The collection of the Bureau of Ethnology includes almost every type of stone implement or ornament, and as the investigations and explorations of the collaborators have extended over nearly all the eastern and central portions of the Mississippi valley, it furnishes a substantial basis for showing the geographic distribution of various forms of objects in use among the aboriginal inhabitants.

It has not been deemed advisable to utilize material contained in other collections. Should this be done there would be no reason for drawing upon one rather than another, and if it were once begun the examination would finally extend to every collection made from American localities, a study which, although perhaps desirable, would transcend the scope of the Bureau plans.

Much that has been published in regard to the distribution of relics in various portions of the country is of little value to a paper of this kind, since few of the objects are sufficiently illustrated or referred to any class in other than the most general terms; so that it is frequently impossible to determine the group in which a given article should be placed. Partly for this reason, partly because the primary purpose is description of a certain collection made in a definite way, little space is given to the descriptive work of predecessors in the field of archeology. The general results of previous work are, however, carefully weighed in the conclusions reached.

Classification of Objects and Materials.

The ordinary division into chipped and pecked or ground implements has been adopted: the former including all such as are more easily worked by flaking, and the latter including those made from stone suitable for working down by pecking into form with stone hammers or by similar means. The system of nomenclature in general use has been retained, as it is now familiar to students of North American archeology, and, while not entirely satisfactory in some respects, is perhaps as good as can be devised in the present state of knowledge.

Careful study of the entire collection has failed to show the slightest difference in the form, finish, or material of implements from the same locality, whether found in mounds or graves or on the surface; hence no attempt is made to separate the two classes of objects. Allowance is to be made for the weathering of a surface specimen, but this is the only distinction.

It is not always easy to identify a stone, even with a fresh surface; in a weathered specimen it is often impossible. For this reason the material of which a specimen is made may not be correctly named; frequently the alteration due to exposure will change the appearance of a rock very much, and in such a case the best that can be done is to tell what it looks most like. The material of a majority of specimens however, or at least the classes of rock to which they belong, as granite, porphyry, etc., are correctly named; to give a more exact name would be possible only by the destruction or injury of the specimen. There are a few terms used which may be here explained.

“Compact quartzite” is a very hard, close-grained, siliceous rock, sometimes nearly a flint, and again closely approaching novaculite. “Greenstone” may be diorite or diabase, or it may be a very compact dark sandstone or quartzite so weathered that its nature can not be determined from superficial observation. “Argillite” refers to any slaty rock; it may be so soft as to be easily cut with a knife, or nearly as hard as quartzite. Usually it is greenish in color.

A comprehensive study of all available collections will no doubt modify materially the classification and system of types here presented.

The quotations from eminent anthropologists given below show the difficulties in the way of establishing a satisfactory system of types, or of assigning certain forms to particular localities. In most of these quotations the substance only of the author’s remarks is given.

According to Dr. E. B. Tylor, the flint arrows of the Dakota, the Apache, or the Comanche might easily be mistaken for the weapons dug up on the banks of the Thames;1 while cores of flint in Scandinavia and of obsidian in Mexico are exactly alike,2 and a tray filled with European arrowheads can not be distinguished from a tray of American ones.3 Prof. Otis T. Mason observes that the great variety of form in such weapons after they are finished is due partly to nature and partly to the workman’s desire to produce a certain kind of implement. All sorts of pebbles lie at the hand of the savage mechanic, none of them just what he wants. He selects the best.4 Perhaps the truth about the shape is that the savage found it thus and let it so remain.5

The state of things among the lower tribes which presents itself to the student is a substantial similarity in knowledge, arts, and customs, running through the whole world. Not that the whole culture of all tribes is alike—far from it; but if any art or custom belonging to a low tribe is selected at random, the likelihood is that something substantially like it may be found in at least one place thousands of miles off, though it frequently happens that there are large intervening areas where it has not been observed.6

On the whole, it seems most probable that many of the simpler weapons, implements, etc., have been invented independently by various savage tribes. Though they are remarkably similar, they are at the same time curiously different. The necessaries of life are simple and similar all over the world. The materials with which men have to deal are also very much alike; wood, bone, and to a certain extent stone, have everywhere the same properties. The obsidian flakes of the Aztecs resemble the flint flakes of our ancestors, not so much because the ancient Briton resembled the Aztec, as because the fracture of flint is like that of obsidian. So also the pointed bones used as awls are necessarily similar all over the world. Similarity exists, in fact, rather in the raw material than in the manufactured article, and some even of the simplest implements of stone are very different among different races.7

Tylor again says:

When, however, their full value has been given to the differences in the productions of the Ground Stone Age, there remains a residue of a most remarkable kind. In the first place, a very small number of classes, flakes, knives, scrapers, spear and arrow heads, celts, and hammers take in the great mass of specimens in museums; and in the second place, the prevailing character of these implements, whether modern or thousands of years old, whether found on this side of the world or on the other, is a marked uniformity. The ethnographer who has studied the stone implements of Europe, Asia, North or South America, or Polynesia, may consider the specimens from the district he has studied as types from which those of other districts differ, as a class, by the presence or absence of a few peculiar instruments, and individually in more or less important details of shape or finish, unless, as sometimes happens, they do not differ perceptibly at all. So great is this uniformity in the stone implements of different places and times, that it goes far to neutralize their value as distinctive of different races. It is clear that no great help in tracing the minute history of the growth and migration of tribes is to be got from an arrowhead which might have come from Polynesia, or Siberia, or the Isle of Man, or from a celt which might be, for all its appearance shows, Mexican, Irish, or Tahitian. If an observer, tolerably acquainted with stone implements, had an unticketed collection placed before him, the largeness of the number of specimens which he would not confidently assign, by mere inspection, to their proper countries, would serve as a fair measure of their general uniformity. Even when aided by mineralogical knowledge, often a great help, he would have to leave a large fraction of the whole in an unclassified heap, confessing that he did not know within thousands of miles or thousands of years where and when they were made.

How, then, is this remarkable uniformity to be explained? The principle that man does the same thing under the same circumstances will account for much, but it is very doubtful whether it can be stretched far enough to account for even the greater proportion of the facts in question. The other side of the argument is, of course, that resemblance is due to connection, and the truth is made up of the two, though in what proportion we do not know.8

While the several authors quoted do not fully agree, and some are even slightly self-contradictory, still, if the statements are to be taken at their face value, it would seem that efforts to make such classifications are mainly a waste of time.

It may be premised that in every class of implements there are almost as many forms as specimens, if every variation in size or pattern is to be considered; and these merge into one another imperceptibly. Not only is this the case with individual types, but the classes themselves, totally unlike as their more pronounced forms may be, gradually approach one another until there is found a medium type whose place can not be definitely fixed.