses my lane plays with the 
 pebbles and sand of its winding course; gently when unaf- 
 fected by rain, and violently as the result of strength gained 
 by prolonged precipitation. 
 
 This would explain the hammered quartz nodules re- 
 ported by Volk in the deep-lying gravels, as well as the well- 
 defined argillite implements which others have been more 
 successful in discovering than has he. 
 
 It is incomprehensible to me, that in his years of un- 
 remitted field-work, he seems never to have been able to 
 draw from compacted gravel an implement that dispels all 
 doubt as to its age and origin, one with every inch of its 
 superficies artificially produced. I have found many such — 
 "many" in a sense, when we consider that there is not more 
 than one artifact to from five to ten million pebbles. Can 
 it be possible those who oppose them as an article of their 
 faith, have gone before, and converted them into "rejects" 
 or "preliminaries" intended for "trimming sites" which 
 
 II A 
 
1 62 
 
 never materialize? What a desperate effort to conceal the 
 truth? 
 
 I recall, however, that one Sunday afternoon (June 27, 
 1897), as Mr. Volk, G. F. Wright and myself were stand- 
 ingf on a broad exposure of gravel near the Assunpink 
 Creek, at Trenton, N. J., Volk picked up a well-defined 
 argillite implement, that was as clearly a constituent part of 
 the gravel here exposed as any one of the large boulders 
 with which it was associated. No one present expressed 
 any doubt as to its paleolithicity. The late Dt. Harrison 
 Allen was present and remarked: "All is plain enough 
 when on the ground, but difficult to realize from hearsay." 
 This, indeed, covers the whole subject. It is one of the 
 phases of Nature, where she rebels when attempt is made 
 to transfer her to a printed page. 
 
 Implements erom the Taeus. 
 
 A few words here concerning the one-time talus at the 
 foot of the bluff facing the river, and in 1876-85, almost a 
 mile long. That a talus should be a bugbear is absurd. 
 A cube of gravel conceals 80 per cent, of its contents, and 
 spread out over as great a space as possible and we learn in 
 detail what really constituted the mass. Somewhere in his 
 "Ice Age in North America," Pro'f. Wright bemoans his 
 ineffectual efforts to find a paleolith in situ or in fresh talus. 
 I judge from this that talus, if fresh, has a value, archseo- 
 logically, that a talus, if stale, does not possess. This may 
 be a law, geologically, written on some tablet of stone, but 
 I do not keep such. The more stale the talus, the better I like 
 it. It has a very ancient, if not fish-like smell that accords 
 admirably with archaeological pursuits. The paleolith may 
 be one with, yet not one of, the jetsam and floatsam of 
 the river, and why the archaeologist should be disconcerted 
 
1 63 
 
 by an occasional broken tea-cup or a tin can, is to me inex- 
 plicable. If he were looking for white pebbles among the 
 black, or spotted pebbles among the uniformly colored ones, 
 the precise position would have no importance, and it is very 
 much the same with the artificially chipped pebbles among 
 those that are waterworn, constituting the gravel deposit 
 as a whole. As Dr. Wadsworth has pointed out, they tell 
 their own story and not leave this to be told by the position 
 wherein they happen to be, when discovered by infallible 
 man. The bluff facing the river is gravel from^ base to cap- 
 stones, and the latter happen to be a goodly array of ice- 
 borne boulders, some weighing more than a ton. Unques- 
 tionably the Lenni Lenape were familiar with these rocks, 
 sat on them, walked among them and buiilt fires that were 
 sheltered by them, and may have knocked chips from them 
 for implements, but what has this to do with the pyaleolithic 
 implements which they did not make, for the excellent rea- 
 son that for them they had no use. If ten thousand years 
 hence a non-visiting historian, or one that chanced here, pre- 
 determined to ignore the facts, declared that the region was 
 tminhabited and always had been until settled by the 
 Bnglish, he would simply be making a fool of himself. Is 
 it possible that in the past anything has happened akin to 
 that which we have imagined of the future ? I have seen a 
 penny coined in England in the reign of George II and a 
 penny coined in this country when George Washington was 
 living, found in the same talus and near the water's edge. 
 Shall we deny that one was not older than the other, ignor- 
 ing the dates plainly stamped upon them? Nature, too, 
 dates her coinage and does not stoop to the use of fictitious 
 figures, and when she marked the paleoliths as prior to the 
 Ivcnni Lenape, she knew what she was doing, and seeking 
 no favor from, entertained no fear of, carping geologists. 
 
164 
 
 The real and sole cause for wonderment is that arrow- 
 points, pottery, pipes, axes, celts and ornaments are not 
 gathered as readily or even more so at the foot of the bluff, 
 as anywhere upland, seeing the fields to the eastward were 
 dotted with villages and wigwams, but in forty years of 
 wandering, with thoughts of the Indian always present, I 
 have never found any trace of these people here at the foot 
 of the bluff. All that was artificial was either very modern 
 or the rude argillite objects that have been the innocent 
 cause of a deal of unnecessary dispute. I have one ex- 
 ception to record. September 20, 1878, I was wandering 
 along the river's edge with the late Prof. J. D. Whitney and 
 Lucien Carr, of Cambridge, Mass., when Prof. Whitney 
 picked up a half of a pestle. Here was a neolithic imple- 
 ment of the most pronounced type and had we passed along 
 there half an hour earlier, one of us might have been hit 
 with it, for it was tossed over the bank, with other rejecta 
 by a woman who was cleaning house. The incident did not 
 lessen the interest shown by Prof. Whitney in a broken 
 paleolith which he found on the bluff, some feet from the 
 base, and which he then said, "from the condition of its sur- 
 face, never came from the soil capping the deposit." (Note 
 made at time of discovery.) Hand-picked apples are pre- 
 ferred for many reasons, but I do not hesitate to eat such 
 as I find on the ground, and I never imagine they have 
 dropped from the clouds above the tree, rather than from 
 the tree itself. 
 
 Mr. Volk records in his archaeology of the Delaware 
 Valley, that he took a fragment of a human femur from the- 
 gravel, where it was not displaced and the bone clearly a 
 part of the deposit, and later, not far away, lost in sand that 
 had trickled from the escarpment and formed a talus, a frag- 
 ment of a human parietal bone. This bone was white, 
 chalky, and similar in all particulars of condition to the 
 
i65 
 
 bone in place, but if the femur had not been discovered, the 
 parietal in the talus would be only presumptive and not con- 
 clusive evidence of antiquity. This is pure and simple rot. 
 The reader will kindly excuse so non-classic an expression, 
 but nothing else so completely fits the case. It is the object 
 itself that tells us that which we desire to know. As Mr. 
 Volk remarks, no white bones drop from a "black" soil that 
 stains everything else a dull red-brown color. This applies 
 equally to a paleolith from the clear gravel, for clean it is 
 at a depth of even three or four feet. All the pebbles are 
 -clean. Sand does not render water turbid and the artifact 
 soils nothing with which it is brought in contact, and this 
 does not apply to surface-earth encompassed pebbles. 
 
 I have been told repeatedly that while this smacks of 
 probability, it is not "scientific" evidence. I am glad to 
 know it. The evidence of man's antiquity as demonstrated 
 by these paleolithic implements in the talus, is wholly sat- 
 isfactory to the man of ordinary powers of comprehension, 
 -and if not "scientific," the evidence is irrefragable, and what 
 more does the reasonable man want? 
 
 It does not appear to have occurred to visiting geologists 
 to study the surface soil and see just what are its chemical 
 as well as physical conditions. Indeed, when I have sug- 
 gested this, the only response was a semi-audible sniff and 
 that far-away look that perhaps a brother geologist is equal 
 to interpreting but passes the comprehension of the un- 
 itiated. 
 
 This soil suffers nothing to lie in it for a few centuries 
 without indelibly staining it. Even white quartz suffers 
 somewhat; quartzite still more so, and sandstone is so 
 brown on its surface that no ordinary scouring will remove 
 it ; and again, this same soil has a certain adhesive property 
 and portions of it stick so closely to pebbles and artifacts 
 -that only violent rubbing will effect a removal. I have ex- 
 
1 66 
 
 amined hundreds of relics, years after they were collected, 
 and found thereon traces of the soil which only a stiff brush 
 would remove. I speak thus confidently after forty years' 
 experience, but this appears to be of little value when com- 
 pared with academic erudition. Possibly, but I have no- 
 ticed that he who has lived all his life on its coast, knows 
 more of the ocean than the breezy mountaineer or dweller 
 of the prairies, who chances here for a day with all the airs 
 of omniscience. 
 
 After the text concerning the origin of the "yellow drift" 
 was completed, it happens that we had a rather unusual 
 rainfall, and as the ground was frozen at the time, the 
 water spread over the surface where the channels O'f the 
 brooks that conduct an ordinary shower were overflowed. 
 The shallow, nearly obliterated valley of Crow Creek was 
 filled to the brim' and several acres of Lai or field, exploited 
 by Volk, were submerged. I found a thin coating oif mud, 
 about one-sixteenth of an inch, covering many square rods. 
 Fully nine-tenths of the water came from Columbia Gravel 
 surfaces and added to the deposit, now capped with a vege- 
 tation-sustaining soil. The material was in part fine sand, 
 a trace of clay and organic matter. A cubic inch of it, 
 dried, could not be diistinguished from a like amount of 
 "yellow drift" taken from some points, and only differed 
 from this "drift" as a whole, in being finer and weighing 
 less, but it must be remembered that in those post-glacial 
 days, there was more rainfall and the country was not so 
 level, and the vanishing Crow Creek was a permanent and 
 a considerable stream. On so much greater a scale, in fact, 
 that the boulders of this "yellow drift" might have been 
 moved by floods of those days, and every one that I have 
 seen is identical with the thousands characteristic of the 
 Columbia Gravel and not resembling those of the Trenton 
 Gravel. When so much is accomplished now with a couple 
 
167 
 
 of inches of rain in twenty- four hours, it is readily seen 
 what must have occurred during torrential downpours many 
 centuries ago. 
 
 Under a clear sky and with Nature at rest, the archaeolo- 
 gist has little chance to realize what has been and what now 
 are the conditions that make towards constant change. It is 
 with this subject, as with a neighborhood's natural history, 
 an occasional visit is of little worth. A year at least must 
 be given to a small space, and better ten of them, before it 
 is safe to be positive as to botanical or zoological features. 
 Tlhere are areas in this, my home neighborhood, which I can 
 distinctly remember for more than fifty years. If I had 
 moved then to another country and only returned to-day, 
 I would not recognize these spots, so greatly have they 
 changed. Hills have been leveled and hollows filled, and 
 within twenty years one considerable creek has become more 
 of a marsh than a running stream. The more I wander 
 over these familiar fields, the more I am convinced that the 
 present conditions have been "built up" without any aid 
 from strictly glacial conditions. 
 
 Axe;s and CEI.TS. 
 
 With the exception of the arrow-point, known practically 
 to everyone, the grooved-stone axe is facile princeps among 
 Indian relics. While ignorance is never so dense as in the 
 highly intelligent community, even the newspaper reporter 
 will not call an axe by some misleading name. Being so 
 common, therefore, as to be universally known, it is strange 
 that it figures not at all in many an account of archaeological 
 exploration. I have collected several hundred and have 
 never seen a collection of stone implements, made in New 
 Jersey, wherein they were not generously represented; yet 
 they occur in such a way as not to be clearly associated with 
 
1 68 
 
 the contents of "pits" or graves and not conspicuous on 
 those so-called "villagfe sites," whereon the other aboriginal 
 artifacts are abundant. 
 
 Mr. Volk, in "Archseology of the Delaware Valley," does 
 not mention them as occurring in the trenches which he dug 
 or among the "pit" contents which he gathered during his 
 field-work of over twenty years; yet presumably every In- 
 dian had his axe, as, after European contact, he had his 
 iron or brass tomahawk. 
 
 In carefully exploiting a selected site, trenching it exhaus- 
 tively, the implements of the Indian are brought to light so 
 far completely that we can picture the life of the people 
 once here, but the grooved axe is so seldom unearthed that 
 it is not missed; but when we walk without definite purpose 
 over a ploughed field or ground without a grovd:h O'f weeds 
 or grass, we not seldom find lying on the surface the most 
 characteristic artifact of the L,enni Lenape. 
 
 Mr. Volk tells me that his impression is that these axes 
 were the latest product of their inventive skill and post- 
 date polished celts; but, even so, their present distribution 
 remains to be acco'unted for. , 
 
 We can, or think we can, trace the origin or development 
 of many forms of implements, and can say with some con- 
 fidence that an accidentally fractured stone suggested the 
 chipped implement, and a water-worn pebble the polished 
 stone implement, but what gave rise to grooving a celt trans- 
 versely is not demionstrable. If a "sudden thought" on 
 the part of some ancient individual, it certainly "took" 
 promptly, for this form of implement is found over an enor- 
 mous extent of country. Moorehead ("Stone Age in North 
 America," I, p. 287) asserts that it is as widely distributed 
 as the celt, and that certain types are found at some points 
 not occurring elsewhere. With the exception of the fluted 
 axes of Wisconsin, to which I called attention in 1891, my 
 
169 
 
 own gatherings of these objects will duplicate the forms 
 said to be characteristic of given territory. 
 
 So far as New Jersey is concerned, her Indians were at 
 one time a distinctly stone-axe people. I accept Mr. Volk's 
 conclusion that they are a late product of their stone-age 
 industry, but why they are now distributed in a manner so 
 unlike other implements remains a problem to be solved. 
 
 The celt presents no such condition as to its surroundings. 
 It is more likely to be found with other articles than with- 
 out them. Mr. Volk found them in pits which he uncov- 
 ered. I have done the same, and very recently ( March 20, 
 1912) my attention was called, as I was passing, to two 
 porphyry celts and a little heap of bones of the deer and 
 charcoal, that the plough had brought to light. These celts 
 interested me the more because found within a few rods of 
 the cache of celts of which Figure 7 of the text is one, and 
 near also a larger cache of these implements discovered 
 forty years ago and mentioned by me in Smithsonian An- 
 nual Rept., 1876, p. 260. If the Lenape, as a whole, were a 
 5tone-axe people, they were here, at the falls of the Dela- 
 ware, distinctly also, a celt-using people, and what is of 
 greater interest, they made these implements larger and of 
 different patterns; the typical form not being the most com- 
 mon. 
 
 Distribution op Chipped Implements. 
 
 It is the common experience of collectors that certain very 
 limited areas afford abundant reward to the patient seeker, 
 and that beyond these well-defined limits, search is well nigh 
 useless. If all that we found was the head of a lost arrow 
 then the needle in a hay-stack is more likely to be dis- 
 covered, but this is not the case. Where one arrow-point is 
 found we are pretty sure to find another and another, and 
 
with them potsherds, scrapers, knives and drills. We find 
 ourselves on what the collector calls "relic ground," and 
 continue the search with confidence. I have searched in 
 vain certain fields that judged from their surroundings and 
 relation to such desirable conditions as a flowing spring or 
 open water available for canoe navigation and found abso- 
 lutely no trace of the aborigine, and not far away another 
 field not as advantageously located, judged by present con- 
 ditions, that was teeming with them. It surprises at first, 
 but should not. We forget what might have been, indeed, 
 must have been, in the days of the ancient man, and prior 
 to the deforesting of the region. 
 
 May not this condition as to surf ace- foupd relics have a 
 bearing on the occurrence of paleolithic artifacts? Their 
 fabricators were human beings and not radically different 
 from the later Indians, as we carelessly imtagine. These 
 rude products of their skill might as readily be localized as 
 are the knives and arrow-points of the Lenni Lenape. 
 
 CuMATic Changi; Since Gi^aciai, Time. 
 
 There does not appear to be any criteria available upon 
 which to base a reasonable assumption as to the climatic 
 conditions when the Trenton Gravel was laid down, so that 
 we might compare them with those of the present day, of 
 which it can be said that we have degenerated, and, as was 
 said long ago, from the dignity of climatic decency to a 
 sorry array of samples of weather. 
 
 That the annual rainfall is not as great as some thousands 
 of years ago is probable, but not demonstrable ; but, assum- 
 ing that there has been gradually a diminution, we have in 
 such fact (?) that the conditions, unstable as they now are, 
 were then in a much more fluctuating condition. If a single 
 summer shower of half an inch can undermine and move 
 
171 
 
 down a gentle declivity a boulder weighing a hundred 
 pounds, as I have known it to do, what of prolonged precipi- 
 tation amo'imting to five or six inches ? The wonder is that 
 the metes and bounds of sandy farms are not seriously 
 affected. Vegetation is the salvation of many an acre. 
 
 It is, however, to snow and froist that I purpose to call 
 more particular attention. The snow that fell during the 
 memorable blizzard of March, 1888, was in many places 
 heaped up to such great height that weeks passed before it 
 had wholly melted away. Trees were in full leaf and 
 flowers blooming, and yet the snow lingered in sheltered 
 spots until about May 20. In one instance that came under 
 my notice this slowly melting snow washed a narrow gully 
 fully four feet deep and nearly twenty yards long. The 
 surface soil and underlying sand were distributed over an 
 alluvial deposit in the adjoining meadow. 
 
 Is not so trivial an occurrence as this a straw pointing in 
 the direction oif post-glacial cataclysmic action of the same 
 general character, but on an infinitely greater scale? 
 
 The presence at the time O'f glacial activity of arctic ani- 
 mals, musk-ox, reindeer, walrus, and of many seals is not 
 only evidence of more intense and more protracted cold 
 than our modern winters (1911-1912 would have satisfied 
 a reasonable Eskimo), but of more frequent and prolonged 
 storms, and just how gradually the climate became one that 
 attracted life not accustomed to arctic severity, and on the 
 other hand, disgruntled the fauna that now dwells con- 
 tentedly about the north pole, no one knows or has figured 
 out, theoretically; but it is a fairly safe presumption that 
 the change was gradual, and after the ice melted and the 
 gravel-transporting floods were a matter of history, there 
 were storms of violence that are not now approached. If so, 
 there would scarcely be a stone that was not moved since 
 its down-river journey, nor a boulder, even the largest, that 
 was not tumbled about. 
 
1/2 
 
 Even if the "ice-age" ended only ten thousand years ago, 
 -which I cannot believe, that period is long enough to give 
 iull opporttmity to effect enormous change and bring the 
 deposits that we now find to their present conditions and 
 relation inter se. 
 
 It is sequence of event, not centuries by the count, that 
 concerns the prehistoric archaeologist, and notwithstanding 
 the vicissitudes of sand, gravel, clay and boulders, it is still 
 possible to trace the three stages of culture of man in the 
 valley of the Delaware, the paleolithic, the intermediate or 
 -argillite, and the neolithic Lenni Lenape. 
 
 The Effects oe Excessive RaineaIvI,. 
 
 As I have seen many a dry field temporarily converted 
 into a wet meadow, it occurred to me that rain in post- 
 glacial time might have played a far more important part 
 than has been suspected in changing frequently the surface 
 of the country. The present season — spring of 1912 — ■ 
 afforded excellent opportunity for an investigation of this 
 kind. The rainfall to date was several inches in excess of 
 normal, as based on precipitation for the past one hundred 
 and nineteen years. While the country still retains its 
 familiar aspect, there are innumerable minor changes that 
 are not without significance, as, if further advanced, they 
 would become major changes and the effects noticeable by 
 all. Just as the Mississippi river at present has broken the 
 levees that restrained its normal flow, and has flooded thou- 
 sands of acres, so have what are only narrow, sinuous 
 depressions in fields become the beds of brooks and 
 water has been flowing for, up to date, about fifty days. A' 
 measurable amount of sand has been carried from the field 
 to the meadow, and pebbles have "crept" several yards 
 down stream. It is inconceivable that some Indian handi- 
 
173 
 
 work should not have been caught in this miniature flood, 
 and falhng from the grass-roots into the depression, reach 
 the horizon of the "yellow drift." 
 
 But a far more interesting feature is that of the issuance 
 of water from the face of the bluff facing the river, or 
 temporary springs, which will disappear as the season 
 advances. The underground current must necessarily dis- 
 place material, perhaps only sand, on its way to the river, 
 and the source of such flow is the surface water covering 
 many acres, temporary ponds and pools from one to three 
 feet in depth. Nothing of themselves now, it is true, but 
 exaggerate them all and prolong their duration and we will 
 see that an object as large as a bone of a man, or of an 
 elk, might be carried underground by a forceful flow of 
 water even if the course was one through coarse gravel, 
 working its way through the cracks and crevices, where the 
 sand and clay had been displaced. 
 
 Here in the valley of the Delaware the forces of Nature 
 are feeble to-day. We seldom have a tornado, phenomenal 
 floods are of rare occurrence, but what now happens every 
 day has only to be enacted on a larger scale, as it probably 
 did happen ten thousand years ago, to explain many a con- 
 dition that we now ascribe to the infinitely fiercer activities 
 of the Glacial Period. 
 
 The Up-River Indian. 
 
 It may have excited some surprise that in the preceding 
 pages I have made practically no reference to the Indians 
 dwelling in the valley of the Delaware, about the falls, or 
 limit of tidal flow. This was because the territory was not 
 within the bounds of that Lenape Land that I have had in 
 mind these many years. It later became a Lenape posses- 
 sion, and 'twixt then and the day of irresistible invasion by 
 
174 
 
 the European — a long period — ^many a village was estab- 
 lished and the Lenapean arts flourished, as the relics of 
 these people found there testify. 
 
 But long prior to that period of occupation the up-river 
 region was one to be explored only and not exploited. It 
 was a region abounding in game and so a source of supply 
 that had better not be too extensively disturbed. It was 
 essentially a hunting ground, and not suited for agricultural 
 purposes without vastly greater preliminary labor than the 
 level, sandy plains near by called for. Again, it was a 
 fighting ground, and the Iroquois, to the north, were all 
 too well disposed to sneak down the stream and capture, if 
 they could, such Lenape hunters as they might meet. 
 
 If we glance at Rhoads' Faunal Map of Pennsylvania 
 and New Jersey, in his "Mammals of Pa. and N. J." we 
 will find that the biological conditions were the same far up- 
 stream as at Trentou and southward, but the physical con- 
 ditions are as different as possible, and the temperature in 
 winter is often twenty degrees colder. It meant then a 
 good deal more to live among the mountains than upon a 
 forest-sheltered plain, and even after the Europeans were 
 well in possession the "Indians from the hills" came an- 
 nually in autumn to the pine-grown forests of the plains 
 and gathered along the sea-coast. Many a highway of the 
 present time is, in part, but an expansion of the narrow 
 but well-defined trail of Indians who were high-landers in 
 summer and low-landers when the snow began to fly. 
 
 The Lenni Lenape in time completely occupied the tidal 
 areas of what is now New Jersey and exploration and 
 subsequent exploitation became imperative, nor was it un- 
 welcome, for an Indian craves adventure more than he does 
 food. A typical Indian day is one chock full of incident. 
 By degrees the villages extended farther and farther up- 
 stream, the river being the main highway or water-way to 
 the Lenape metropolis at the falls. 
 
175 
 
 It is an interesting feature of humanity that people Hving 
 on a plain are content to walk upon it and find a living upon 
 it, but do not dig into it deeper than to bury a coi-pse or 
 plant a few seeds. The idea that in the ground is anything 
 of real value seems never to occur to the dweller on the 
 plains, but when among the hills this is all changed. A hill 
 must contain something. It is viewed as a store-house, and 
 the curiosity that is aroused leads to digging among the 
 rocks. This may be aimless at first, but it always leads to 
 a substantial purpose. In this case, the up-river Indian 
 became a miner. Always on the lookout for the best ma- 
 terial, the Indian discovered argillite in place, and selecting 
 its finest grade, admirably chipped it into various forms. A 
 word here concerning up-river implements of this material. 
 They are simply somewhat weathered, but compared with 
 those found in the tidewater regions are as fresh as if made 
 yesterday. The importance of this fact should not be over- 
 looked. Max Schraibisch has investigated many rock shel- 
 ters in northern New Jersey and found the rock-floor had 
 been occupied by Indians who used argillite exclusively, and 
 then upon a layer of ashes, sand and debris, pottery and jas- 
 per appear. This shows the material, argillite, was well 
 distributed before jasper and quartz came into general use, 
 but the more interesting feature is that the argillite speci- 
 mens from rock-shelters are not decomposed to the extent 
 that many are that are found in South Jersey. Protection 
 in the shelter and exposure in the fields of tidal regions may 
 explain this comparative condition to a certain extent, but 
 not miaterially, and the conclusion reached that argillite was 
 characteristic of a pre-Lenapean people is not affected. The 
 •exploration in northern New Jersey tends only to sub- 
 stantiate the antiquity of the Lenni Lenape, and so push 
 back deeper into the past the period when the Indian's pre- 
 cursor occupied the land. 
 
176 
 
 A most interesting feature of the career of the Indian as 
 a dweller among the hills is his exploitation of jasper quar- 
 ries, and when he discovered that jasper fresh from the 
 mine was more readily worked than the pebbles of this 
 material occurring sparingly in the river drift, it was used 
 for objects of large size, as those "blades," as they are 
 called, which in South Jersey are so frequently found 
 cached. Careful examination of the mines shows that much 
 selection occurred, and pieces of choice quality were trans- 
 ported, buried in damp earth, and resorted to as necessity 
 required. I have found several such deposits near Tren- 
 ton, one of which in its entirety is now in the Peabody 
 Museum of Archaeology, Camibridge, Mass. 
 
 As a whole, the traces of early man in the Upper Dela- 
 ware Valley do not suggest an antiquity at all comparable 
 to that of the tidal region immediately southeast of it, but 
 this does not mean that such traces as are found are want- 
 ing in archaeological significance. Many discoveries have 
 been made that dates the Indian occupant far back into the 
 past, and the archaeologist need not be at all perturbed by 
 the silly, and in some instances wholly unwarranted, objec- 
 tions raised by Salisbury in his report on the surface geol- 
 ogy. The late Charles Laubach's discoveries near Reigels- 
 ville, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, were real discoveries of 
 pronounced antiquity, and the fact that water might occa- 
 sionally reach a height that would overflow it has no bear- 
 ing whatever on the origin of the deposits overflowed in 
 this instance. 
 
 It has been maintained that a complete change O'f sur- 
 roundings would effect a change in the handiwork of a 
 people, but this w^as not brought about in the case of the 
 up-river Lenape. I have failed to find any form of imple- 
 ment in this region not common in the tidal region ; but, on 
 the other hand, the skill in flint chipping was more uni- 
 
177 
 
 formly excellent near Trenton than at Easton, Belvidere or 
 the Water Gap, three points where the Indians had exten- 
 sive villages. Comparing a thousand arrow-points from 
 each of the four places named and the difference to which I 
 have referred will be at once apparent. 
 
 This, I think, can be explained by the fact that the moun- 
 tain Indians were of necessity a hunting people, and had 
 less leisure than their agricultural cousins living on the tidal 
 flats and devoted to less onerous pursuits. The latter had 
 time to be meditative, and it is only when not physically 
 occupied that real advance in skill and culture is made. The 
 artistic touch came into being; beauty and use showing in 
 many an artifact. 
 
 The Encyclopedia Britannica and Antiquity op 
 Man in North America. 
 
 The last (I'lth) edition of the Encyclopaedia Britamica 
 gives the wide range of its readers the assurance that in 
 North America there is no positive evidence of the presence 
 of man prior to the closing of the last glacial epoch. 
 Why, as the glacial conditions were on the wane and not 
 while waxing, or, at least, during the heyday of its activity, 
 is not made plain. Theoretically possible, it is admitted, 
 but no actual demonstration has been brought, not to light, 
 but to the satisfaction of the encyclopaedic authors. There 
 is a vast difference herein, for competent American archae- 
 ologists have, with their own hands, pulled artifacts from 
 compact, deep-lying gravel, which unquestionably dates back 
 to a time when the glacier was still intact in the upper 
 valley of the Delaware and floods, derived from its melting 
 face, pushed gravel to where it now lies, at the limit of the 
 river's tidal flow. 
 
 12 A 
 
178 
 
 This may be held as an iticident of the ice-age's closing- 
 days, but was there ever a day when the southern ice-front 
 was not melting and a river flowing from its base? And, 
 too, the river, older than the glacier, was not it filling, in 
 part, a pebbly channel? Why, indeed, may not many a 
 water-worn cobble be older than any glacier, and the same 
 true of many an undeniable artifact? In treating this 
 question, too much has been demanded of the valley by 
 the geologists. They have not treated it as they do when 
 it is a question of what rocks are in place, and what fossils 
 are found in themi. There is no more reason to browbeat 
 the zircon that my grandfather discovered in 1825, than 
 the paleoliths that I discovered in 1875. Because a given 
 object refers to man no more modernizes it, necessarily, 
 than a bone or tooth is :recent, that rolls from the gravel. 
 The paleontologist is impatient if you modernize his fossils, 
 and well he may be; and the archaeologist has just as abund- 
 ant show of reason of resenting the assertion that because 
 the Lermi L,enape were sole possessors of the Delaware 
 valley at no very distant date, all, referrible to man, not 
 having a European origin, is to be referred to them. The 
 physical conditions under which much is found contradicts 
 this scholastic dictum, which impresses the unlearned by 
 reason of its ponderous verbiage. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the offered indications of man's 
 presence during glacial conditions be accepted, is it within 
 the realm of probability that during such conditions man 
 originated here? Glacial conditions deal with death, not 
 life, and it is only certain forms of life that find it possible 
 to defy it and maintain themselves. This is particularly 
 true of man. No one imagines that the Eiskimo was 
 evolved from an Arctic pithecoidal creature. He was forced 
 to stay where he is and became a^cclimated. ^Vihile just 
 south of the continental ice-sheet there was an abundance 
 
179 
 
 of attractive territory, a veritably goodly land for any rea- 
 sonable creature, it cannot be assuiTned that Homo Ameri- 
 ■canus originated here, i. e., was an autochthon. He came 
 from some distant point, and why not before the glacier 
 came into being as readily as during its presence, or in those 
 days when it was slowly disappearing? 
 
 Many mineral artifacts are imperishable. A quartz peb- 
 "ble, abraded through use as a hammer, will remain what it 
 is for a million years tO' comie, sO' why may it not have been 
 used as a hammer a million years ago? Artifacts have a 
 good deal to say for themselves and a sufficient number 
 Tiave been found under conditions, i. e., in such situations, 
 that only an antiquity can be ascribed to themi commen- 
 surate with glacial antiquity. It is grudgingly admitted 
 that man in North America may have witnessed the closing 
 scene of the glacial drama, but if so, why not present when 
 the curtain rose on that day of ten thousand acts and 
 scenes innumerable? H there is an iota of evidence that 
 man saw the last drops of a melting glacier trickling down 
 the rock-ribbed valley of the river, then there is equal evi- 
 dence that he saw the beginning of that ice-sheet that ex- 
 tended from- Staten Island to the interior west. It is one 
 thing or the other, and I, as a practical archaeologist, hav- 
 ing studied the problem for almost forty years, stand for 
 that one thing, and would stand with as much faith and as 
 little misgiving as I do, did I stand alone. 
 
 Admitting that N'orth America was peopled from abroad, 
 it is not an ascertained fact that this peopling occurred 
 recently and after the country had acquired the physical 
 status that we know was that of the country when the late 
 Colonial period commenced. On the other hand, there is 
 nothing running counter to the view that south of the ter- 
 minal moraine, man could not have found the country not 
 only practicable but desirable, nor that he did not. For 
 
i8o 
 
 auig-ht we know to the contrary, South and Central Ajuerica 
 were inhabited long before the central section of North 
 America, and when the latter was invaded, man may have 
 reached far north of the southern limit of glacial condi- 
 tions. Had he done so, the invading- ice would not only 
 have driven him' from the land but destroyed beyond all 
 possibility of recognition every trace of his one-time so- 
 journ there. Furthermore, he might have lingered in just 
 suich locations as the valley of the Delaware, while south of 
 him, or along the Gulf coast and in the now arid regions 
 of Arizona and New Mexico, flourished a superior people. 
 
 What constitutes evidence? Every individual of ordi- 
 nary intelligence finds a ready answer to the question, but 
 the reply is one satisfactory to himself but not necessarily 
 so to others. In ordinary matters of everyday life, the 
 question presents no difficulty, but there occasionally arises 
 an extraordinary condition, when decision is a difficult mat- 
 ter and opinions will be so varied that no expression of 
 decision by one individual will meet with universal appro- 
 bation. A correct solution of an intricate problem! can only 
 be reached by a correct attitude towards it and all too 
 frequently those who have been loudest in proclaiming the 
 truth have followed a preconception or been biased by a 
 prejudice. This is true, peculiarly, of ethnologists who 
 have paid painstaking attention to the peopling of North 
 America prior to the Columbian discovery. That which- 
 was tangible and unmistakable sufficed them. The "Indian" 
 was a substantial fact and that he had followed in the foot- 
 steps of any earlier people was an unthinkable proposition. 
 It was even a geographical problem more than an ethno- 
 graphical one, and when what is claimed to be geological 
 evidence of antiquity is presented, it is set aside as an in- 
 stance of an intrusive object, that by some very local 
 cataclysmic action, has caused an object of recent origin ta 
 
i8i 
 
 be inhumed, or, if such artifact by some chance is upon the 
 surface, it cannot be old, but is a "reject" resulting from 
 an Indian's failure to perfect a neohthic implement. The 
 application of such explanation is very soothing to the mind 
 that operates under protest, but knowledge is not advanced 
 in such manner. If the evidence that applies to fossils is 
 accepted as "certain," then the same emphatic term applies 
 to the evidence offered with reference to man's antiquity. 
 
 The declaration, to wit: 
 
 "Mulch has been written and more said concerning the 
 existence of man in the United States before the last glacial 
 •epoch. The present state of evidence, however, seems to 
 afiford no warrant for the conclusion that mian existed in 
 the United States before the end of the glacial period. 
 Wlhatever theoretical reasons there may be for assuming 
 his earlier existence, they must be held as warranting no 
 more than a presumptive conclusion, which up to the pres- 
 ent time lacks confirmationi by certain evidence," 
 does not honor the monumental publication in which it ap- 
 pears. 
 
 It is a curious feature of archaeological research that he 
 who bears the heat and burden of the day in the field must 
 have the value of the results obtained passed upon by "ex- 
 perts" who are familiar with objects but not with their his- 
 tory. 'Not that objects do not and cannot speak for them- 
 selves — this they do, but their communicative power is 
 short-lived and dies when the dissociation of object and 
 nidus is completely effected. All the museums and all the 
 libraries in the world are not as eloquent of the antiquity of 
 man as a single battered pebble drawn from the face of 
 some compacted, gravelly bluff, and no avalanche of protest 
 avails to influence the message of a broken stone. He who 
 lives by a river's brim needs no tutor to make plain what 
 running water is capable of accomplishing, is daily doing. 
 
l82 
 
 and has done in ages past. The river of the theorist may 
 climb the hills, but the practical stream finds its way from 
 the mountains to the sea. The antiquity of man in North 
 America may be a high-sounding phrase and nothing more 
 in encyclopaedic pages, but out in the country, under a clear 
 sky, in the searching light of an unclouded sun, where the 
 river flows and field and forest are ready to tell their stories,, 
 there even the neglected artifact that frost and fire of cen- 
 turies have left unscathed, has a tale toi unfold that carries 
 him who lends a listening ear, back millennium, after millen- 
 mium until the world as it was, before evern the ice age, ap- 
 pears in nO' tmoertain shape. It is not presumtion on the 
 part of the archseologist to aissert that twoi and twO' make 
 four. It is not necessary for the encyclopaedist to insist that 
 possibly this may be true. The American archaeologist too 
 generally has been afraid of his own shadow. The possi- 
 bility of making a blunder has paralyzed his efforts. What 
 if he was mistaken once in awhile? The man who never 
 made a mistake never made a discovery. 
 
 Marvelous as has been the advance of knowledge in the 
 line of ancient America and her people, we have not yet 
 solved every problem, but, so far as we have gotten, the evi- 
 dence all points to an antiquity that years ago would have 
 been laughed at, and not one jot or tittle has been discovered 
 that even renders improbable the existence in North 
 America of pre-glacial man. 
 
INDKX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Abbott Spring, 1 1 1 
 
 Agricultural implements, loi 
 
 Agriculture, Lenapean, 26 
 
 Alaska, 15 
 
 Allen. Harrison, Dr., comment by, T62 
 
 Alps 15 
 
 America, Central, 180 
 
 America, North, 180 
 
 America, South, 180 
 
 Amulets loi 
 
 Anodonta 109 
 
 Antler, carved, zy 
 
 Archseologia Nov. Cses., quoted, 46 
 
 Archaeology, North American, problems of, 149 
 
 Arctic animals, 171 
 
 Argillite artifacts, 90, 105, 116 
 
 Arizona, i8t) 
 
 Arrow-points, 53 
 
 Arrow-points, abundance of, 57 
 
 Artifacts, relation to pebbles, 161 
 
 Art-work, Lenapean, 80 
 
 Ash, 19 
 
 Assanhican, 43 
 
 Assiscunk Creek, 86 
 
 Assunpink Creek 86, 146, 162 
 
 Atlantic City, N. J., pi 
 
 Atlantic County, N. J., 46 
 
 Axe, grooved stone, 40, 167 
 
 B. 
 
 Barber and Howe : N. J. Hist. Coll., quoted, 49 
 
 Bear 18, 27 
 
 Beech, ^^ 
 
 Belt, Thomas, '30 
 
 Birch, ' 
 
 Bird-Life, destruction of, ^° 
 
 Bordentown, N. J., 45. 75, 81 
 
 Boudinot, E., "Star in the West," 21 
 
1 84 
 
 Page. 
 
 Boulders, ice-borne, io6 
 
 Boull, M., 123 
 
 Bow, use of, 56 
 
 Box tortoise, 48 
 
 Brinton, D. G., quoted, 27, 39, 40, 43, $2, 92, 125 
 
 Brinton and Anthony's Lenapean Lexicon, 53 
 
 Bristol, Pa., paleolithic implements found at, 144 
 
 Burlington Island 76 
 
 C. 
 
 Caches of stone implements, 61, 90 
 
 Campanius, Thomas, quoted, 43 
 
 Cape May, N. J., 16, 70 
 
 Caribou 18 
 
 Carr, Lucien, 164 
 
 Catalpa, 18 
 
 Catlinite, 28 
 
 Celts, 41, 167 
 
 Ceremonial objects, 45 
 
 Chesapeake Bay, 92 
 
 Chestnut 18 
 
 Chipped implements, distribution of, 169 
 
 Columbia gravel, 107 
 
 Colonial days, 85, 179 
 
 Colonial relics, 48, 55 
 
 Colonial time, country in, 70 
 
 Cougar, 18, 27 
 
 Crania, human, from gravel, 122 
 
 Crosswicks Creek, 71, 86, iii 
 
 Crow Creek, 160, 166 
 
 Culture, neolithic, 123 
 
 O. 
 
 Dawkins, Wm. Boyd, 131 
 
 Deer, Giant (Cervus Scotti) , 18 
 
 Deer, Virginia, 18 
 
 Delaware River, 18, 22, 71, 136, 159 
 
 Delaware River, ancient man on, 78 
 
 Delaware River, ice in, 1 19 
 
 Delaware River, Dutch on, 28, 46, 69, 88, 95 
 
 Delaware River, recent dredging of, 76 
 
i8s 
 
 S£:^:^:'^^::::;:::;::."^'."^' '"• '''' -''' ^^^' ^^^' ^^'^ 
 
 Drift, yellow, '^R 7^"^^"" 
 
 T^ . ,^ -^ „ ' 40, 106, 112, 119, 173 
 
 Drift, yellow, man of • v, /^ 
 
 Mil, ^'^i'^!i!!i!X^!!!!!;;;:;;:;;; '% 
 
 Duck Island, ^ 
 
 Du Pratz, quoted, 
 
 Dutch at Manhatta, g 
 
 Dutch Trading Posts, 64 
 
 Easton, Pa., Indian conference at, 45 
 
 Easton, Pa., Indian relics at, 17- 
 
 ^•™ 18 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, its declaration of antiquity of N. A. 
 
 man, jj^^, 
 
 England, paleolithic implements in, 144 
 
 Eocene, jo^ 
 
 Eskimo, 171^ J78 
 
 Eskimo in New England, 63 
 
 Eskimo relics in New England, 62 
 
 Eskimo, southern range of, 63 
 
 Ettwein, Bishop, quoted, 52 
 
 Evil Eye, 45 
 
 F. 
 
 Falls of Delaware, 43 
 
 Ffalles of Delaware, 86 
 
 Fishing, 26 
 
 Fish-spears, 118 
 
 Flint "blades," 58 
 
 Flint chipping, 22 
 
 Flood, phenomenal, in Delaware River, 84 
 
 Flood-plain, 80 
 
 Flora of South Jersey, 19, 24 
 
 Freshets 19 
 
 G. 
 
 Gaudry, Albert, Prof., 123 
 
 Glacial time, climatic change since, 170 
 
 Gokhos— owl, 35 
 
 Goniobasis,* 109 
 
i86 
 
 Page. 
 
 Gravel, Columbia, 107, 113, 117, i66- 
 
 Gravel, glacial, 133 
 
 Gravel, Trenton, 113, 121, 138, 141, 147, IS9. 161, 166, 170 
 
 Gulf Coast, 180 
 
 H. 
 
 Haines, H. W., 131 
 
 Heckewelder, quoted, 70, 91, 94 
 
 Hickory, 18, 85 
 
 Holmes, W. H., corrected, 129 
 
 Homo Americanus, 23, 115, 179 
 
 Homo Delawarensis, 126, 141, 146 
 
 Horn-beam, 19 
 
 Horse-chestnut, 4& 
 
 Hudson River, 92 
 
 Human face, wooden carving of, 35. 37 
 
 Human portraiture, attempts at, 34 
 
 Hunter, stone-age, S6 
 
 Hunting, 26 
 
 Hydrastis Canadensis, 40 
 
 I. 
 
 Ice Age in North America, 162 
 
 Idol, 51 
 
 Indian names, 17 
 
 Indian trails, 16 
 
 Indian, up-river, 173 
 
 Inland rivers, valleys of, 86 
 
 Iroquois, 63, 92 
 
 J. 
 
 Jasper quarries, 176 
 
 Jasper, skill in chipping, 56 
 
 K. 
 
 Kalm, Peter, quoted, 66, 68, 71, 88 
 
 Keane, A. H., quoted, 156 
 
 Keyport, N. J., 51 
 
 Knives, oval, 58 
 
i87 
 
 L. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Lalor field 107, in, 166 
 
 Laubach, Chas., discoveries of, 176 
 
 Lenapean metropolis 64 
 
 Lenapean Land, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24 28, 46, 64, 67, 69, 95 
 
 Lenapean relics, 22, 26 
 
 Lenapean relics, characteristics of, 24 
 
 Lenapean "stone" — is it genuine ? 33 
 
 Lenapean wihittuck, 70 
 
 Lenni Lenape, origin of, 102 
 
 Lenni Lenape, trailitions of, 16, 78, 92 / 
 
 Lenni Lenape, use of argillite by, ii9> I7S 
 
 Lenni Lenape, wanderings of, 14 
 
 Limvea, lOQ 
 
 Liquidambar, 18 
 
 Locust, 18 
 
 M. 
 
 Mammals, extinction of, 24 
 
 Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I74 
 
 Mammoth, 34 
 
 Maple, ^9 
 
 Marine shells, ^° 
 
 Martin : Indian Dyes, 4o 
 
 Mastodon, 34 
 
 Meadow soil, rate of accumulation of, 84 
 
 Mechenquiechen, '^ 
 
 Miocene, '°'^ 
 
 Mississippi River, 92, 172 
 
 Mohicanittuck, 94 
 
 Mongol, American, '^ 
 
 Moorhead, W. K., quoted, ^°^ 
 
 Moraine, terminal 74, 1/9 
 
 Morse, Edward S., ^ 
 
 Mortillet, Mon., quoted, ^^ 
 
 Multi-faceted, water-worn pebbles, 
 
 Museum, Peabody, at Cambridge, Mass., |3.3 
 
 Musk-ox, j2 . 
 
 Mussel, fresh-water, ^^ 
 
 Mya, 
 
1 88 
 
 N. 
 
 Page. 
 
 New Castle, Delaware, 39 
 
 New Jersey, 56 
 
 New Jersey, coastal pkin of, 18 
 
 New Jersey, deforesting of, I9i 25 
 
 New Jersey, rainfall in, 19 
 
 New Jersey, southern half of, 19 
 
 New Mexico, 180 
 
 O. 
 
 Oak, 18 
 
 Obsidian, 28 
 
 •Ostrea, 109 
 
 P. 
 
 Pacific Coast, ancient man on, 120 
 
 Paint used by Indiaris, 39 
 
 Paleolithic artifact 72 
 
 Paleolithic hunter, 154 
 
 Paleolithic implements, futility of denial of, 74, Tj 
 
 Patina, loi 
 
 Pebble-transportation in brooks, 159 
 
 Penn's Manor, 80 
 
 Penn, William, 12 
 
 Pepackhamatunk, S3 
 
 Periwig Island, 71 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa., 71 
 
 Phytolacca decandra, 40 
 
 Pigments, 39 
 
 Pipes, loi 
 
 Planorbis, 109 
 
 Pleistocene, fauna of, 18 
 
 Pleistocene period, 18, 20, 104 
 
 Potomack, 94, 120 
 
 Pottery, Lenapean, 28 
 
 Pottery, occurrence of, 64 
 
 Pottery, ornamentation of, 29, 38 
 
 Pottery, significance of 64 
 
 Pre-Lenapean people, Tj, 113,119 
 
 Primitive Industry, Abbott, quoted, 60, 120, 145, iSS 
 
 Putnam, F. W., on argillite chips, 104, 134 
 
 Pyrus coronaria, 40 
 
1 89 
 
 Q. 
 
 Pssfc 
 
 Quartz nodules, g ' 
 
 Quaternary, ^. ...^ ....... ..... 104 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabbit's foot, 
 
 ^^i'^f^"' '.'.■.■.■.'.'.■.■.■.■.■.'.■.'.■.■.'.■.■.■.' '19, 172 
 
 Rain-wash, jq2 
 
 Rancocus Creek, ; gg 
 
 Rancocus Creek, burial mound at, 4g 
 
 Reindeer j»j 
 
 Relatio Itenaris in Marylandiam, 52 
 
 Rhoads, S. N 174 
 
 Rink, Dr. Henry, quoted, 61 
 
 Riverview, 130 
 
 "Rotten" arrowheads, pi 
 
 S. 
 
 Salisbury, R. D., 77,176 
 
 Sand, fixedness of, 24 
 
 Sand, instability of, 24 
 
 Sandy Hook, N. J., 16 
 
 Sanguinaria Canadensis, 40 
 
 Sanhicans, 43 
 
 Sassafras, ig 
 
 Scheyichbi, 15, 52, 66, 69, 72, 121, 157 
 
 Schraibisch, Max, explorations of rock-shelters by, 175 
 
 Seal, 171 
 
 Scraper, 59 
 
 Semi-lunar knife, 63 
 
 Shackamaxon, treaty elm at, 23 
 
 Shawnee Is., 75 
 
 Soil accumulation, since European occupation of country, 65 
 
 Sookpehelleu, 7i 
 
 South Jersey, I39. 176 
 
 Spears, use of, S0> 54 
 
 Sphinx, 29 
 
 Stacy, Mahlon, 45 
 
 Staten Island, I79 
 
 St. Lawrence River, 124 
 
 Stones, fire-cracked, 102 
 
1 90 
 
 Page. 
 
 Sturge, W. A., I44 
 
 Susquehanna River, 70 
 
 Swedes on Delaware 28, 46, 67, 69, 88, 95 
 
 Sycamore 18 
 
 T. 
 
 Talega, 125 
 
 Talligeu, 92 
 
 Talligewi, 92 
 
 Talligewi — argillite people ? 93 
 
 Talus, implements from the, 162 
 
 Tanganadun, 52 
 
 Tangandikan, S3 
 
 Tanganikan, 53 
 
 Tedyuscung, 45 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 113 
 
 Time, arch»ological significance of, 3 
 
 Tomahawk, use of, 26 
 
 Tombic anall, 40 
 
 Tracy, Evarts, on "Sphinx,'' 30 
 
 Tradition, archaeological value of, 14 
 
 Trenton, N. J., 43, 45, 48, 70, 74, I77 
 
 Trenton gravel, artifacts in, 74, 76 
 
 Trenton gravel region, 107 
 
 Trimming sites, 161 
 
 Tsalaki, 93 
 
 Tulip, 18 
 
 Tullytown, Pa., 144 
 
 Tupelo, 18 
 
 Turkey-tribe, 91 
 
 Turtle-tribe, 91 
 
 Tylor, Edward B., 132 
 
 U. 
 
 TJnio, 109 
 
 V. 
 
 Volk, Ernst 12, 34, 119 123, 161, 165, 168 
 
igi 
 w. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Wadsworth, M. E., quoted, 134, 163 
 
 Walamink, 39 
 
 Walam Olum, 121 
 
 Walnut, 18 
 
 Walrus, 171 
 
 Water Gap 75, 177 
 
 Water-worn pebbles, 79 
 
 Weapons, man's need of, 21 
 
 Whitney, J. D., 164 
 
 Willow, 19 
 
 Wilson, Thomas, 123 
 
 Wolf-tribe, 92 
 
 Wright, Geo. Fredk., 131, 162 
 
 Wsinkhoalacan Si 
 
 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, S3