-; 
 
 Fossil Men 
 
 a'.; :ru.icui 
 
 Modern RcDresentativf 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
I 
 
FOSSIL MEN: 
 
 AND THEIR MODERN REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
Works by the Same Author. 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE IN BIBLE LANDS. 
 
 With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, js. 6d. 
 II. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 
 
 With Twenty Illustrations. 
 Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 7$. 6d. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD, 
 
 According to Revelation and Science. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 London : 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, Paternoster Row, 
 

FOSSIL MEN 
 
 THEIR MODERN REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO ILLUSTRATE 
 
 THE CHARACTERS AND CONDITION OF PRE-HISTORIC 
 
 MEN IN EUROPE, BY THOSE OF THE 
 
 AMERICAN RACES. 
 
 J. W. 
 
 BY 
 
 DAWSON, C.M.G., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., 
 H 
 
 Principal of McGill College and University, Montreal ; 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Story of the Earth and Man," " The 
 
 Origin of the World" etc. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 $jrahra : 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVIII. * 
 
 (fclo 
 
Butler & Tanner, 
 
 The Selwood Printing Works, 
 
 Frome, and London. 
 

 TO HIS FRIEND, 
 
 PETER REDPATH, Esq., 
 
 OF MONTREAL, 
 
 W$& foork is JBEOtcatet* 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR, 
 
 IN COMMEMORATION OF PERSONAL KINDNESS, 
 
 AND OF 
 
 AID LIBERALLY RENDERED 
 
 TO 
 
 SCIENCE EDUCATION IN CANADA. 
 
 M373557 
 
PREFACE 
 
 No subject of Geological investigation is perhaps in a 
 more unsatisfactory state than that which relates to 
 the connection of the modern or human period with 
 preceding epochs. Difficult and complex problems, 
 yet unsolved, and even imperfectly understood in 
 their data and conditions, encompass the history of 
 that remarkable Glacial Age which seems to have 
 preceded the advent of man and the modern mammalia 
 in the Northern Hemisphere. Much uncertainty and 
 liability to error attach to the study of the superficial 
 deposits which alone contain the remains of man and 
 his works. Further, the Geologist, the Archaeologist, 
 and the Historian, the Philologist and the Anthropo- 
 logist, approaching this obscure region from different 
 directions, all claim to be heard, and often vie with 
 each other in dogmatic assertions respecting facts and 
 inferences of the most uncertain character. 
 
 The present work is intended as a popular exposi- 
 tion of some of the more important topics, from the 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 point of view of the Geologist and Naturalist, and on 
 that principle of referring to modern causes for the 
 explanation of ancient effects, which is the basis of 
 theoretical geology, the principal modern facts relied 
 on being those furnished by the aboriginal tribes of 
 America. It cannot pretend to be exhaustive of a 
 department of inquiry yet in its infancy ; but may 
 claim the merit of being suggestive. 
 
 The substance of this work appeared in a series of 
 papers in the Leisure Hour, entitled " The New 
 World and the Old," but has been considerably ex- 
 tended and in some parts re-written. 
 
 J. W. D. 
 
 McGill College, Montreal. 
 
 Jan. 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Explanatory and Introductory ...... 1 
 
 Chapter II. 
 An Old Story of the New World 18 
 
 Chapter III. 
 Glimpses of Pre-historic Times 45 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 The Eemains of Cities of the Stone Age . . . .70 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Implements and Weapons of the Stone Age . . .111 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Lost Arts of Primitive Eaces 146 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 Physical Characteristics of Pre-historic Man . . . 177 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Antiquity of Man 205 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Primitive Ideas of Keligion, the Idea of God . . . 250 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Primitive Ideas of Religion, the Instinct of Immortality . 282 
 
 Chapter XL 
 Unity and Continuity ....... 307 
 
 Appendix . 340 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Les Roches Perce'es ...... Frontispiece- 
 
 Implements op Chipped Stone, Europe . . . .12 
 
 Implements op Chipped Stone, North America . .13 
 Implements of Polished Stone, Europe . . . .14 
 
 Implements of Polished Stone, North America . . 15 
 Ornaments, etc., of a Red Indian of Newfoundland . 21 
 Section of the Stockade or Wall of Hochelaga . . 38 
 
 Plan of Hochelaga 39 
 
 The Town of Hochelaga 41 
 
 Sketch-map Showing the Probable Lines of Migration 
 
 and Distribution of the American Tribes . . 48 
 Alleghan, Toltecan, Peruvian, and Modern Crow Heads 54 
 Modern Mandan, and Ancient Aztec Heads . . 55 
 
 Copper Axes, Spears, and Knife of the Alleghans . 58 
 Copper Bracelet, Disc, Bead, and Buttons of Alleghans 59 
 Mode of Suspending Earthen Pots .... 72, 73 
 Fragment of Earthen Vessel, Hocuelaga . .75 
 
 Earthen Pot .77 
 
 Head from an Earthen Pot 79 
 
 Head in Pottery 81 
 
 Plan of Hociielagan House for Five Families . . 83 
 Earthen Pot found on the Upper Ottawa . . 87 
 
 Fragments of Pottery . . . . . . .91 
 
 Earthen Pipes, Hocuelaga 94 
 
 Red Pipestone Pipe 95 
 
 Stone Arrow- Heads, Modern 123 
 
 Bone Needle and Spears, Hochelaga .... 135 
 
Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAG 8 
 
 Bone Harpoons . 137 
 
 Shell and Terra Cotta Beads, Hochelaga . . . 141 
 Grotesque Figure, Queen Charlotte Islands . . 148 
 Pipe Carved out of Hard Porphyritic Stone . . 150 
 
 Group of Huron Women 156 
 
 Grooved Hammer . 171 
 
 Outlines of Three Pre-historic European Skulls com- 
 pared with one prom Hochelaga .... 194 
 Outline of a Cro-magnon Skull as seen in Front, and 
 
 hochelagan skull on a smaller scale . . 195 
 
 Front View of Another Hochelagan Skull of a Similar 
 
 Type 196 
 
 Profile View of Same Skull 197 
 
 Chippewa Chiefs, from Photographs .... 253 
 Totems of Chiefs of the Penobscot Indians . . . 265 
 Totems of Families of the Eeindeer Age in France . 267 
 plctograph on a plece of reindeer horn from a cave 
 
 in the dordogne 269 
 
 American Pictograph from Schoolcraft . . . 270 
 
 Totems Sculptured on the Roches Perce'es . . . 272 
 Adjedatig, or Grave-post of Wabojeegse, the "White 
 
 Fisher" . . ■ . . . . . .289 
 
 Chippewa Graves and Mourners ..... 291 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Somewhere in the past, the long ages of the prehuman 
 geologic record join and merge into the human period. 
 The day when the first man stood erect upon the earth 
 and gazed upon a world which had been shaped for 
 him by the preceding periods of the creative work, 
 was the definite beginning of the Modern Period in 
 Geology. If that day could be fixed in the world's 
 calendar, on reaching it the geologist might lay down 
 his hammer and yield the field to the antiquarian and 
 the historian. On that day a world, for long ages the 
 abode of brute creatures, became for the first time the 
 habitation of a rational soul. On it the old and un- 
 varying machinery of nature first became amenable to 
 the action of a conscious, independent earthly agent. 
 On it a new and marvellous power — that of human 
 will — was introduced upon our planet. No wonder, 
 then, that in our critical and sceptical time, when men 
 are no longer satisfied with traditions, or even with 
 sacred history, questions as to this mysterious meet- 
 ing-place of the past and present should be agitated 
 
Z FOSSII MEN. 
 
 with an engrossing interest, and that all our varied 
 stores of scientific and historical knowledge should be 
 brought to bear on it. Nor need we wonder that 
 obscurity still rests upon the subject when regarded 
 from the standpoint of science and secular history. 
 It is connected, in so far as geology is concerned, with 
 difficult and controverted questions of the Glacial 
 period and its close, and in the domain of archaeology 
 with the darkness that antedates the beginning of 
 literature. It thus forms an appropriate battle- 
 ground for active spirits eager to reach new truths. 
 The evolutionist searches in its obscurity for the tran- 
 sition from apes to men. The geologist painfully 
 gathers the faint traces of forgotten tribes preserved 
 in caves and gravels, and the archaeologist joins him 
 in his quest. 
 
 The result has been the accumulation of a great 
 mass of facts, of which, however, many are doubtful 
 in their import, the initiation of many controversies, 
 and the production of a general vague impression 
 that science has unsettled all our previous views as 
 to the origin and antiquity of man. While popular 
 writers have boldly asserted this last conclusion as 
 established beyond dispute, the more cautious, and 
 those who have the best opportunities of weighing 
 the evidence, are well aware of its doubtful and un- 
 certain character; and the attempt recently made by 
 one of the greatest and most judicial minds among 
 English geologists to sum up the actual results,* 
 * Lyell, "Antiquity of Man," fourth edition. 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 while it startles the reader with the magnitude and 
 strangeness of the questions suggested, appals him 
 with their complexity and difficulty. 
 
 To those who, like the writer of these pages, have 
 long been familiar with the manners of the American 
 aborigines and with the antiquities of America, the 
 facts detailed in such publications as LyelFs "Anti- 
 quity of Man," Christie and Lartet's " Reliquiae 
 Aquitanicae," Morlot's Memoirs on the Swiss Lake 
 Habitations, and Dupont's on the Belgian Caves, 
 appear like a new edition of a familiar story ; and as 
 Dr. Wilson has well shown in his u Pre-historic Man/' 
 existing humanity, as it appears in the native Ameri- 
 can, is little else than a survival of primeval man in 
 Europe. In short, the early voyagers who first met 
 the American tribes really held conference with their 
 now ancestors, or with men among whom still lived 
 manners and customs extinct in Europe before the 
 dawn of history. Why, then, should not that method 
 of reasoning from existing causes to explain ancient 
 facts, by which geology has achieved its greatest 
 triumphs, be applied to the extinct tribes of the old 
 world ? Why should not the enormous mass of exist- 
 ing information as to rude man in America be em- 
 ployed to illustrate and explain conditions long since 
 passed away in the eastern continent ? 
 
 To attain successfully such a result requires some- 
 thing more than the desultory and imperfect refer- 
 ences which have been casually made by writers on 
 European archaeology. It requires that large and 
 
4 POSSIL MEN. 
 
 systematic views of the culture of the American na- 
 tions should be placed beside the results of European 
 research, and that such comparisons shall not be over- 
 loaded with details, but shall be given in a distinct 
 and pictorial form. It has occurred to me that this 
 may best be done by taking up our position on the 
 antiquities of one tribe or locality, connecting the 
 others with this, so as to show the homogeneous nature 
 of the American culture, and then applying the whole 
 to European facts and difficulties. 
 
 I shall therefore take as my first starting-point the 
 primitive town of Hochelaga, the predecessor of the 
 fair city of Montreal, and shall present to the reader 
 American and European prehistoric times as they 
 would appear to an inhabitant of that ancient town. 
 We shall thus at least obtain a novel insight, remote 
 from that of the ordinary geologist or arch asolo gist, 
 and which may aid us in interpreting some things 
 which from his point of view are most difficult to 
 understand. We shall, I hope, find that such change 
 of base in our attack on prehistoric times may afford 
 advantages of a peculiar character, and may enable 
 us to correct some of the fanciful and enthusiastic 
 impressions of those who look back on prehistoric 
 times in Europe from the, perhaps, too elevated 
 standpoint of a mature civilization, to which the rude 
 hunter, with his weapons of stone and bone, seems a 
 creature almost too remote to have approached within 
 thousands of years, and rather to be pushed back 
 into the mists of an archaic and forgotten anti- 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. O 
 
 quity, to consort with the mythical anthropoid apes 
 from which the evolutionist proposes to derive our 
 species. 
 
 Since, however, in the following chapters we shall be 
 occupied almost exclusively with American facts, and 
 must refer from them to the discoveries made in Europe, 
 and as the reader may not be familiar with the 
 aspects of pre-historic time to European geologists 
 and antiquarians, I may here shortly explain the 
 usually received views with reference to those times 
 anterior to history, and the terms by which they are 
 designated. 
 
 We have the misfortune, according to archae- 
 ologists, to live in the "Iron Age/' a fact of which we 
 are also reminded by our roads and ships, and by the 
 too great prevalence of a cold, dead materialism, to 
 which all that is not iron and steel, or their equivalent 
 in money, is mere superstition, and which derides the 
 beliefs of the world's earlier times. This Iron Age 
 represents, in Europe at least, the period of written 
 history, for even in Greece the earliest literature goes 
 back merely to the time when the Iron Age of that 
 country was beginning. In the East a far earlier 
 literature exists, but this also does not go beyond the 
 earlier age of iron in that part of the world — the 
 Iron Age of the East having apparently antedated 
 the Iron Age of Europe, much as the latter did that 
 of America. The date of the beginning of the Iron 
 Age is a point altogether indefinite. In Asia Tubal- 
 Cain may have inaugurated it before the Deluge. In 
 
6 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 America it is making its way to-day in direct conflict 
 with the age of Stone among the more remote tribes. 
 When we speak, therefore, of the Iron, Bronze, and 
 Stone Ages, it is useless, if we wish to attach any 
 definite meaning to our language, to extend its ap- 
 plication beyond the temperate latitudes of Western 
 Europe. 
 
 Copper, and bronze, the alloy of copper and tin, 
 were in prevalent use before iron* ; and bronze, with 
 its ingredients well proportioned, was no bad sub- 
 stitute for the most useful of metals, having the 
 advantage besides of not perishing by rust, and of 
 being easily molten into any required shape. The 
 Bronze Age precedes the date of written history in 
 Western Europe, though in the East it is coeval with 
 the early Bible history, and in Greece it reaches to the 
 Trojan war. It attained its acme before the Roman 
 legions had swept over the European plains, when the 
 civilising element was mainly represented by Phoe- 
 nician traders visiting the coasts, and when the rude 
 primeval tribes were shaping themselves into nations, 
 and acquiring the arts of life from the more cultivated 
 peoples of the south and east. As in the case of the 
 Iron Age, we can attach no definite limits to its 
 
 * It would seem that in Africa and elsewhere iron may have 
 been used as early as or earlier than bronze, in consequence 
 of the occurrence of iron ores easily reduced. For this reason, 
 Yirchow, quoted with approval by Tylor in an address de- 
 livered at the Sheffield meeting of the British Association, 
 has proposed to merge the Bronze and Iron Ages in a " Metal 
 Age." 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 beginning or to its end. There must have been a 
 time when the Iron Age was fully established on the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, while yet in the inland 
 and northern nations the Age of Bronze coexisted 
 with the earlier Age of Stone, and in some places the 
 Iron Age must have come abruptly into conflict with 
 that of Stone, without the intervention of the Age of 
 Bronze, as it has done in America. 
 
 This last Age, that of Stone, in the South of Europe, 
 antedates all written history. In the many-sided 
 East, however, we find cutting instruments of stone in 
 use in Egypt and Syria long after the dawn of lite- 
 rature, and intruding themselves into Europe in some 
 of the detachments which joined the army of Xerxes; 
 while in remote corners of the North of Europe 
 some uses of stone weapons reached almost into the 
 Middle Ages. The earlier Stone folk are known to 
 us only by their graves, and remains of their habi- 
 tations and implements. The ancient barrows and 
 cromlechs of Britain and France, and the gallery 
 tombs of Scandinavia, contain the bones of the name- 
 less warriors of this Age buried with their flint 
 arrows and stone hatchets. The curious lake habi- 
 tations of Switzerland, built by unknown tribes on 
 piles over the water, also afford their remains, though 
 some of these strange dwellings reach up to the time 
 of Bronze and Iron. The shell-heaps of the primitive 
 fishermen of the coast of Denmark, and the peat-bogs 
 of various districts of Europe, afford additional re- 
 mains of the people of this Age. 
 
8 FOSSIL MEN, 
 
 Wilson may furnish us with a specimen of a monu- 
 ment of this period, which is everywhere in Europe 
 known to us only by monuments, and not by written 
 history. It is the mount called Knock Maraidhe, or 
 Hill of the Sailors or Sea-rovers, standing till 1838 
 in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, in the midst of modern 
 civilisation. It was of no mean size, being fifteen feet 
 high, and one hundred and twenty in diameter, but no 
 history tells its origin or the cause of its name. It 
 had to be levelled, and then it appeared that it had 
 been built by human hands. Under the centre was a 
 massive stone tomb, or cromlech, holding the remains 
 of two male skeletons in a sitting or crouching 
 posture, and other bones, possibly of a dog. Shells of 
 the common Littorina, perforated for stringing, lay 
 beside the skulls, and a stone arrow-head and a pin 
 or hair-support of bone. Around the margin of the 
 tumulus were stone cists, each containing a small vase 
 and calcined bones, the remains of offerings to the 
 dead. This, as we shall see in the sequel, is an almost 
 precise counterpart of some of the oldest American 
 interments in those remarkable mounds of the river 
 valleys of the West, which, though some of them 
 are of great antiquity, undoubtedly represent a mode 
 of burial pursued up to the time of the European 
 discovery. 
 
 Here is another picture. It is a " Gallery grave " 
 in Sweden, as described by Nilsson. The walls con- 
 sist of flat slabs of granite or gneiss, carefully joined 
 together, forming a chamber from twenty to thirty 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 feet long, and five to six feet high, which is roofed 
 over with flat slabs of gneiss. In the centre of the 
 long side, fronting the south, is a door leading out- 
 ward through a gallery, also of stone, sixteen to 
 twenty feet long, three feet high, and two to three 
 feet broad. Around the sides of the chamber are 
 stalls or niches, separated by partitions of wood or 
 stone, and in these are the skeletons of the old people, 
 seated with their legs bent under their bodies, or with 
 the bones fallen together in a heap and the skull on 
 top, and beside them their stone weapons and orna- 
 ments of shell and amber. The whole structure is 
 buried under a mound or tumulus of earth. This, 
 again, is the style of the family sepulchres of the 
 modern Esquimaux, and is apparently borrowed from 
 the plan of their ordinary dwellings, as the existing 
 plan of a Lapland house is thought to represent that 
 of the ancient gallery graves of Sweden. These in- 
 stances represent the absolute Stone period of Europe 
 before the use of bronze ; but they belong to what has 
 been called the Neolithic or later Stone period, in 
 which stone implements of the most perfect kind 
 existed, and in which the physical features and 
 animal inhabitants of Europe were the same as at 
 present. 
 
 In an earlier part of the Stone Age, animals now 
 locally or wholly extinct still survived, and there 
 were climatal and geographical conditions somewhat 
 different from those of the present time. In France 
 and Belgium, for example, there are indications that 
 
10 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the reindeer, now confined to Lapland, and not known 
 in Germany since the time of Caesar, while there is 
 no written record of its former existence in Gaul, 
 afforded a large part of the food of the inhabitants. 
 There is even evidence that these earlier Stone people 
 hunted the now extinct mammoth and its contem- 
 poraries. We may take as an example the cave of 
 Bruniquel in the south of France. It has apparently 
 been used both as a house and as a place of sepulture, 
 and since its occupation a layer of hard stalagmite has 
 accumulated over the earth and carbonaceous matter 
 of its floor. Professor Owen, who examined the bones 
 obtained in it, estimated the number of reindeer re- 
 presented in his collections at 1000.* There were 
 also numerous bones of a species of horse. With 
 these were remains of ten human beings, abundance of 
 flint flakes, and numerous bone implements, including 
 harpoons exactly like those now used by the Esqui- 
 maux. On many of the bones were carved figures of 
 animals. Portions of four implements made of mam- 
 moth ivory, and needles and pins of bone, were also 
 found, and sea-shells both from the Mediterranean and 
 Atlantic, some at least of which must have been used 
 as ornaments merely. At the time when these and 
 similar earlier Flint folk lived, France would seem to 
 have been in part overgrown with dense forests, and 
 in part connected with great steppes or prairies ex- 
 tending over all central Europe ; its climate must have 
 been cool enough for the reindeer, and possibly the 
 * " Transactions of the Royal Society." 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 mammotli or extinct European elephant may not have 
 disappeared. 
 
 But a still earlier Stone period, that more properly 
 named the Palaeolithic, appears to be indicated by 
 quantities of roughly-shaped flint implements found in 
 the valley of the Somme, at Hoxne in Suffolk, and 
 many other places, imbedded in clays and gravels of 
 the river-beds, and in the earth and stalagmite of 
 caverns along with remains of extinct mammals ; * but 
 as yet without any human bones. If these remains 
 truly indicate a primitive Stone period of rough imple- 
 ments only, then man must have inhabited Europe 
 before some of the later changes in its physical geo- 
 graphy, at a time when the European land was more 
 extensive than now, when many large mammals now 
 extinct still lived, and before the great movements 
 of subsidence which have brought the European conti- 
 nent to its present form. 
 
 For reasons to be stated in the sequel, however, it 
 is doubtful if there really was a distinct Palaeolithic 
 period, properly so called. Many of the so-called im- 
 plements are probably natural, and the manner in 
 which they are found renders it possible that those 
 actually fabricated by man belonged merely to special 
 stations of tribes who may have had other and better 
 implements elsewhere. Still there seems to be evi- 
 dence of the existence of the earlier Flint folk before 
 the disappearance of the great Post-pliocene mammals 
 now extinct, and before the last great subsidence or 
 * " Story of the Earth and Man," 1873. 
 
12 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 diluvian catastrophe of the northern continents. The 
 men of this early age, if not properly " Palaeolithic," 
 were at least possibly antediluvian. 
 
 Penetrating beyond the so-called Palaeolithic period, 
 we find ourselves in the Post- pliocene or Glacial age of 
 geology, in the later part of which it seems evident 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 -Implements of Chipped Stone, Eukope. 
 (After Nilsson and others.) 
 
 that nearly all the European land was under the sea. 
 and the islands which remained were subject to a 
 climate almost arctic in its character. Here we lose 
 all traces of man ; and if he existed in this period, 
 it must have been in some of those portions of the 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 13 
 
 world to which the subsidence and cold climate of the 
 Glacial age did not extend. It is trae that the supposed 
 Palaeolithic men are often called Post-pliocene, but 
 when this term is used in a strict sense, as it is by- 
 Sir C. Lyell, it is with the limitation that human re- 
 mains occur only at the close of the Post-pliocene ; or 
 the beginning of the modern period. 
 
 Fig. 2. — Ihplements of Chipped Stone, Noeth Amebica. 
 (After Squier.) 
 
 Whatever dates we may assign to these several 
 stages of prehistoric man, and whatever value we may 
 attach to such classifications, or whatever new light 
 subsequent research may throw upon them, American 
 facts enable us to attain to absolute certainty on 
 some material points. Of these, one is that the oldest 
 populations known to us in Europe were not inferior 
 
14 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 either in physical character or the arts of life to the 
 aborigines of America at the time of its discovery. 
 Another is, that in their rude manufactures, their 
 habits of life, their social institutions, and their re- 
 ligious beliefs, they must have resembled the Ame- 
 
 Fig. 3. — Implements of Polished Stoki., avmvs. 
 (After Nilsson.) 
 
 ricans in the closest and most precise manner. These 
 two great leading truths it will be my province to 
 establish and illustrate in the following pages. In the 
 meantime I may appeal to the eye by a few woodcut 
 illustrations of implements and weapons of the Stone 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 15 
 
 Age in Europe and America. In figure 1, are given, 
 from Nilsson and others, tracings of some common 
 forms of arrow and spear heads of the best and 
 
 Fig. 4.— Implbmknts of Pot.tsttf.i) Stonb, Nohtk Amkeica. 
 (Partly after Sqaier.) 
 
 the rudest styles of chipped flint, one of them being 
 a weapon of the ancient Amiens type. In figure 2 are 
 some similar tracings from Squier's memoir on the 
 
16 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 ancient natives of the Mississippi Valley. I havo 
 selected these as belonging to one of the most culti- 
 vated of the primitive populations of America, who 
 were agriculturists, weavers, and skilful potters and 
 workers in metal, yet used flint implements exactly 
 similar to those of the ruder tribes. Figure 3 shows 
 a group of polished stone implements from Nilsson, 
 all European and of the so-called later Stone Age. In 
 figure 4 are similar stone implements used in America 
 by the same peoples who used those in figure 1, and 
 at the same time. These, let it be observed, are not 
 obtained by arbitrary selection of a few similar things 
 out of many dissimilar. On the contrary, it would be 
 possible to fill pages with such illustrations, showing 
 that the handiwork of the red man, from Terra del 
 Fuego to Baffin's Bay, is of similar character to that 
 of pre-historic man in Europe. I cannot dwell here 
 on all that is implied in such resemblance. To those 
 who know the uses of such implements, every one of 
 them tells, not of a fancied instinct to make things of 
 one form as birds make their nests, but of a wide 
 range of similar wants and habits leading to similar 
 contrivances. Take, for instance, the hollow chisel or 
 gouge in figure 4, used by the American Indian to tap 
 the maple-tree, to extract its saccharine juice in 
 spring, and also to hollow out wooden troughs to hold 
 it ; and consider all that is implied in the fact that 
 precisely the same sort of chisel is found abundantly 
 in Scandinavia, as represented in figure 3. Or, take 
 the grooved axes in figures 3 and 4, and consider how 
 
EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 much of experience in woodcraft is implied in the con- 
 struction, handling, and use of such an implement, and 
 with how many possible industries in wood it connects 
 itself. Or take the rudely-chipped flint implements of 
 " Paleolithic M type from the gravels of the Somme, 
 in connection with the fact that an implement of 
 somewhat similar style used by the semi-civilised 
 mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley is held with 
 much probability by some American antiquaries to 
 have been an agricultural hoe, and what strange 
 revelations may we have of the primitive farmers who 
 possibly cultivated the alluvial flats of the Somme 
 Valley with such tools, while they, perhaps, built their 
 towns on hills beyond the reach of inundations. Such 
 comparisons will grow and multiply on us as we pro- 
 ceed, and I must not anticipate them here. In follow- 
 ing out these comparisons, moreover, I do not wish to 
 restrict myself to the mere similarity of implements 
 and other remains, but to present such pictures of the 
 actual life of the American Indian as may enable us 
 to place ourselves in his position, and to view things 
 from his standpoint. By thus sitting at the feet of 
 the red man, we may chance to discover some truths 
 which the learned archsoologists of the old world have 
 not yet attained ; and in any case may hope to present 
 some interesting and instructive pictures of primitive 
 man in the old world and the new. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 Nothing can be more interesting than the narratives 
 which remain to us of the first contact of Europeans 
 with the Indian tribes of the West ; and perhaps no 
 such narrative is more touching than the unvarnished 
 yet circumstantial story of the old Breton navigator of 
 St. Malo, who first entered the St. Lawrence and held 
 intercourse with the tribes of Canada. 
 
 In the spring and summer of 1534, Jacques Cartier, 
 following on the track of Cabot and of the Breton and 
 Basque fishermen, who even at this early date visited 
 the coast and banks of Newfoundland, the " Island 
 of Baccalaos," — had entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
 by the Strait of Belleisle ; and in search of a way to 
 the Indies, coasted along the south side of Labrador, 
 and visited the Magdalen Islands, and the coast of 
 New Brunswick. He then passed up the deep Baie 
 des Chaleurs, so named by him because of the hot 
 summer sun which beat fiercely on its forest-clad 
 shores, and finally took refuge from the fogs and 
 storms of autumn in the lovely Bay of Gaspe. 
 
 On the coast of Labrador, which, he quaintly says, 
 from its barren and forbidding aspect, must have been 
 the land that God gave to Cain, he found a tribe of 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 19 
 
 Americans, the first that he saw. They were large, 
 well-built people, with their skins painted red, clothed 
 in furs, their hair tied up in a knot, secured with a 
 bone pin, and ornamented with feathers. They used 
 canoes of birch bark, and were hunting seals, in search 
 of which they gave the French navigator to under- 
 stand they had come from a country farther to the 
 south. There can be little doubt that they were the 
 Red Indians or Boeotics of Newfoundland, a race now 
 extinct, mercilessly exterminated by the European 
 settlers of that island, and by the Micmacs of Nova 
 Scotia, but who were of old most extensive hunters 
 of the reindeer, the seal, and the walrus, and skilful 
 carvers of ivory and fabricators of bone implements, 
 and who, in respect to their physical character, food, 
 and mode of life, were very like the men of the so- 
 called Reindeer Age in France itself, subsisting like 
 them very much on the carriboo, or American reindeer, 
 then abundant in the interior of Newfoundland. There 
 is reason to believe that the Red Indians were an 
 eastern extension of the Tinne or Chipewyan race, 
 which once extended across the continent between 
 the Esquimaux on the north and the Algonquins 
 and other Indian tribes on the south. The old Bre- 
 ton here stood in the presence of the precise equi- 
 valent of the Flint folk of his own country, just as 
 they would have appeared, if raised from their graves 
 in the French caverns, with their flint arrows, bone 
 spears, harpoons and shell ornaments. But Cartier 
 knew as little of these things as the Red Indians did 
 
20 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of the ocean telegraph which now ties their island to 
 Europe. In figure 5 I have given a representation of 
 the ornaments and one of the weapons of a Eed Indian 
 warrior, found in a cavern, with the bones of their 
 owner, on an island on the eastern coast of New- 
 foundland.* The strung shells are those of Purpura 
 Japillus. The beads are made from the shell of a 
 large species of Mactra; the pendants are neatly- 
 carved in the ivory of the walrus ; the arrow-head is 
 quite palaeolithic. These objects were taken from a 
 grave which also contained the oxidized remains of 
 an iron hatchet, some red ochre used as paint, and a 
 portion of a walrus tusk, part of which had been cut 
 away for use. The date is probably that of the 
 earliest French visitors of Newfoundland, and presents 
 a curious association of the ages of iron, of bone, and 
 of rudely chipped stone. 
 
 Crossing to the opposite side of the gulf, he had 
 some slight intercourse with the Micmacs of the coast 
 of New Brunswick, whom he rightly characterises as 
 a coast tribe, going from place to place in their bark 
 canoes, of which he saw as many as forty or fifty 
 together ; living in summer mainly on fish, and form- 
 ing extensive shell heaps on the coast, though in 
 
 * " Transactions of Nova Scotia Institute," vol. i. These 
 remains were found in 1847 by Eev. M. Blackmore. Beside 
 the objects mentioned above, there were glass beads, a bone 
 spear, and the remains of an iron knife. All the objects were 
 near the head of the skeleton. This had been wrapped in 
 birch bark, and near it were fragments of a carved piece of 
 wood. 
 
Fig 5.— Oknaments, etc., of a Red Indian of Newfoundland. 
 
 (a) Pierced Shells of Purpura lapillus. 
 
 (b) Wampum of Shell of Mactra. 
 
 (c) Pendants of Ivory of Walrus. 
 
 (d) Flint Arrow-head. 
 
OQ 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 winter they retired into the interior and hunted the 
 elk and reindeer. They still exist in a semi-civilized 
 state, and we shall have more to say of them in the 
 sequel. In the time of Cartier they were a nation of 
 hunters and fishermen, destitute of agriculture, fabri- 
 eatiug very rude pottery, making their wigwams and 
 canoes of birch bark, and their weapons and imple- 
 ments of chipped and polished stone, knowing no 
 metal but native copper, and employing this ap- 
 parently merely for ornamental purposes, but having 
 for their chief ornament and currency the strings of 
 wampum made from the shell of the quahog (Venus 
 mercenaries). These people were shy and threatening 
 in their first approaches to the French, but soon 
 opened an exchange of skins for knives, hatchets, and 
 trinkets, and manifested great eagerness to become 
 possessed of these new and precious treasures. Per- 
 haps these were the least advanced in the arts of life 
 of any of the peoples that Cartier met with, yet it is 
 interesting to observe that with these, as all others, 
 the idea of bartering property already existed, and 
 that they at once understood the importance to them 
 of the improved implements of the strangers, whom 
 they evidently recognised as men like themselves, to 
 be treated with on terms of equality, and to be re- 
 ceived in a hostile or friendly manner as their inten- 
 tions might seem to warrant. 
 
 The ancient traditions of the Micmacs, as collected 
 by Mr. Eand, an able missionary worker among them, 
 show that they recognised the Baie des Chaleurs, Mowe- 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 23 
 
 boktabaak, " the Biggest of Bays/' as the northern 
 boundary of the Micmac country, and Gaspe, the 
 Great Cape, or cape par excellence, which forms the 
 south portal of the St. Lawrence, as the beginning of 
 Canada, a land inhabited by the hostile tribes of the 
 Kwedeches, with whom they waged long and bloody 
 wars, and whom iu the struggles that succeeded the 
 French occupation they replaced in Gaspe. Here 
 accordingly Cartier found a different nation. They 
 were engaged in fishing mackerel with nets of their 
 own manufacture. The voyager here notes for the 
 first time the shaven head and scalp-lock so character- 
 istic of many of the American tribes. Here also he 
 notes in their possession Indian corn or maize, the 
 aboriginal bread-corn of America, with grains " as 
 large as peas," and also beans and dried plums. They 
 rejoiced with great joy when Cartier gave them knives 
 and trinkets, and showed their delight by dancing 
 and songs, the universal language of gladness. The 
 erection of a cross by the French led to an official 
 visit from the chief, and a long speech in which this 
 aboriginal sovereign, clad in a bearskin, was under- 
 stood to assert his right to the country, and the 
 impropriety of setting up any such sign or token of 
 the white man without his permission. Neither party 
 in the scene understood the other's words, yet the 
 significant act was the same to both. To the French- 
 man it was the symbol of taking possession of the 
 new country for his sovereign. To the American it 
 was the setting up of the totem or national mark of a 
 
24 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 strange tribe, and the meaning was identical. We 
 may imagine, therefore, the Canadian potentate as 
 saying, " If you strangers understand this erection as 
 we do, namely, as the sign or totem of your tribe, then 
 we object to it, as indicating a claim on your part to 
 a territory which is ours of right." Whatever the 
 words of the chief, the end was that he and his retinue 
 were induced to go on board the ships, where they 
 were loaded with presents, and the chiefs two sons 
 were retained as hostages, and finally taken with 
 Cartier to France. There can be little doubt that 
 these people were not the Micmac or Malicete tribe 
 afterwards known to the French as Gaspesiens, but 
 that they were an outlying branch, or wandering party 
 of the Algonquin or Huron tribes of Canada. This 
 was the ultimatum of Carrier's first voyage ; for after 
 beating for some days against the west winds in the 
 strait between Gaspe and Anticosti, he was obliged to 
 bear away for Belle Isle and to return to France. 
 
 Next year he returned, and with little difficulty 
 reached the entrance of the St. Lawrence, which his 
 Indian captives had already taught him to call the 
 Great River of Hochelaga, and the highway of Canada. 
 He found at the mouth of the Saguenay certain Cana- 
 dian fishermen in the pursuit of seals ; and farther up, 
 at Isle aux Coudres, so named by him from the 
 abundance of hazel-nuts, was another party engaged 
 in the more formidable sport of hunting the white 
 whale or Beluga of the St. Lawrence, the Adhotuis 
 of the natives, a strange and beautiful creature, which 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 25 
 
 excited the astonishment of the French seaman, and 
 which he correctly characterises as living between the 
 sea and the fresh water of the St. Lawrence, and as 
 peculiar to the estuary of that river. He does not 
 mention how the natives captured this formidable 
 creature, often twenty feet in length ; but the modern 
 Indians, like the Esquimaux, use a harpoon with a 
 cord and float. We may imagine that the means in 
 Carrier's time were the same, only that the iron of the 
 modern harpoon would be represented by a triangular 
 stone point, or a many-barbed head of bone.* 
 
 The Canada of Carrier's time began at the bottom 
 of the Isle of Orleans, not far below Quebec, and 
 extended thence half-way to Montreal. It was the 
 native name of a district bounded by Saguenay on 
 the east and Hochelaga on the west, and of which 
 Stadacona, on the site of the present Quebec, was the 
 capital. The name Quebec, meaning a strait, was 
 then applied to the narrow part of tne ~river7'at the 
 foot of Cape Diamond. Opposite the Island of Orleans, 
 
 * The Beluga catodon, white whale or white porpoise of the 
 St. Lawrence, still exists, though less abundant than formerly. 
 It is strictly an estuarine animal, found only in the St. Lawrence 
 and in parts of Davis' Straits. Its bones, found in the post- 
 pliocene Leda clay of the St. Lawrence, show that it existed 
 in the glacial period, when it must have had a far wider range 
 than at present, over portions of North America now land, but 
 then submerged. Its bones have been found in the vicinity 
 of Lake Champlain and near Brockville on the St. Lawrence. 
 Though the specieB found in the post-pliocene has been named 
 Beluga Vermontana, a comparison with the recent animal shows 
 that it is the same species. 
 
26 FOSSIL MEN 
 
 Donnacanna, the reigning Agouhanna, or chief of 
 Canada, met the voyagers in state with twelve canoes, 
 and made a long speech, with mnch gesticulation, 
 which was interpreted by the two Canadians, who had 
 returned with Cartier, as expressing welcome and 
 goodwill. At Stadacona, accordingly, Cartier laid up 
 his ships, preparatory to his further intended explora- 
 tion of the River Hochelaga, and had many feasts and 
 quarrels with his friend Donnacanna, whom at length 
 he treacherously seized and carried off to France. 
 
 Here, first at Stadacona, and afterwards at Hoche- 
 laga, Cartier found himself at the head-quarters of 
 the primitive men of the more advanced Stone Age. 
 We shall first accompany him to the latter place, 
 and then inquire in detail as to the actual character 
 of the Flint folk, and the remains which they have 
 left. 
 
 Donnacanna and his advisers were, when their edu- 
 cation and opportunities are considered, little inferior 
 to their successors in American public life in devising 
 political expedients. They seem at a very early 
 period of their intercourse with the French to have 
 discovered that it was not for the public good to 
 allow their visitors to proceed any farther up the St. 
 Lawrence. It was clearly the interest of Stadacona 
 that foreign trade should be limited to it, and that the 
 precious commodities of the strangers should be dis- 
 tributed inland only at the price set upon them by the 
 Quebec dealers. The commercial jealousy of the cities 
 on the St. Lawrence was already in full force. The 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 27 
 
 first device was to represent that the river was dan- 
 gerous or not navigable. Finding this not sufficient, 
 Donnacanna, after a present of fish and a solemn dance 
 and song, drew a circle in the sand (an action for 
 which had he known it, there are classical precedents) 
 around Cartier and his companions, in token that they 
 were to remain where they were, and then formally 
 presented him with a girl and two boys, children of 
 the best families in the town, as pledges of alliance 
 and friendship. Even this, however, proved of no 
 avail, and then the sanctions of religion were invoked. 
 Three medicine-men with blackened faces, dog-skin 
 or skunk-skin dresses, and huge horns on their heads, 
 appeared suddenly in a canoe, as messengers from the 
 Great Spirit, Coudragny, to reveal the news that at 
 Hochelaga the ice and snow would be so formidable 
 that the French would all be destroyed. This, how- 
 ever, the captain refused to believe, alleging that the 
 Indian god had no power over the followers of Christ : 
 and the expedients of Donnacanna were exhausted, so 
 that the adventurous Breton was allowed to proceed 
 on his way. 
 
 On the 17th day of September Cartier began his 
 long and toilsome ascent of the great river, arriving at 
 Hochelaga on the 2nd of October, thus occupying 
 thirteen days in a voyage which the magnificent river- 
 boats of the St. Lawrence now perform in as many 
 hours. He was struck with the grandeur of the great 
 stream, the fertile lands on its banks, and the magni- 
 ficent forests, now beginning to assume their splendid 
 
28 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 autumnal hues. He saw many huts on the banks, 
 occupied by fishermen, who came to his boats with as 
 great confidence and nonchalance as if the French had 
 been well-known friends and neighbours, and at the 
 mouth of the Richelieu he was visited by a great chief, 
 apparently tributary to him of Stadacona, with many 
 professions of friendship. There seems little doubt 
 that the news of the arrival of the French had pre- 
 ceded them far up the river, and that as allies of 
 Donnacanna they were everywhere received as friends. 
 
 At length, on the evening of the 2nd of October, 
 amid all the autumnal glories of the Canadian forest, 
 Cartier moored his boats at the foot of the current of 
 St. Mary, opposite what is now a suburb of Montreal, 
 and in sight of the wooded trappean hill which over- 
 looked the town of Hochelaga as it now overlooks the 
 chief city of Canada. 
 
 The arrival of the voyagers was speedily made 
 known in the town, for before night more than a 
 thousand persons had assembled on the bank, and 
 signified their joy and welcome by dances, in which 
 the men, women, and children performed separately, 
 and by throwing fish and corn-bread into the boats. 
 Not content with this, they lighted fires on the shore, 
 and kept up their dances all night, with cries of 
 Aguiaze, which Cartier interpreted as a word of wel- 
 come. 
 
 The place where the boats halted, and to which the 
 Europeans have now restricted the once more exten- 
 sive name of Hochelaga, was about three miles from 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 29 
 
 the actual town, on going to which the traveller would 
 first pass over the low alluvial bank of the river for 
 some distance, and then ascend to a sandy terrace on 
 which the town was built, as Cartier describes it, at 
 the base of the mountain, on a level sandy plain, inter- 
 sected by a few small brooklets. This being premised, 
 we may give the account of the visit in the words of 
 the old voyager, as translated by Hakluyt, with a few 
 verbal emendations : — 
 
 "The captaine the next day very earely in the 
 morning, having attired himselfe, caused all his com- 
 pany to be set in order to go to see the towne and 
 habitation of those people, and a certaine mountaine 
 that is neere the citie; with whom went also five 
 gentlemen, and twenty mariners, leaving the rest to 
 keepe and looke to our boates : we tooke with us 
 three men of Hochelaga to bring us to the place. 
 All along as we went we found the way as well 
 beaten and frequented as can be, the fairest and best 
 country that possibly can be seene, full of as goodly 
 great okes as are in any wood in France, under which 
 the ground was all covered over with faire akornes. 
 After we had gone about foure or five miles, we met 
 by the way one of the chiefest lords of the citie, ac- 
 companied with many moe, who so soone as he sawe 
 us beckned and made signes upon us, that we must 
 rest in that place where they had a great fire, and so 
 we did. Then the said lord began to make a long dis- 
 course, even as we have saide above, they are accus- 
 tomed to doe in signe of mirth and friendship, shewing 
 
SO FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 our captaine and all his company a joyfull countenance, 
 and good will ; who gave him two hatchets, a paire of 
 knives and a crucifix which he made him to kisse, and 
 then put it about his necke, for which he gave our 
 captaine heartie thank es. This done, we went along, 
 and about a mile and a halfe farther, we began to 
 finde goodly and large cultivated fieldes, fall of such 
 corn as the countrie yeeldeth. It is even as the Millet 
 of Bresil, as great and some what bigger than small 
 peason, wherewith they live even as we doe with our 
 wheat. In the midst of those fields is the citie of 
 Hochelaga, placed neere, and as it were joyned to a 
 great mountaine,* that is tilled round about, very 
 fertill, on the top of which you may see very farre, we 
 named it Mount Roiall. The citie of Hochelaga is 
 round, compassed about with timber, with three course 
 of Rampires, one within another framed like a sharp 
 spire, or pyramid, but laid acrosse above. The middle- 
 most of them is perpendicular. The Rampires are 
 framed and fashioned with pieces of timber, layd along 
 very well and cunningly joyned togither after their 
 fashion. This inclosure is in height about two rods.-f- 
 It hath but one gate or entrie thereat, which is shut 
 with piles, stakes, and barres. Over it, and also in 
 many places of the wall, there is a kind of gallery to 
 runne along, and ladders to get up, all full of stones 
 
 * Literally — " which surrounds it, well cultivated and very 
 fertile." 
 
 f French — "deux lances." The drawing in Bamusio's 
 translation would give a height of about sixteen feet. 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 31 
 
 and pebbles for the defence of it. There are in the 
 towne about fiftie houses, at the utmost about fiftie 
 paces long, and twelve or fifteen broad, built all of 
 wood, covered over with the barke of the wood, as 
 broad as any boord, very finely and cunningly joyned 
 togither according to there fashion. Within the said 
 houses, there are many roomes. In the midest of 
 every one there is a great hall, in the middle whereof 
 they make their fire. They live in common togither : 
 then doe the husbands, wives and children each one 
 retire themselves to their chambers. They have also 
 on the top of their houses certaine granaries,* wherein 
 they keepe their come to make their bread withall ; 
 they call it Caracony, which they make as hereafter 
 shall follow. They have certaine peeces of wood, like 
 those whereon we beat our hempe, and with certain 
 beetles of wood they beat their corne to powder ; then 
 they make paste of it, and of the paste, cakes or 
 wreathes, then they lay them on a broad and hote 
 stone, and then cover it with hote pebbles and so they 
 bake their bread instead of ovens. They make also 
 sundry sorts of pottage with the said corne and also 
 of peas and beanes, whereof they have great store, as 
 also with other fruits, great cowcumbers and other 
 fruits. They have also in their houses certaine 
 vessels as bigge as any But or Tun, wherein they 
 keepe their fish, causing the same in sommer to be 
 dried in the smoke, and live therewith in winter, 
 whereof they make great provision, as we by expe- 
 * Corn-cribs. 
 
32 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 rience have seene. All tlieir viands and meats are 
 without any taste or savour of salt at all. They sleepe 
 upon barkes of trees laide all along upon the ground 
 being over- spread with the skinnes of certaine wilde 
 Beastes, wherewith they also clothe and cover them- 
 selves, namely of the Dormouse,* Beaver, Martin, 
 Fox, Wild Cat, Deer, Stag, and other wild beasts, but 
 the greater part of them go almost naked (during 
 the summer). The thing most precious that they have 
 in all the world they call Esurgny ; which is white and 
 which they take in the said river in Cornibots,t in the 
 manner following. When any one hath deserved 
 death, or that they take any of their enemies in 
 war res, first they kill him, then with certain knives 
 they give great slashes and strokes upon their but- 
 tocks, flankes, thighs and shoulders ; then they cast 
 the same bodie so mangled downe to the bottome of 
 the river, in a place where the said Esurgny is, and 
 
 * Query, musk-rat. 
 
 f This word seems to have puzzled the translators. It is 
 probably a vulgar local name for some shell supposed to re- 
 semble that of which these Indians made their wampum. I 
 would suggest that it may be derived from comet, which is used 
 by old French writers as a name for the shells of the genus 
 Voluta, and is also a technical term in conchology. In this 
 case it is likely that the Esurgny was made of the shells of 
 some of our species of Melania or Paludina, just as the Indians 
 on the coast used for beads and ornaments the shells of Pur- 
 pura lapillus and of Dentalium, etc. It is just possible that 
 Cartier may have misunderstood the mode of procuring these 
 shells, and that the statement may refer to some practice of 
 making criminals and prisoners dive for them in the deeper 
 parts of the river. 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 33 
 
 there leave it ten or twelve houres, then they take it 
 up againe, and in the cuts find the said esurgny or 
 cornibots. Of them they make beads, and use them 
 even as we doe gold and silver, accounting it the 
 preciousest thing in the world. They have this vertue 
 in them, they will stop or stanch bleeding at the nose, 
 for we proved it. These people are given to no other 
 exercise, but onely to husbandrie and fishing for their 
 sustenance : they have no care of any other wealth or 
 commoditie in this world, for they have no knowledge 
 of it, and never travell and go out of their country, as 
 those of Canada and Saguenay doe, albeit the Canad- 
 ians with eight or nine villages more alongst that river 
 be subject unto them. 
 
 " So soone as we were come neare the towne, a great 
 number of the inhabitants thereof came to present 
 themselves before us, after their fashion, making very 
 much of us : we were by our guides brought into the 
 middest of the towne. They have in the middlemost 
 part of their towne a large square place, being from 
 side to side a good stone cast, whither we were 
 brought, and there with signes were commanded to 
 stay, and so we did : then suddenly all the women and 
 maidens of the towne gathered themselves together, 
 part of which had their armes full of young children, 
 and as many as could came to kiss our faces, our 
 armes, and what part of the bodie soever they could 
 touch, weeping for very joy that they saw us, shewing 
 us the best countenance that possibly they could, de- 
 siring us with their signes, that it would please us to 
 
 D 
 
34 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 touch their children. That done, the men caused the 
 women to withdraw themselves backe, then they every 
 one sate down on the ground round about us, as if we 
 would have shewen and rehearsed some comedie or 
 other shew : then presently came the wcmen againe, 
 every one bringing a four e square matte in manner of 
 carpets, and spreading them abroad on the ground in 
 that place, they caused us to sit upon them. That 
 done, the Lord and King of the country was brought 
 upon nine or ten men's shoulders (whom in their 
 tongue they call Agouhanna, sitting upon a great 
 stagges skinne, and they laide him downe upon the 
 foresaid mats neere to the capitaine, every one beck- 
 ning unto us that hee was their lord. This Agou- 
 hanna was a man about fiftie yeeres old : he was no 
 whit better apparelled then any of the rest, onely ex- 
 cepted that he had a certain thing around his head 
 made of the skinnes of hedgehogs * like a red wreath. 
 He was full of the palsie and his members shronke 
 together. After he had with certain signes saluted 
 our captaine and all his companie, and by manifest 
 tokens bid all welcome, he shewed his legges and 
 armes to our capitaine, and with signes desired him to 
 touch them, and so he did, rubbing them with his own 
 hands : then did Agouhanna take the wreath or 
 crowne he had about his head, and gave it unto our 
 capitaine, that done they brought before him diverse 
 diseased men, some blinde, some criple, some lame 
 and impotent, and some so old that the haire of their 
 * Porcupines. 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 35 
 
 eyelids came downe and covered their cheek es, and 
 layd them all along before our capitaine, to the end 
 they might of him be touched ; for it seemed unto 
 them that God was descended and come down from 
 heaven to heale them. Our capitaine seeing the 
 misery and devotion of this poore people, recited the 
 Gospel of St. John, that is to say, ' In the beginning 
 was the Word/ making the sign of the cross upon the 
 poor sick ones, praying to God that it would please 
 him to open the hearts of this poore people, and to 
 make them know our holy faith, and that they might 
 receive baptisme and christendome, that done, he took 
 a service-booke in his hand, and with a loud voice 
 read all the passion of Christ, word by word, and all 
 the standers by might heare him, all which while this 
 poore people kept silence, and were marvellously at- 
 tentive, looking up to heaven, and imitating us in ges- 
 tures. Then he caused the men all orderly to be set 
 on one side, the women on another, and likewise the 
 children on another, and to the chiefest of them he 
 gave hatchets, to the other knives, and to the women 
 beads and such other small trifles. Then where y 
 children were, he cast rings, counters and broaches 
 made of tin, whereat they seemed to be very glad. 
 That done, our capitaine commanded trumpets and 
 other musicall instruments to be sounded, which when 
 they heard, they were very merie. Then we took our 
 leave and went away ; the women seeing that, put 
 themselves before to stay us, and brought us out of 
 their meates that they had made readie for us, as fish, 
 
36 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 pottage, beanes, and such other things, thinking to 
 make us eate, and dine in that place ; but because 
 the meats were not to our taste we liked them not, 
 but thanked them, and with signes gave to understand 
 that we had no neede to eate. When we were out of 
 the towne, diverse of the men and women followed us, 
 and brought us to the toppe of the foresaid moun- 
 taine, which wee named Mount Roial, it is about a 
 quarter of a league from the towne. When as we were 
 on the toppe of it, we might discerne and plainly see 
 thirtie leagues about. On the north side of it there 
 are many hilles to be seene running west and east, and 
 as many more on the south, amongst and betweene the 
 which the countrey is as faire and as pleasant as pos- 
 sible can be seene, being levell, smooth, and very 
 plaine, fit to be husbanded and tilled, and in the mid- 
 dest of those fieldes we saw the river further up a 
 great way than where we had left our boates, where 
 was the greatest and the swiftest fall of water that 
 any where hath beene seene which we could not pass, 
 and the said river as great wide and large as our sight 
 might discerne, going southwest along three fair and 
 round mountaines that we sawe, as we judged about 
 fifteen leagues from us. Those which brought us 
 thither tolde and shewed us, that in the sayd river 
 there were three such falles of water more, as that 
 was where we had left our boates ; but we could not 
 understand how farre they were one from another. 
 Moreover they showe us with signes, that the said 
 three fals being past, a man might sayle the space of 
 
AN OLD STORY OF THE NLW WORLD. 37 
 
 three months more alongst that river, and that along 
 the hills that are on the north side there is a great 
 river, which (even as the other) cometh from the west, 
 we thought it to be the river that runneth through 
 the countrey of Saguenay, and without any signe or 
 question mooved or asked of them, they tooke the 
 chayne of our capitaines whistle, which was of silver, 
 and the dagger-hafb of one of our fellow mariners, 
 hanging on his side being of yellow copper guilt, and 
 shewed us that such stuffe came from the said river, 
 and that there be Agojudas, that is as much to say, an 
 evill people, who goe all armed even to their fingers' 
 ends. Also they shewed us the manner of their 
 armour, they are made of cordes and wood, finely and 
 cunningly wrought together. They gave us also to 
 understande that those Agojudas doe continually 
 warre one against another, but because we did not 
 understand them well, we could not perceive how farre 
 it was to that country. Our capitaine shewed them 
 redde copper, which in their language they call Caque- 
 daze, and looking towarde that countrey, with signes 
 asked them if any came from thence, they shaking 
 their heads answered no ; but they shewed us that it 
 came from Saguenay, and that lyeth cleane contrary 
 to the other. After we had heard and seene these 
 things of them we drewe to our boates accompanied 
 with a great multitude of those people ; some of them 
 when as they sawe any of our fellowes weary, would 
 take them up on their shoulders, and carry them 
 as on horseback/' 
 
38 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 This, let it be observed, is the picture of an abso- 
 lutely primitive people, previously unvisited by Euro- 
 peans — " flint-folk 3} in so far as weapons and im- 
 plements are concerned. They may serve to us as a 
 type of those still older aborigines of Europe whose 
 remains are now exciting so much attention, and we 
 may consider in the following pages their history and 
 probable origin, the remains which they have left, 
 their arts and manufactures, their knowledge, culture, 
 and religion, their physical characteristics, and other 
 
 Fig. C— Section of the Stockade ob Wall of Hochelaga. (After Cartier.) 
 
 American nations their contemporaries, and may as 
 we proceed apply the result to the explanation of pre- 
 historic man elsewhere. 
 
 The plan and section of the city and its defences, 
 given in figures 6 and 7, are reduced from those in 
 Bamusio's edition of Carrier's Voyages, and are 
 apparently sketches from memory. The stockade 
 was probably of round trunks of trees rather than of 
 planks, but the town was, no doubt, a regular circle, 
 with the houses on one plan. This plan and the social 
 
AN OLD STORY OP THE NEW WORLD. 39 
 
 relations connected with ib we shall have to notice in 
 the sequel. Our sketch, fig 8, may be taken as pretty 
 nearly representing the actual appearance of Hoche- 
 laga. The features of the country are accurately 
 given, and the oak-tree in the foreground is a sketch 
 
 Fig. 7— Plan of Hochelaga. (after Cartier), 
 
 (A) Gate. 
 
 (B) Square. 
 
 (C) Chief's House. 
 
 (D) Wall or Stockade. 
 
 of one now standing on McGrill College grounds, Mon- 
 treal, near the ancient site. 
 
 What was the fate of Hochelaga ? The question 
 may be prompted by an interest in these primitive 
 people, and the answer has in it much material for 
 
40 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 thought as to other perished nations. Cartier, finding 
 that the great River Hochelaga was no highway to 
 the Indies, but learning that towards its source was 
 the land of " Saguenay," celebrated for its metallic 
 wealth, made it an object in his third voyage to reach 
 the land of Saguenay,* now known to us as the 
 copper region of Lake Superior. He failed, however, 
 to surmount the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and from 
 the fragments of his journal which remain seems to 
 have found reason to dread hostilities on the part of 
 the natives, now better informed as to the ambitious 
 and selfish designs of the French. No mention is 
 made of Hochelaga, but the voyager was entertained 
 by the people of another town or village apparently 
 near the Lachine rapids, which he names Tutonaguy. 
 
 In 1603, when Champlain ascended the St. Law- 
 rence, either Hochelaga had disappeared, or the 
 explorer heard nothing of it, and we hear no more of 
 its site till 1642, more than a century after the voy- 
 ages of Cartier, when the Sieur de Maisonneuve 
 selected the locality for the site of the future Montreal 
 — an instance of tl;e fact which perpetually recurs in 
 the history both of the old world and the new, that 
 the exigencies of defence or the convenience of sub- 
 sistence and communication have dictated to the 
 primitive peoples of bygone ages the selection of 
 localities which have approved themselves to their 
 successors up to our own time. An isolated and de- 
 
 * This name, like many others, has been restricted in use 
 to a locality scarcelv that to which it was originally applied. 
 
42 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 fensible position, with fertile soil, and a hill command- 
 ing an extensive view of the great Canadian plain, 
 and this at the foot of the rapids which close the free 
 navigation of the St. Lawrence, and at the confluence 
 of the two greatest rivers of Canada, constituted a 
 combination of advantages equally appreciable to 
 the aborigines and to the French settlers, and which 
 still give to Montreal the first position as a Canadian 
 city. 
 
 Sometime in the interval between 1535 and 1642, 
 Hochelaga had been utterly destroyed, and the en- 
 croachments of the warlike Five Nations, or Iroquois, 
 from the south, had even made the island a sort of 
 frontier debatable land in which no man lived, and 
 to which it was dangerous to resort even for hunting. 
 A tradition current long afterwards among the Algon- 
 quins, and preserved by Charlevoix, told of a long 
 and bloody war between them and the Hochelagans, 
 terminated by a treacherous surprise at the little 
 River Becancour, between Hochelaga and Stadacona, 
 iu which the Hochelagans were defeated with the 
 loss of so many warriors that the stream acquired 
 the name of the putrid river from the number of 
 dead bodies left in it. This was a serious blow to 
 Hochelaga, leading afterwards to its fall by the hands 
 of another enemy. According to certain Indians 
 who represented themselves as the survivors of the 
 nation, and who visited the French colonists in 1642, 
 the town was finally taken and burned by the Hurons, 
 and its few remaining people had taken refuge with 
 
AN OLD STORY OP THE NEW W0KLD. 43 
 
 the nomadic tribes of the Ottawa. They represented 
 themselves as the last remnant of a great people who 
 had once possessed broad lands and many towns on 
 both sides of the St. Lawrence. Their tribal name 
 had been Onontchataranons, but by the French they 
 were called Iroquet, a name apparently expressing 
 a supposed affinity with their bitter enemies the 
 Iroquois. The French invited them to return to 
 Montreal, and a few families accepted the invitation, 
 but remained only for a short time, being driven away 
 by the dread of the Iroquois, from whom they doubted 
 the ability of the French to protect them. This is 
 the last historical notice of Hochelaga. Its site was 
 overgrown with trees, and subsequently cleared and 
 cultivated. Its name was transferred to Cartier's 
 landing-place, at the foot of the current of St. Mary. 
 In I860 the excavations for foundations of houses in 
 the western part of Montreal uncovered its old hearths 
 and kitchen-middens and burial-places. In the next 
 and following chapters we shall direct attention to its 
 history and remains, and to the light which these 
 throw on the primitive relations of the American 
 tribes. 
 
 In the meantime let us think of the instructive fact 
 that within three hundred years of the time when the 
 French explorer found at the foot of Mount Royal 
 a populous Indian town, strongly fortified and sur- 
 rounded by cultivated ground, its very site had been 
 forgotten, and was occupied with fields showing no 
 sign above the green sward of the remains beneath.. 
 
44 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 The mountain remains as of old, but a new city of 
 a strange people has grown up, and but for Carrier's 
 narrative, those who dig up the curiously ornamented 
 earthen vessels, the stone implements, and the bones 
 of the old Hochelagans, might suppose that they were 
 dealing with the relics of a people who may have 
 perished thousands of years ago. The historical facts 
 of the existence of the town in 1535, and of its 
 destruction before the settlement of Montreal, while 
 they take away the romance which might otherwise 
 connect itself with the remains, give to them, as we 
 shall find, a double value as interpreters of the pre- 
 historic antiquities of old America and Europe. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 GLTMPSES OP PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 
 
 What were the ethnic relations of the old Hochelagans, 
 whose reception of Cartier was noticed in our last 
 chapter ? The answer furnishes a strange illustration 
 of the evanescent nature of the history of tribes with- 
 out written records; but when pursued to the end casts 
 a flood of light on the pre-Columbian history of North 
 America. Dr. Wilson has shown that notwithstanding 
 a general physical resemblance of the primitive North 
 Americans, they present distinct types of skull cor- 
 responding to the long and short-headed forms 
 (Dolichocephalic and Brachycephalic) of European 
 races. Now the skulls obtained from the cemeteries 
 of the ancient Hochelaga are of the long-headed form 
 characteristic of the Iroquois and Huron nations, that 
 is, of the historical enemies, not of the later political 
 allies, of this ancient people. We shall find also that 
 the patterns of their pottery and tobacco-pipes corre- 
 spond with those prevalent among the other tribes 
 in the neighbourhood of the St. Lawrence, but more 
 especially resemble those of the ancient Eries, a tribe 
 also hostile to the Iroquois, though allied to them by 
 language. The language of Hochelaga, in so far as 
 can be judged from the short vocabulary preserved by 
 Cartier, was not Algonquin, or like that of the tribes 
 
46 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 north of the St. Lawrence, nor was it precisely like 
 that of the Iroquois or Hurons, but a separate dia- 
 lect resembling these in many leading words. On 
 the other hand, the early French explorers regarded 
 all the St. Lawrence tribes except the Hurons as of 
 Algonquin race. In Cartier's time and subsequently 
 the Iroquois and Hurons were hostile to Hochelaga, 
 while the Algonquins seem to have been allies, and 
 Hochelaga seems to have enjoyed a political headship 
 over the St. Lawrence tribes to the eastward and 
 northward. Lastly, Hochelaga was finally destroyed 
 by the Hurons, and the survivors, if we are to believe 
 their tale, had identified themselves with Algonquin 
 tribes on the Ottawa. 
 
 The solution of the difficulty is that the Hoche- 
 lagans were not precisely either of the Iroquois, 
 Huron, or Algonquin stock, but a remnant of an 
 ancient and decaying nation to which the Eries and 
 some other tribes also belonged, and which had 
 historical relations originally with the now extinct 
 Alleghans, or mound-builders of the Ohio and Mis- 
 sissippi rivers, and latterly with the Iroquois and 
 Hurons, but which at the epoch of the French dis- 
 covery was on the point of extinction, hemmed in 
 between the aggressive Iroquois nations in the south, 
 and the barbarous Algonquins in the north, and 
 holding the stronghold of Hochelaga as one of its 
 last fortresses on the St. Lawrence. Before the 
 French colonisation of the St. Lawrence valley these 
 people had disappeared, and the Algonquins had re- 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE- HISTORIC TIMES. 47 
 
 placed them, and their former residence had become 
 an unpeopled frontier between the Iroquois and 
 Algonquins. Had Cartier visited Hochelaga a few 
 centuries earlier, he would have found it connected 
 with a great and powerful group of similar nations 
 extending to the valley of the Ohio. Had he as- 
 cended the St. Lawrence a century later, he would 
 have found no trace of such a city. 
 
 The evidence and the historical application of this 
 result will require us to consider the ante- Columbian 
 distribution of the North American nations, and the 
 changes and movements in progress among them ; 
 and it will be the most perspicuous mode to adopt the 
 historical style for what is in regard to its evidence a 
 matter of archaeology. 
 
 It was a tradition of one of the American tribes 
 that in old times the Indians were increasing to such 
 an extent that they were threatened with want, and 
 the Great Spirit then taught them to make war, and 
 thus to thin one another's numbers. The tradition, 
 as we shall find, embodies the historic truth that" peace- 
 ful primitive nations had been overthrown by warlike 
 invaders. But without absolutely believing in this 
 mythical period of peace, there is good reason at least 
 to show that before the European discovery a series of 
 great movements and conquests had commenced and 
 was in progress. Before these movements, we learn 
 from monumental and linguistic evidence the distri- 
 bution of races marked on the little sketch-map on 
 the following page. 
 
48 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Across the Arctic regions of the continent lay as 
 now the Innuit, Kalalik, or Greenland ers, better known 
 to us by the Algonquin nickname of Esquimaux (Es- 
 kumaget, "he eats raw flesh " ). On the eastern side 
 
 O^y^r^D 
 
 Fig. 9.— Sketch-map showing the Probable Lines op Migration abd 
 
 DlSTEIBUTION OP THE AlTEBICAN TfilBES. 
 
 of the continent these poor people have always been 
 separated by a marked line from their Indian neigh- 
 bours on the south, and have been regarded by them 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE-H1ST0RIC TIMES. 49 
 
 with the most bitter hostility. On the west, however, 
 they pass into the Eastern Siberians on the one hand, 
 and into the West-coast Indians on the other, both 
 by language and physical characters. They and the 
 northern tribes at least of West-coast Indians, belong 
 in all probability to a wave of population spreading 
 from Behring Strait. They were the Skraelings, or 
 dwarfs, of the ancient Icelandic voyagers who early 
 visited and colonised Greenland ; and as they repre- 
 sented the inhabitants of Yinland, which seems to 
 have been on the coast of New England, as Skraelings, 
 it has been supposed that the Esquimaux formerly 
 extended farther to the south than at present. It is, 
 however, not unlikely that the Northmen may have 
 regarded the Indians also as Skraelings. 
 
 South of the Esquimaux there extends, from near 
 the west coast far into the interior, a series of tribes 
 whose languages and manners are intermediate be- 
 tween those of the last mentioned people and the 
 Indians to the south. These are the Tinne, or Chippe- 
 wyans. There is reason to believe that at one time they 
 extended quite to the Atlantic coast, and that some 
 of the primitive tribes of Labrador, the Red Indians 
 of Newfoundland, and the pre-historic peoples who are 
 said by tradition to have been displaced by the Algon- 
 quin tribes of Nova Scotia and New England, belonged 
 to this stock. The Tinne are either a mixed people, 
 intermediate between the Indians and Esquimaux, or 
 a more ancient people than either, hemmed in between 
 the northern and southern streams of migration. 
 
50 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Between the Esquimaux and Tinne on the north 
 and the St. Lawrence and its lakes on the south, and 
 stretching down the Atlantic coast as far as Florida, 
 lay the numerous tribes of Algonquins and their allies, 
 resembling each other in physical characters and 
 language, and whom tradition and other indications 
 concur in tracing to a migration entering America 
 from the equatorial Atlantic. Many of these tribes 
 were hunters and fishermen, but in the temperate and 
 warmer regions they had acquired the rudiments at 
 least of agriculture. They are the typical American 
 Indians of the early English colonists. 
 
 In Central America, Mexico, and the rich alluvial 
 plains of the Mississippi and its tributaries, were 
 the Toltecans, or primitive Mexicans, and the Alle- 
 ghans, or " mound-builders M of the Mississippi and 
 Ohio — a people now known by little more than their 
 bones and the remains of their works. In physio- 
 gnomy and bodily frame they seem to have presented 
 some of the softer features of the Polynesians, from 
 whom perhaps they were in whole or in part derived. 
 Simple and primitive tillers of the soil, they possessed 
 a higher degree of the instinct of combination for 
 great public works and of artistic skill than the other 
 North American tribes. Their huge communistic 
 barracks or hotels, the so-called palaces of Central 
 America, Yucatan, and Mexico, the Pueblos of the 
 Colorado, and the mound- villages of the Mississippi, 
 with their sacrificial and burial-mounds, still remain 
 as gigantic monuments of their skill and industry. 
 
GLIMPSES OP PKE-HISTORIC TIMES. 51 
 
 In some parts of the western territories the manner 
 in which these are perched on almost inaccessible 
 cliffs affords a testimony to the skill and enterprise 
 of these people, and an affecting evidence of their 
 struggle against the encroachments of the more war- 
 like and barbarous tribes. They were clever weavers, 
 potters, and workers in copper and silver, and had 
 made an amount of progress in the arts of life which 
 in Mexico astonished their Spanish conquerors. They 
 held all the great fertile plains and tablelands be- 
 tween the Eocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and 
 had extended themselves to the mineral districts of 
 Lake Superior, where they worked extensive mines of 
 copper and silver. They have even left traces of their 
 presence in the valley of the St. Lawrence. But they 
 held their wide possessions by a precarious tenure. 
 Their arms were not superior to those of the ruder 
 races that surrounded them. Tradition and their 
 buried skeletons testify that they were of greater 
 physical strength than the savage tribes, and they 
 excelled in numbers, military skill, and the art of 
 fortification. Still they were subject to continual 
 raids and attacks, and before the discovery of America, 
 the Aztecs, a people of truly American physiognomy 
 and of savage instincts, had conquered Mexico, while 
 the region of the western plains, the meeting-place of 
 the three great waves of immigration, and the Scy thia 
 of North America, rearing a numerous and bold popu- 
 lation of buffalo-hunters, had overwhelmed with its 
 swarms the northern mound-builders. These, when 
 
52 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 cut off: from the copper mines of the north and the 
 fisheries of the great lakes, probably decayed rapidly, 
 and the old trees growing on their earthworks when 
 the first European explorers visited their country, 
 testify to the lapse of centuries since their destruction 
 or expatriation. 
 
 Originally these Alleghans were bounded on the 
 north by the Algonquins, but the earlier waves of 
 conquest from the north and west severed this con- 
 nection. These earlier migrations, however, in time 
 became partially absorbed and civilized, and formed 
 a belt of semi-Alleghan and semi-Algonquin territory 
 along the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, the 
 people inhabiting which had borrowed some of the 
 arts and modes of life of the Alleghans. To this 
 probably belonged such nations of agricultural and 
 village-dwelling Indians as the Eries, the Neutrals, 
 the Hurons, and the Hochelagans, which eventually 
 cultivated friendly relations with their neighbours on 
 the south, and with the Algonquins on the north, 
 and carried on to some extent the copper-mining and 
 agriculture of their civilized predecessors. But other 
 waves of migration from the west followed, and at 
 the time of the early French discoveries the Iroquois 
 and other fierce and warlike tribes were inserting 
 themselves like a wedge between the remains of the 
 Alleghans on the south, and the Eries, the Hurons, and 
 the Hochelagans on the north. 
 
 Such is the history as its general features present 
 themselves to my mind, after long study of the frag- 
 
G/JMPSES OF PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 53 
 
 mentary evidence which remains. I could not, with- 
 out several chapters of discussion, give the details of 
 this evidence, but shall devote the remainder of this 
 chapter to some portions of it which especially con- 
 cern my present purpose. 
 
 The features of the old Alleghans, or civilised 
 mound-builders, are preserved to us only by their 
 sculptures and terra-cottas, and principally by the 
 heads represented on the curiously-formed tobacco- 
 pipes, which they devoted in great numbers on their 
 u altar hearths " to their gods or manitous ; and the 
 few skulls which have been secured from the grave- 
 mounds correspond with these representations. They 
 were people with rounded, short, and sometimes high 
 heads ; and features, which while American, were less 
 marked and softer than those of the more barbarous 
 tribes. The same cast of countenance appears, ac- 
 cording to Wilson, on pottery, attributable to the 
 Toltecans or primitive Mexicans and the Central 
 Americans, while the features of the intrusive Aztecs 
 were more of the ordinary Indian type. To illustrate 
 this I give a few profiles — that of a mound-builder 
 from a pipe, those of two ancient Central Americans 
 from Palenque, that of a Peruvian from an earthen 
 vase, and that of a woman of the mound-builders, also 
 from an earthen vessel. To contrast with these are 
 an Aztec chief from a Mexican painting, and a mo- 
 dern Mandan Indian belonging to a nomadic tribe. 
 The Toltecan and Alleghan features obviously show 
 the American type softened and refined either by 
 
54 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 foreign intermixture or by long ages of civilized cul- 
 ture. A similar but somewhat different style of refine- 
 ment in the American countenance appears in the 
 Inca race of Peru. It is remarkable in connection 
 
 Fig. 10.— Alleghan, Toltecan, Pebuvian, and Modeen Ceow Heads. 
 
 (a) Toltecan from Palenque. 
 
 (b) Mound -builder on a pipe. 
 
 (c) Crow. 
 
 (d) Mound-builder on a vase. 
 
 (e) Peruvian on a vase. 
 
 (After Wilson, Foster, and Catlin.) 
 
 with this that the Alleghans and Toltecans are the 
 oldest North American aborigines of whom we have 
 any record. Whatever age may be assigned to the 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE-HISTORTC TIMES. 
 
 55 
 
 buildings of Central America, Yucatan, and Mexico, 
 there seems the best reason to believe that some of 
 the Mississippi mounds are very ancient. Very old 
 trees were found growing on them, and there were 
 indications of previous generations of trees. The 
 " garden beds H of extinct and. forgotten tribes are 
 found to have extended themselves over the earth- 
 works of earlier people. Professor Swallow, of Mis- 
 souri, informs me that he opened two ancient burial 
 
 Fig. 11.— Modehn MANDiir, and Ancient Aztbc Heads. 
 (After Catlin and Wilson.) 
 
 mounds in that State, on which vegetable soil two feet 
 thick had accumulated, and around which six feet of 
 alluvial silt had been deposited, apparently in con- 
 sequence of a subsidence of the soil on which the 
 mound had been built, in some pre-historic earthquake, 
 similar, perhaps, to those which in modern times pro- 
 duced the sunk country of New Madrid in the same 
 region. In the alluvium which had accumulated was 
 
56 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 found the tooth of a mastodon. Perhaps no American 
 interment can lay claim to greater antiquity, and the 
 bones of the buried corpses had been resolved almost 
 entirely into dust. Yet earthen vessels found with 
 them showed the high Alleghan type of features, and 
 the only skull secured was of the same type. I have 
 in my own collection a tooth of the mastodon, and a 
 human skull, probably of a woman, which were found, 
 as I am informed, together, in river alluvium, near 
 Kankakee, Illinois, and the statement is corroborated 
 by the state of preservation of the remains. The skull, 
 while of decided American type, is of a short and high 
 form, more allied to the Toltecan head than to that of 
 the more barbarous Indian races. In North America, 
 therefore, a comparatively civilised and well-developed 
 race would seem to have precedence of all others, a 
 statement which we shall find may apply to Europe 
 also, notwithstanding the mythical notions of a palaeo- 
 lithic age of barbarism. 
 
 It is remarkable, however, that two types of head 
 are represented in these old monuments, one short 
 and high, with a respectable frontal development; 
 another low-browed, and retreating in the frontal 
 aspect. According to Foster both these types appear 
 in the burial mounds of the Alleghans. This may 
 indicate different castes or tribes, or conquering and 
 subject or servile races. It is certain, however, that 
 similar differences exist among the modern Indians, 
 and that those with low foreheads, even when not 
 artificially compressed, are not deficient in intelligence. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PEE-HISTORIC TIMES. 57 
 
 For instance, Catlin has remarked and figured in his 
 sketches the peculiar Toltecan face in the Upsarokas, 
 or Crows, a small tribe inhabiting the Upper Missouri. 
 He notices its resemblance to the Yucatan figures, 
 and particularly refers to the low and retreating 
 forehead, which he, however, affirms is not artifi- 
 cially flattened. He describes the Crows as tall and 
 athletic men, intelligent and cleanly, and remarkable 
 for the superior neatness and ingenuity of their arms, 
 garments, and lodges. They are, however, a migra- 
 tory people, though the allied Minatarees are more 
 stationary, and are cultivators. He further remarks, 
 however, that the Mandans, who have salient features 
 like those of the Aztecs, represent the Toltecan 
 features on their drawings on buffalo skins. May 
 this not be a conventional style of art handed down 
 from an earlier period ? 
 
 Another people of the west, who may be regarded 
 as lineal descendants of the Toltecans or Alleghans, 
 are the Moquis, or Tillage Indians of New Mexico, 
 who still retain the semi-civilized habits and arts of 
 these ancient peoples. From an excellent series of 
 photographs of these people, for which I am indebted 
 to the officers of the United States Geological Survey 
 of the Territories, I infer that they have the semi- 
 Polynesian and refined style of features referred to 
 above. A comparison of these photographs with 
 others in my possession of natives of Easter Island, 
 shows a striking resemblance ; and it is interesting 
 that the latter, in their system of totemic carving 
 
58 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 on wood of family records, and in the character of 
 the megalithic images with which they adorned their 
 burial places, also show affinity with the nations of 
 Western America. 
 
 Fig. 12.— Copper Axes, Spears, and Kitipe of the Alleghans. 
 (After Squier and Foster.) 
 
 The traditions of the Delawares and Iroquois concur 
 in testifying to their former wars against a great 
 people, the Allegwi or Alleghans, dwelling to the 
 south-west, and who were finally expelled from their 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 59 
 
 territories, and in accordance with this the researches 
 of Squier and Davies have shown that the earthworks 
 of the ancient mound-builders extend up the Ohio 
 valley towards western New York, so that these 
 
 Fig. 13.— Coppbr Ebacelet, Drsc, Bead, and Buttons of Allkghans. 
 (After Squier.) 
 
 people were once conterminous with the Iroquois and 
 allied tribes. Still more remarkable evidences exist 
 that the power of the Alleghans extended as far north 
 as Lake Superior and the St. Lawrence valley. I may 
 
CO FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 take two illustrations from Wilson. One is an ancient 
 burial-place discovered by Dr. Keynolds near Brock- 
 ville. Here were buried, about fourteen feet below 
 the surface, twenty skeletons, arranged in a circle 
 with their feet towards the centre. Some of the 
 skeletons were of gigantic proportions, but their bones 
 had well-nigh crumbled into dust. With them were 
 found well-made spears and chisels of native copper, 
 stone-chisels, gouges, and arrow-heads, and a curious 
 terra-cotta mask, which Wilson has figured, and which 
 he remarks is Toltecan rather than Indian in its 
 features, and which resembles the heads on earthen 
 vessels of the mound-builders, while he evidently 
 regards the interment as not corresponding with those 
 of the Canadian tribes. It does, however, correspond 
 with old Alleghan interments already mentioned as 
 discovered by Professor Swallow. In one of the 
 mounds explored by him, the bodies, whose bones were 
 in the last stage of decay, lay in the same position as 
 in the Brockville grave, and each had an earthen 
 vessel at its head with a representation of a human 
 face. This mode of burial, the warriors lying in death 
 as they would lie with their feet to the watch-fire, and 
 each with his vessel of water or food at his head, like 
 Saul, King of Israel, of old,* seems to have been 
 peculiar to the Alleghans, and has been recognised in 
 several localities. War parties at least of this people, 
 and possibly also permanent settlements, must have 
 extended themselves to the St. Lawrence river. 
 * 1 Samuel xxvi. 11. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PKE-HISTORIC TIMES. 61 
 
 The evidence of copper mining on Lake Superior 
 in pre-historic times is equally conclusive. In the 
 Ontanogan district, where extensive mines of native 
 copper are now worked, ancient excavations long 
 since deserted and overgrown with the aboriginal 
 forest are found on the outcrops of the veins. Some 
 of these are twenty -five to thirty feet deep, and in the 
 bottom of them are found the stone mauls and picks 
 and decayed wooden shovels of the ancient miners. * 
 In one place a mass of native copper, weighing six 
 tons, had been dislodged from its matrix, and mounted 
 on a wooden frame, but afterwards abandoned, either 
 because of its great weight, or because the miners had 
 been driven away by some hostile invasion. These 
 ancient works are said to be found over an extent of 
 nearly 150 miles on the south side of Lake Superior, 
 and on the north side of the lake they also occur, 
 though on a smaller scale. I have myself explored 
 some of them at Maimanse. Here they are confined 
 to the outcrop of the veins in which the native copper, 
 associated with quartz and other minerals, projects in 
 irregular masses and strings above the enclosing trap. 
 Following these indications, the ancient miners had 
 traced the veins along the hills, and had not only 
 broken off the projecting masses with stone mauls 
 which were found in their trenches, but had, perhaps 
 with the aid of fire, followed the larger masses down- 
 ward for several feet, throwing out the broken quartz 
 in heaps at the sides. That these mines were not 
 * Wilson, " Prehistoric Man." 
 
62 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 worked by the present Indian tribes of the country 
 is evident, that some of them are of great antiquity is 
 proved by the silt and vegetable soil with which they 
 are filled, the former sometimes containing skeletons 
 of wild animals, which have fallen into these old 
 excavations, and the latter being overgrown with 
 the ancient trees of a primeval forest. Further, depo- 
 sits of manufactured implements indicate that they 
 were made on the spot, and their style, especially that 
 of some knives inlaid and ornamented with native sil- 
 ver, shows that the artists were the same with those 
 who made the implements of the Mississippi mounds. 
 These people had, in short, explored all the rich 
 localities of native copper only recently re-discovered 
 by Europeans. To some extent, however, the tribes 
 that expelled the primitive miners preserved their 
 arts, for the copper of Lake Superior was known to 
 the Hochelagans and Stadaconians of the time of 
 Cartier, though possessed by these people in much 
 less abundance than by the old Alleghans. 
 
 There is also evidence that the original supplanters 
 of the Alleghans were themselves in process of being 
 supplanted at the period of the French discovery. 
 The strange story of the Eries or Neutrals, as it has 
 been preserved by Schoolcraft, belongs to this cate- 
 gory. This people, who have given a name to one of 
 the great American lakes, held a political position at 
 the time of the French discovery which entitled them 
 to the name of the neutral nation. Occupying a fertile 
 territory south of Lake Erie, and inhabiting walled 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE-HJSTOR1C TIMES. 63 
 
 villages, they were distinct from the Iroquois on the 
 one hand and the Algonquins on the other, just as 
 the Wyandots or Hurons were on the north of Lake 
 Ontario and the Hochelagans in their island on the 
 St. Lawrence. Further, in language they were allied to 
 the Iroquois and Hurons, being called by them Atti- 
 wendaronks, or people differing little in language or 
 speaking a cognate dialect, as distinguished from the 
 Algonquins, who were to them barbarians. This was 
 also the linguistic position of the Hochelagans rela- 
 tively to the Iroquois. Cartier says that the Hoche- 
 lagans enjoyed some sort of hegemony over the St. 
 Lawrence tribes. In like manner these people were 
 recognised not only as neutrals, but as pacificators. 
 Their political ruler was a queen, and her council fire 
 was recognised as a sacred place of refuge and of 
 arbitration of differences. This female rule was also, 
 as we shall find, in all probability an institution 
 borrowed from the Alleghans. The more bitter ani- 
 mosities consequent on the European invasion led to 
 events which plunged the Eries into war with the 
 Iroquois, and after a severe struggle they were driven 
 from their homes, and obliged to retreat to the south- 
 ward, where, according to information collected by 
 Schoolcraft, they became identified with the Katawbas 
 of Virginia and Carolina, one of the noblest and most 
 amenable to culture of the native tribes of the South- 
 ern States of the American Union. The Hurons were 
 also in like manner dislodged by the Iroquois, and 
 this extermination of large and populous nations after 
 
64 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the discovery of America seems but the completion of 
 a great intrusive movement breaking up the tribes 
 which had previously replaced and mixed with the 
 Alleghans, or which had perhaps been allies of theirs 
 on the north, partially impregnated with their culture 
 and pursuing their industries long after they were 
 cut off. It accords with this that there is a very 
 strong resemblance of detail between the arts and 
 implements of the Eries, Hurons, and Hochelagans, 
 indicating a close connection at that traditional time 
 when their towns and villages occupied the wide 
 regions afterwards seized by their enemies the Iro- 
 quois. 
 
 r ? Many hundred years ago," said an aged Iroquois 
 chief, in accounting to an American antiquarian * for 
 the many ancient forts scattered over western New 
 York, fl a long war occurred between the Iroquois and 
 other powerful nations, during which many fortifica- 
 tions, often stockaded and enclosing villages, were 
 built throughout all this region, but their enemies 
 were finally repulsed, and passed far to the south- 
 west." Whether this legend refers to the expulsion 
 of the Eries and their allies, which happened as late as 
 1655, or to the far earlier expulsion of the Alleghans, 
 or whether it includes a mixture of both, it would 
 perhaps be impossible to say. " The traditions of the 
 Delawares," says Dr. Wilson, " hold that the Alleghans 
 were a strong and mighty nation, reaching to the 
 eastern shores of the Mississippi, when in remote 
 * Cheney, • Eeport on Monuments of New York." 
 
GLIMPSES OF PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 05 
 
 times they came into the great valley from the west. 
 But the Iroquois, who had established themselves on 
 the head waters of the chief rivers which have their 
 rise to the south of the great lakes, combined with the 
 Delaware or Lenape nation to crush the power of that 
 ancient people of the valley, and the surviving rem- 
 nant of the decimated Alleghans were driven down the 
 Mississippi, and their name blotted out from the roll 
 of nations. The very name of the Ohio is of Iroquois 
 origin, and given to the river of the Alleghans by 
 their ruthless conquerors. The Susquehannocks, who 
 are believed to be of the same ancient lineage, excited 
 the ire of the dominant nation, and were in like 
 manner extirpated. At a later date the Delawares 
 fell under their ban, and the remnant of that proud 
 nation, quitting for ever the shores of the noble river 
 which perpetuates their name, retraced their steps into 
 the unknown west." Three hundred years of European 
 colonisation and warfare have brought the same fate 
 on the conquering Iroquois themselves, whose small 
 remnants exist in a few scattered settlements, fading 
 away and mingling with the pale faces, and of no 
 political importance among the strange people who 
 have usurped that heritage which they had wrested 
 from others. 
 
 Thus we find in America the Europeans displacing 
 in historic times Indians who had themselves not long 
 before displaced others, and these last retaining the 
 clear tradition of those they had displaced at a still 
 earlier time. The Alleghans are represented only by 
 
66 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 remains of unknown date, and the Eries, Hurons, and 
 Hochelagans would have been in the same position but 
 for the arrival of the French in time to witness their 
 decadence. Let us observe also that such a history 
 implies primitive civilization fading into barbarism 
 until it shall be replaced by some new culture. The 
 Alleghans of the Ohio and Mississippi had their council 
 fires quenched by barbarians long before Cortez at- 
 tacked the new Mexican empire of the Aztecs. Our 
 poor Hochelagans, within less than a century of 
 Carrier's time, had been destroyed or reduced to the 
 condition of wandering hunters. The pre-Columbian 
 America seemed hastening to return to barbarism. 
 
 Let us observe also that the aboriginal Americans, 
 though probably reaching the continent from the old 
 world by three distinct lines of migration, one from 
 Southern Asia by the Pacific, one from Northern 
 Asia by Behring's straits, and one from Western 
 Europe by the Atlantic and its islands,* had brought 
 with them essentially the same beliefs and customs, 
 and not very dissimilar physical characteristics; so 
 that they naturally and readily blended into a more a? 
 less homogeneous American type, with local modifi- 
 cations of physical aspect, customs, and arts. At the 
 time therefore when America was first colonised, there 
 must have been a remarkable uniformity in the popu- 
 lations inhabiting Asia and Europe, similar to that 
 which obtained in prehistoric America. In other 
 
 * See the discussion of this subject by Wilson, "Pre-historic 
 Man." 
 
GLIMPSES OP PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 67 
 
 words, the prevalent or universal type of the people of 
 the Eastern or Eurasian continent must have been 
 that which we now call Turanian or American. In 
 America the local varieties and more or less cultured 
 members of this great race had again and again re- 
 placed each other over wide regions, so that the same 
 varieties of Dolichocephalic and Brachycephalic races, 
 and the same ages of Stone and Bronze, recognised 
 in Europe, with the addition of an intermediate age of 
 native Copper, could have been made up by the anti- 
 quary, did we not know that they were contemporary, 
 and that over wide areas, almost equalling the whole 
 of Europe, the age of Copper and of civilization pre - 
 ceded that of barbarism. 
 
 May this not, then, be an American epitome of 
 pre-historic Europe ? Simple and industrious colonists 
 spreading themselves over new lands : barbarous and 
 migratory tribes and families wandering from the 
 centres of civilization over the untilled wastes, and 
 then recoiling in successive waves on the more culti- 
 vated tribes with rude and desolating violence. So 
 the struggle of opposing races would go on from 
 century to century, strewing the land with strange 
 and unaccountable traces of semi-civilization and 
 barbarism — the forests growing over them and river 
 floods sweeping them away and depositing them in 
 unlikely places, until Eome did for Europe what 
 Europe has been doing for America ; and then in both 
 cases the pre-historic ages recede into dim obscurity, 
 and under the manipulation of the archseologist may 
 
68 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 be stretched indefinitely into the past, and arranged 
 according to his fancy in successive periods of bar- 
 barism and semi-civilization. 
 
 It is true that this view seems in direct contradiction 
 to the theories promulgated with so much confidence 
 of the primitive barbarism or semi-brutal character of 
 man. Yet there are facts, in the old world as well as 
 in the new, which point in this same direction. For 
 example, it is admitted that the wild Veddahs of 
 Ceylon are proved by their Sanscrit tongue and their 
 physical characters to be a degraded branch of that 
 great Aryan family to which the civilized Hindoo 
 belongs. The Hottentots and even the Bushmen of 
 South Africa can be shown by language and customs 
 to be merely depauperated descendants of that great 
 Ethiopian nation which in Upper Egypt founded one 
 of the oldest known civilized kingdoms. Physiological 
 considerations point in the same direction ; for man, 
 unarmed and naked, must originally have been fru- 
 givorous, and then to some degree a horticulturist, be- 
 fore he could have developed into a savage hunter and 
 warrior. To suppose that the savage hunters of our 
 day are the primeval type of man, is one of the most 
 unfounded assumptions of that materialistic philosophy 
 which disgraces the intellect as well as the right feel- 
 ing of our time. At the same time, it has been the 
 policy of this philosophy to gather up and parade 
 all that is discreditable and low in the condition and 
 manners of the modern savage, so as to approximate 
 him as nearly as possible to brutes ; and having done 
 
GLIMPSES OF PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. 69 
 
 this, to exhibit him as the existing representative 
 of our pre-historic ancestors. Thus there is created 
 at once a double prejudice, hostile to true views of 
 human origin and history, and to the brotherhood 
 of humanity, as well as to its spiritual relations and 
 higher aspirations. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REMAINS OP CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 
 
 The modern Montreal has now overgrown the site 
 of Hochelaga, and it met with no obstacles in doing 
 so save the natural inequalities of the ground. Less 
 than three hundred years have elapsed, and the clear- 
 ing of the young forest which must have covered the 
 site, and the ploughing of the fields, had sufficed to 
 remove all traces except those which might remain 
 beneath the greensward. Thus, its very place un- 
 known, the old city reposed until the bones of its 
 sleeping inhabitants were disturbed by the excava- 
 tions of streets and foundations of houses. For some 
 time this work proceeded without any attention being 
 given to the antiquities uncovered. In levelling the 
 ground large quantities of sand were removed to be 
 used in making mortar, and the workmen merely 
 reburied the bones in the underlying clay, where they 
 may some day serve to convince enthusiastic believers 
 in the antiquity of man that our species existed in 
 Canada at the time of the marine Post-pliocene. At 
 length attention was directed to the subject, and a 
 somewhat rich harvest was obtained of relics — which 
 are now preserved in public and private collections. 
 It will be interesting here to note what actually 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 71 
 
 remained to indicate the site. The wooden walls 
 described by Cartier, and the bark houses, were no 
 doubt burned at the time of the final capture of the 
 town, which was probably taken by a sudden surprise 
 and assault, and its inhabitants butchered, with the 
 exception of those who could escape by flight, while all 
 portable articles of value would be taken away; and this 
 would especially apply to the implements and trinkets 
 left by the French, the report of whose vast value and 
 rarity may perhaps have stimulated the attack. 
 
 In a dry sandy soil and in an extreme climate, 
 wooden structures rapidly decay, and such parts of 
 the buildings as the fire may have spared would soon 
 be mingled with the soil. No trace of them was seen 
 in the modern excavations except a few marks of the 
 spots where posts or stakes may have been sunk in 
 the earth. When the sod was removed, the position 
 of a dwelling was marked merely by its hearth, a 
 shallow excavation filled with ashes and calcined 
 stones, and having the soil for some little distance 
 around reddened by heat. Around and in these 
 hearths might be found fragments of earthenware 
 pots and of tobacco pipes, broken stone implements 
 and chips of flint, bones of wild animals, charred 
 grains of corn, stones of the wild plum, with other 
 remains of vegetable food, and occasional bone bod- 
 kins and other implements. In depressed places, and 
 on the borders of the small brooks and creeks which 
 traversed or bounded the town, were accumulations of 
 kitchen-midden stuff, in some places two or three feet 
 
<Z FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 in thickness, and of a black colour. This was full 
 of fragments of pottery and bones, and occasionally 
 yielded interesting specimens of stone and bone im- 
 plements. Aronnd the outskirts of the town, and in 
 some cases within its limits, were skeletons which 
 have been buried in shallow graves in a crouching 
 
 Fig 11.— Muu* si Suspending Eaktrvn Potp. (Outside of aw gle oj mouth <>j 
 
 position and lying on their sides, and over each 
 skeleton could usually be detected the ashes and 
 burned soil of the fuueral feast. The soil being dry, 
 all vestiges of hair and of the skins in which the 
 bodies had probably been wrapped had perished, and 
 the bones had lost their animal matter, had become 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF TDE STOKE AGE. 4 6 
 
 porous and brittle, and were stained of a rusty colour 
 like the sand in which they lay. 
 
 With regard to the evidence that the site referred 
 to is actually that of the town described by Cartier, I 
 may mention the following additional points. A map 
 or plan of Hochelaga, purporting to have been taken 
 on the spot or from memory, is given in Ramusio's 
 Italian version of Cartier's Voyages (1560). It shows 
 
 Fig. 15.— Mod a. or Suspending Eakttikn Tots. (Inside of angle of mouth, 
 with head joy suspension.) 
 
 that the village was situated at the base of Mount 
 Royal, on a terrace between two small streams. It 
 enables us to understand the dimensions assigned to 
 the houses in the narrative, which evidently refer not 
 to individual dwellings, but to common edifices in- 
 habited by several families, each having its separate 
 room. It gives as the diameter of the circular en- 
 
74 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 closure or forfc about one hundred and twenty yards, 
 and for each side of the square in the centre about 
 thirty yards. This corresponds with the space occu- 
 pied by the remains above referred to. It is to be 
 understood, however, that the fort or city, which was 
 quite similar to those occupied by most of the agricul- 
 tural American tribes, was intended merely to accom- 
 modate the whole population in times of danger or 
 in the severity of winter, and to contain their winter 
 supplies of provisions ; but that in summer the people 
 would be much scattered in temporary cabins or wig- 
 wams in the fields, or along the rivers and streams. 
 
 Further, according to the description of the old 
 navigator, the town was four or five miles distant 
 from the place where Cartier landed, and nearer the 
 mountain than the river, and the oak-forest and the 
 cornfields which surrounded it must have been on 
 the terrace of Post-pliocene sand now occupied by the 
 upper streets of the modern city, and about one hun- 
 dred feet above the river. If the village was destroyed 
 by fire before 1603, the date of Champlain's visit, no 
 trace of it might remain in 1642, when the present 
 city was founded, and the ground it occupied would 
 probably be overgrown with shrubs and young trees. 
 I have seen clearings in the American woods covered 
 with tall young trees in less than thirty years. But 
 the Indian tradition would preserve the memory of 
 the place ; and if, as the narrative of the Jesuits in- 
 forms us, the point of view to which Maisonneuve and 
 his French colonists of 1642 were conducted by the 
 
76 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Indians who professed to be survivors of the Hochela- 
 gans, was the front of the escarpment of Mount Royal, 
 the same with that occupied by Cartier, their Indian 
 informants would have at their very feet the old resi- 
 dence of their fathers, and their remarks as to its soil 
 and exposure would be naturally called forth by the 
 view before them. The story of the Jesuit fathers is 
 that the two aged Indians who accompanied Maison- 
 neuve to the mountain top after the ceremony of 
 founding the new town, said that they were descend- 
 ants of the original inhabitants ; that their tribe had 
 at one time inhabited all the surrounding country even 
 to the south of the river, possessing many populous 
 villages ; that the Hurons, who at that time were hos- 
 tile to them, had expelled them ; that some of them 
 had taken refuge among the Abenaquis, others among 
 the Iroquois, others among the Hurons themselves. 
 They were now associated with a band of Algonquins 
 from the Ottawa. Their grandfathers had cultivated 
 their corn in the very spot at their feet, but they had 
 been driven to become migratory hunters. 
 
 The only other probable explanation of the remains 
 would be that they belong to the more recent settle- 
 ment of the Indians above referred to when invited by 
 the French to return. This, however, was a very 
 temporary occupation, not sufficient to give so large 
 an amount of remains. Further, at a time when 
 the Indians were in constant association with the 
 French, and when missionaries were labouring among 
 them, it is probable that their place of residence would 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 77 
 
 afford some indication of intercourse with Europeans, 
 and would be nearer to the French fort. With 
 reference to the extent of the remains, I may state 
 that my own private collection contains fragments 
 
 Fig. 17.— Eabxhkn Pox (keduced). (Site of lluchelaga.) 
 
 belonging to from 150 to 200 distinct earthen vessels, 
 and these are of course only a very small fraction of 
 the amount actually present. The interments in a 
 limited space around the supposed town must have 
 
78 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 amounted to several hundreds, though, it is not 
 improbable that the Hochelagans, like some other 
 Canadian tribes, periodically disinterred their dead, 
 and removed their bones to a common tribal ossuary. 
 Lastly, making every allowance for the nature of the 
 soil, the condition of the skeletons would seem to re- 
 quire an interment of at least three centuries. For all 
 these reasons, I can entertain little doubt that the 
 site referred to is actually that of the Hochelaga of 
 Cartier. 
 
 The only objects indicating intercourse with Euro- 
 peans which I have yet found, are an iron nail 
 without the head, and with the point rounded so as 
 to form a sort of bodkin, a piece of iron shaped into 
 a rude knife or chisel, a small piece of sheet brass 
 about half an inch long by a quarter wide, and appa- 
 rently cut roughly from a larger piece. These were, 
 I think, mixed among the debris from one of the 
 kitchens. 
 
 I quote here from a notice published in 1861, when 
 the details were fresh in my memory, a few additional 
 facts bearing upon the above points. "In a limited 
 area, not exceeding two imperial acres, twenty skele- 
 tons have been disinterred within twelve months, and 
 the workmen state that many parts of the ground 
 excavated in former years were even more rich in such 
 remains. Hundreds of old fireplaces and indications 
 of at least ten or twelve huts or lodges, have also been 
 found, and in a few instances these occur over the 
 burial-places, as if one generation had built its huts 
 
THE EEMATNS OP CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 79 
 
 over the graves of another. Where habitations have 
 stood, the ground is in some places, to the depth of 
 three feet, a black mass saturated with carbonaceous 
 matter, and fall of bones of wild animals, charcoal, 
 pottery, and remains of implements of stone or bone. 
 Further, in such places the black soil is laminated, as 
 if deposited in successive layers on the more depressed 
 parts of the surface. The length of time during 
 which the site was occupied is also indicated by the 
 very different states of preservation of the bones and 
 bone implements; some of those in the deeper parts 
 
 Fig. 18. — Head fhom an Earthen Pot. 
 
 of the deposit being apparently much older than those 
 near the surface. Similar testimony is afforded by the 
 great quantity and various patterns of the pottery, as 
 well as by the abundance of the remains of animals 
 used as food throughout the area above mentioned. 
 All these indications point to a long residence of the 
 aborigines on this spot, while the almost entire 
 absence of articles of European manufacture in the 
 undisturbed portions of the ground, implies a date 
 coeval with the discovery of the country. The few 
 
80 FOSSrL MEN. 
 
 objects of this kind found in circumstances which 
 prevented the supposition of mere superficial inter- 
 mixture, are just sufficient to show that the village 
 existed until the appearance of Europeans on the 
 stage." On the whole, the situation and the remains 
 found not only establish the strongest probability 
 that this is the veritable site, but serve to vindicate 
 Cartier's narration from the doubts cast upon it by 
 subsequent explorers, who visited the country after 
 Hochelaga had disappeared. 
 
 Since the days when Cain went forth as the first 
 emigrant and built a city, defence and shelter have 
 ranked among the primary wants of man. The means 
 by which they are secured depend partly on the state 
 of civilization which may have been reached, and 
 partly on the materials at hand ; but chiefly on the 
 latter. In rocky regions, caverns and over-hanging 
 ledges afford the most convenient shelter, and stones 
 afford the materials of cyclopean walls for defence. 
 On treeless, alluvial plains the nomad makes his tent 
 of skin, and when he becomes settled has recourse to 
 earthen walls or sun-dried brick. In forest countries 
 wood or bark forms the most convenient material, 
 whether for savage or civilized nations. The Ameri- 
 can tribe of the Moquis, in the rocky tablelands of 
 New Mexico, build stone structures as massive as any 
 ordinarily constructed by civilized man. The modern 
 inhabitants of the plain of the Euphrates use brick 
 and sun-dried clay exactly as the earliest settlers in 
 the plain of Shinar must have done. The European 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 81 
 
 settlers in Eastern America have adopted houses of 
 wood as their usual habitations. 
 
 Neither antiquity, therefore, nor culture are marked 
 by any particular material for building. But the ma- 
 terial used will make a vast difference with reference to 
 the remains left. A nation, however rude or ancient, 
 that has been able to use caverns for habitation or to 
 
 Fig. 19.— Head in Pottbbt. 
 
 build of stone, will leave some permanent, nay, inde- 
 structible evidences of its presence preserved in cave- 
 earth, or rising from the surface of the ground. A 
 nation that has built of clay will leave merely mounds. 
 The nations that built habitations of clay in the allu- 
 vial plain of Mesopotamia, or the valley of the Missis- 
 sippi, were not necessarily less civilized than those 
 who built with stone in Peru or Egypt, The New 
 England villager who lives in a neat wooden house 
 
82 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 and worships in a wooden church, is not necessarily 
 less civilized than the people who built magnificent 
 stone edifices in Yucatan, though if the New England 
 village were deserted, no trace of it, except in a little 
 broken pottery, or a few hearth and chimney stones, 
 might remain in a century or two. Nations living by 
 river-sides, and whose only remains are a few inde- 
 structible flint implements, may have been, and pro- 
 bably were, more highly civilized than those whose 
 debris preserved in caves furnishes far more numerous 
 and curious antiques. Our Hochelagans were wood- 
 builders. Bark peeled from trees in wide sheets, and 
 supported on poles, forms the cheapest and most 
 comfortable abode for dwellers in the forest, and the 
 people of Hochelaga had houses of this kind with 
 several rooms, and an upper storey to be used as 
 a granary. They were, possibly, more comfortable 
 and suited to the habits of their builders than the 
 huts of mud and rough stone occupied by thousands 
 of the peasants of modern Europe. Their habitations 
 belonged to a type which seems to have been nearly 
 universal among the more settled populations of Ame- 
 rica, and which Morgan has shown to be connected with 
 peculiar customs of patriarchal communism akin to 
 those of which traces remain in the tribes and gentes 
 of early Europe and Asia. Carrier's plan of a Hoche- 
 lagan house, as given on the following page (Fig. 20), 
 shows a series of rooms surrounding a central hall, 
 in which was a fireplace. Now, we know from the 
 customs of the Iroauois and Hurons, as described by 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 
 
 83 
 
 Champlain and other early French explorers, that each 
 room was occupied by a family, while all the families 
 in the house had the cooking-place in common, and 
 cultivated their cornfields and went on hunting ex- 
 peditions in common. In such a community, accord- 
 ing to the ancient American idea of " women's 
 rights," all the women were related — the husbands 
 might be, probably of necessity were, of different 
 tribes. In some of the Indian nations, indeed, com- 
 munal houses of even greater size and with several 
 
 nQOOOOQOQOOOOOOp ' 
 
 tt 
 
 n 
 
 H 
 
 R 
 
 11 
 
 OQOO O Ol 
 
 IT 
 
 IQOOOOO 
 
 Fig. 20.— Plan of Hochelagan House fob Five Families. (After Cartier.) 
 R. Rooms, each for one family. H. Common hall. F. Common fire. 
 
 fires were used. The stone " pueblos M of the Moquis 
 are of this character. The winter houses of the Green- 
 landers are on the same plan, which Nilsson has shown 
 is that also of the " gallery graves w and gallery 
 houses of Sweden. Further, as Morgan has proved, 
 the so-called palaces of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru, 
 were merely large communistic edifices, each occupied 
 by a whole tribe, whose members lived in common, 
 and were related by a bond of consanguinity depend- 
 
84 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 ent on descent through the female line.* It seems 
 not impossible that the tradition of the Tower of 
 Babel includes the construction of a huge communistic 
 building on this plan, intended to bind together the 
 early tribes of men in a communistic league, and in- 
 vestigations should be made as to the probability of 
 similar arrangements among the cave-dwellers and 
 other primitive inhabitants of Europe. At this day 
 there remain Pueblos of this kind on the table-lands 
 of New Mexico, where they are inhabited by the 
 Moqui tribes ; and ruined edifices of the same type, 
 known to have been occupied by the ancestors of these 
 people at the time of the Spanish conquest, are from 
 300 to 400 feet in length, with four to seven storeys 
 of stone rooms rising in successive terraces, and one 
 of these is said to have been capable of lodging 600 
 families. When we come to consider the domestic 
 institutions of these people, and to compare them with 
 those of pre-historic Europe, we shall have occasion 
 to return to this subject. 
 
 Instead of a rampart of earth, perhaps with pali- 
 sades on top like those of the forts of the Iroquois 
 and the mound-builders, the Hochelagans had a wall 
 
 * It seems in every way probable that tribes whose families 
 combined to erect such structures as the Swiss lake habita- 
 tions, retained the primitive tribal communism. Their houses 
 as restored, for example in the papers of Mr. Walker (Leisure 
 Hour, Nov. 1873), resemble the "long houses" of the Iroquois, 
 and Sir John Lubbock has figured in his " Pre-historic Times " 
 what he regards as a clay model of a lake hamlet, which in the 
 essential features of its plan is similar to the houses of 
 Hochelaga. 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 85 
 
 framed of wood, a gigantic public work fco be executed 
 by a tribe destitute of metallic tools. If we under- 
 stand rightly Cartier's description, the rampart of the 
 town consisted of a central support of vertical pali- 
 sades, with an outer row inclined inwards and resting 
 on this, and a similar inclined row supporting it 
 within. It must have been made, not of planks or 
 boards, but of unhewed logs, each about twenty feet 
 in length, cut with stone hatchets and carried on 
 men's shoulders. By the plan of construction adopted, 
 the necessity was avoided of digging deep holes for 
 the palisades, or of building a rampart of earth about 
 them, and the only danger to which such a structure 
 was exposed, that of fire, was much lessened by the 
 inclined position of the palisades. Still a wall of this 
 kind would perish in no very great number of years, 
 even if it escaped destruction by fire ; and if not 
 renewed would soon leave no trace behind. The poles 
 for such a fortification must have been very similar to 
 the poles of the Swiss lake habitations, and like them 
 they were probably cut and pointed with the aid of 
 fire. I have, however, in my collection a portion of a 
 large tree which has been partially cut across with a 
 thin chisel, probably of copper, which must have been 
 driven in by mallets or hammers. In this way thick 
 trees of the softer kinds of wood could easily be 
 divided. 
 
 Vessels for collecting provisions and cooking food 
 are primary requirements of man in every stage of 
 civilization or barbarism. Here again the material is 
 
86 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 not characteristic of particular stages so much as of 
 opportunities, and may be perishable or the reverse. 
 In Central America the Spaniards found some nations 
 not very far advanced in civilization whose ordinary 
 utensils were of gold. On the other hand, many 
 tribes had merely earthen vessels, and some were 
 destitute of these, and used baskets or bark vessels 
 only. The latter were especially characteristic of 
 nomadic tribes, and of parties making long expedi- 
 tions. People without beasts of burden or convey- 
 ances of any kind other than canoes, could not safely 
 or conveniently transport with them heavy and fragile 
 vessels. To them, therefore, the potter's art was 
 unsuited ; but so soon as such tribes became settled, 
 they would adopt earthenware as the most cheap 
 and convenient vessels. A tribe, therefore, of roving 
 habits, or living in a region where it was necessary 
 to make periodical migrations, might be destitute of 
 pottery, though they might have vessels of wood, 
 basket-work, or bark, more neatly and artificially con- 
 structed than the clay pots of more settled tribes. 
 Still, the latter would leave a monument of their art 
 in the debris of their pottery, which would be wholly 
 wanting in the case of the former. Further, the 
 pottery of primitive tribes is of a sort which speedily 
 becomes disintegrated in a wet soil or ground up by 
 attrition, so that river-side tribes might leave no sign 
 of it, when it might be met with abundantly in the 
 old residences of cavern and upland tribes. 
 
 The Hochelagans were potters, and, as we know to 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 87 
 
 have been the case with other tribes, this art was 
 probably practised by the women, and the vessels, 
 formed by hand, without the aid of a wheel, were im- 
 perfectly baked in a rude oven or fireplace constructed 
 for the purpose. Their process for preparing the clay 
 was that which seems to have been practised anciently 
 all over the world, and is still vindicated by experience 
 as the best to form vessels intended to stand the fire. 
 
 Fig. 21.— Earthen- Pot found on the Upper Ottawa, and now in thb 
 Museum of the Natural History Society of Monteeal (Reduced). 
 
 The clay was first mixed intimately with sand, usually 
 a coarse granitic sand, different from that near Mon- 
 treal, as the clay is also different from the ordinary 
 brick-clay of Montreal, which being calcareous is not 
 well fitted for the purpose of the potter. The mass 
 was then kneaded out and doubled in pastrycook style, 
 so as to give it a tough, laminated texture, and then 
 was fashioned into the vessel desired. Specimens 
 
88 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 from an ancient British barrow given to me by Pro- 
 fessor Rolleston have been made of precisely similar 
 materials, and in the same way ; and as their ornamen- 
 tation is nearly the same, they show nothing, did we 
 not know their origin, to prevent the belief that both 
 might have been made in the same place and by the 
 same hand. 
 
 The usual shape was that of a pot, round in the 
 bottom and curving upward into a cylindrical neck. 
 In some, however, the neck was square or octagonal, 
 and in this case there were sometimes projecting 
 ornaments or hooks at the corners for suspension. 
 This primitive Hochelagan pot is of the type of those 
 used by all ancient nations, from the old u Reindeer 
 Epoch" of Belgium and France, down through all 
 antiquity to our own round metal pots. Perhaps the 
 earliest known example is that found in the palaeolithic 
 cave of the Trou de Frontal, by Dupont, which closely 
 resembles the native American pots in form and 
 material, except that it is not ornamented and that 
 the projections for suspension are on the sides instead 
 of at the rim. The Hochelagan women, however, had a 
 very ingenious contrivance for hanging their pots over 
 the fire, which deserves notice. They had no doubt 
 found by experience that when an earthen pot was 
 hung over the fire by strings or withes tied to the out- 
 side, the flames would sometimes reach the perishable 
 means of suspension, and, burning it, allow the pot 
 to fall, and its contents to be lost. Hence they con- 
 trived a mode of fastening the cord within the throat 
 
THE KEMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 89 
 
 of the vessel, where the fire could not reach it. This 
 hook for suspension was made in the shape of a human 
 head and neck, the hole for the cord being left behind 
 the neck (Figs. 14, 15, 18, 19). Many of these heads 
 were found detached, and their use was not known 
 until the fragment in Fig. 15 was found. Earthen 
 heads of this kiud are often figured on American 
 vessels, and perhaps indicate guardian "manitous," 
 but their peculiar use in the Hochelagan vessels seems 
 unique. 
 
 Some of these earthen vessels were large enough 
 to hold four gallons. Others would hold a quart or 
 less, and the smaller are usually thinner and of finer 
 clay than the others. All are very neatly made, and 
 uniform in thickness, and wonderfully regular in form 
 when we consider that they were fashioned without 
 the potter's wheel. Many are elaborately ornamented 
 with patterns worked with a pointed instrument, with 
 rings made with a stamp, and with impressions of 
 the finger-point and nail around the edge. (Figs. 16, 
 17, 22). This last kind of marking, still practised by 
 pastrycooks, is common both to American and early 
 British and Swiss pottery, in which we can distinctly 
 see rows of impressions of the small finger-point of 
 the lady-artificer with the print of the finger-nail. 
 Fragments of pottery from a long barrow near West 
 Kennet, in Wiltshire, figured by Lubbock, are re- 
 markably near to a common Hochelagan pattern, and 
 finger-prints as an ornament occur on vessels from the 
 pile-villages of the Lake of Zurich. Examples have 
 
90 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 also been found of a potter's graving implement for 
 forming these patterns. It was a small, neatly polished 
 conical bone, sharp at one end and hollowed at the 
 other, so that it could be used either for drawing lines 
 or for stamping circles, precisely like those on some of 
 the specimens of pottery. 
 
 The patterns on the pottery are not merely capri- 
 cious. They are imitations, and of two distinct styles. 
 One evidently represents the rows of grain in the ear 
 of Indian corn, and may be called the corn-ear pat- 
 tern. The same device is seen in specimens of Indian 
 pottery from New York figured by Schoolcraft, and it 
 still occasionally re-appears in our common earthen- 
 ware pitchers. The second may be called the basket- 
 and-bead pattern, and imitates a woven basket orna- 
 mented with beads, or, as in modern Indian baskets, 
 with pendant rings. To this class belong the so-called 
 chevron and saltier patterns, and it is possible that 
 they may be originally traced, both in the old and 
 new worlds, to the aboriginal practice of moulding 
 pottery in woven grass baskets, subsequently removed 
 by the process of baking. Many and elegant modifi- 
 cations of this pattern occur, and imply that the 
 potters were familiar with the modes of basket-making 
 still in use among the Indians. This basket-pattern 
 appears, though in a rude form, in some specimens of 
 early British pottery, and akin to it are the impres- 
 sions, common both in American and European clay 
 vessels, of twisted thongs or cords. A third pattern, 
 which is confined to the round bottom of some of 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 
 
 91 
 
 the larger vessels may be styled a net-pattern. It is 
 formed by square or rhombic indentations, regularly 
 arranged, so as to form a reticulated design. Similarly 
 baked and ornamented pottery is found in all old 
 Indian sites in Eastern America. Among the Mic- 
 
 Fig. 22.— Fragments of Potteey (Reduced). (Site of Hochelaga.) 
 (a, b, c, d) Basket patterns. (e) Net pattern. (/) Corn-ear pattern. 
 
 macs and New England tribes it is usually ruder than 
 that of Hochelaga, corresponding to the supposed 
 oldest types of the European caves and barrows. The 
 Iroquois, Hurons, and Eries had the same types with 
 those of Hochelaga. The old Alleghans, or mound- 
 
92 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 builders, made, at the same or possibly a still earlier 
 period, finer and more gracefully ornamented vessels, 
 and the art was carried to still greater perfection by 
 the Mexicans and Peruvians. Many of the smaller 
 pots are blackened with fire, and are encrusted near 
 the neck with a black paste, evidently the remains of 
 the pottage of Indian corn-meal formerly cooked in 
 them. The large pots are usually clean, and may 
 have been used as water-pots or for holding dry 
 articles of food. 
 
 The highest skill of the Hochelaga potters was 
 bestowed on their tobacco-pipes. They possessed 
 stone pipes of steatite, or soapstone, but none of these 
 of elaborate form have been found. One somewhat 
 elaborate example seems to have been formed of the 
 celebrated red pipes tone, or catlinite, from the far 
 west. The great number of fragments of clay pipes, 
 however, and the manner in which some of them 
 are blackened, testifies to the prevalence of the habit 
 of smoking. In one Hochelagan pipe the remains of 
 the tobacco-leaves were recognised when it was dis- 
 interred. It had been filled, perhaps, on the eve of 
 the final assault of the town, and the smoker had 
 thrown it down unused to rush to the last battle of 
 his tribe. The use of tobacco was found in full force 
 by Cartier. It was probably cultivated both at Sta- 
 dacona and Hochelaga, as it still is by the Canadian 
 "habitants." I have, indeed, seen a well-grown 
 patch of tobacco growing beside a noble crop of wheat 
 on the Laurentian hills, behind Murray Bay, on the 
 
THE KEMAJNS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 93 
 
 Lower St. Lawrence, in latitude 47° 40", and at a 
 height of 1000 feet above the sea level, though 
 physical geographers place the northern limit of wheat 
 at the sea level far to the south of this. The Indians 
 could, therefore, easily cultivate this plant on the 
 warmer soil in southern exposures along the St. 
 Lawrence ; but they also used wild plants designated 
 as pehin and JcinniMnick. The habit was new to the 
 French. Cartier says : " They have an herb, of which 
 they store up a large quantity for winter, which they 
 esteem very much, and the use of which is confined to 
 the men. They use it in the following way. The 
 plant having been dried in the sun, they carry sus- 
 pended to the neck a little bag of skin containing the 
 dried leaves, along with a little pipe ( ' cornet/ 
 perhaps alluding to the trumpet-like shape usual at 
 Hochelaga) of stone or wood. Thus prepared, they 
 place a little of the powder of the herb in one end of 
 the pipe, and placing a live coal on it, draw their 
 breath through the other end until they fill themselves 
 with smoke, so that it issues from their mouth and 
 nostrils as from a chimney. They say that it keeps 
 them healthy and warm, and never go without it." 
 Carrier's men tried the weed, but found it too hot and 
 " peppery M for their taste. This practice of smoking 
 tobacco, as well as lobelia and other narcotic weeds, 
 was universal in America, and is one of the few habits 
 which men calling themselves civilized have thought 
 fit to borrow from these barbarous tribes. It may 
 have originated in the attempt to repel mosquitoes 
 
94 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 and other noxious insects, or to allay the pangs of 
 hunger; or perhaps, as Wilson thinks, its narcotic 
 fumes were supposed to aid in divination, and in 
 
 Fig. 23.— Eabihen Pipes, Hochelaga (Reduced). 
 
 communion with those spiritual beings whom the 
 American firmly believed in as holding intercourse 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 95 
 
 with man. Thus it may have become an appropriate 
 sacrifice and means of. invocation, even with reference 
 to the Great Spirit. In any case, its use was inter- 
 woven with all the religious usages of the people, and 
 as the l( calumet of peace " with their most solemn 
 social and political engagements. From this high 
 place it has descended among the civilized imitators 
 
 Fig. 23a.— "Red Pipestone Pipb. 
 
 of the red man to be merely the solace of their idle 
 hours. 
 
 That the usage of smoking should have prevailed 
 throughout America, and should have been connected 
 with the religious and social institutions of all its 
 tribes, and that it should not have existed in the 
 old world till introduced from America, seems singular, 
 yet the belief at one time entertained that the " elfin 
 pipes " found in Britain indicate ancient usages of 
 this kind, and that smoking is an old institution in 
 
96 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Tartary and China, where one species of tobacco is 
 native, seems now generally discredited. Still it is 
 not impossible that there may be some foundation in 
 fact for the conclusion of Pallas, who argues from 
 the general use of tobacco by the Mongol tribes, the 
 primitive and original forms of their pipes, and the 
 similarity of their modes of using the plant to those 
 of the Americans, that the custom must be indigenous 
 among them. If so, it would not be surprising that 
 even the Palaeolithic man of Europe, in his dark 
 cavern abodes, enjoyed the solace of the fragrant 
 weed, smoked the calumet of peace with his former 
 foes, and, like his American brethren, fancied that he 
 saw spiritual beings — 
 
 " In the smoke that rolled around him, 
 The punkwana* of the peace-pipe." 
 
 Archaeologists should keep this in view in searching 
 for the relics of the Stone period. 
 
 Certain clay tubes, suspiciously resembling tobacco 
 pipes, are figured among the remains obtained by 
 Schliemann on the site of ancient Troy ; and on the 
 other hand, a figure of an owl's head, remarkably like 
 those found in the ruins of Troy, occur on many 
 Huron pipes. Flinders, in his " Voyages," refers to a 
 habit of smoking, or of puffing smoke through tubes, 
 as existing among a tribe of Papuans. It is to be 
 observed, however, that tubes of bone, clay, and stone 
 were used by medicine-men for applying smoke to the 
 
 * The fumes or rising smoke. 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 97 
 
 bodies of the sick. On the other hand, the Micmac 
 Indians of Nova Scotia sometimes used tobacco pipes 
 made of birch-bark rolled in the form of a cone, and 
 which of course are perishable. 
 
 The pipes of old Hochelaga were mostly of clay, 
 and of many and sometimes elegant patterns. Some 
 were very plain and small, others of elegant trumpet 
 or cornucopia form, and some ornamented with rude 
 attempts to imitate the human face. While the men 
 were the smokers, the women seem to have exhausted 
 their plastic skill in furnishing their lords with the 
 means of indulging their taste for the narcotic. 
 Schoolcraft has figured pipes used by the Iroquois and 
 Eries precisely similar to those of the Hochelagans. 
 Those of the mound-builders were peculiar (Fig. 10, 
 p. 54), but it is curious, and probably an evidence of 
 ancient intercourse, that stone pipes of the mound- 
 builder s' type are occasionally, though rarely, found 
 in Canada. I have seen a broken specimen from 
 Hopkins Island, near St. Regis, where many Indian 
 remains are found. In addition to jars and pipes, the 
 only frequent objects of earthenware are small discs, 
 perforated in the centre and crenated at the edge. 
 They may have served as an inferior kind of wampum, 
 or beads, or perhaps for the playing of some game of 
 chance. Similar clay beads found in Sweden are 
 described by Nilsson as belonging to the pre-historic 
 times of Scandinavia. 
 
 It has been said of the oldest Stone age, or Paleo- 
 lithic age of Europe, that no remains of earthenware 
 
 H 
 
98 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 are found in connection with its deposits; or to put 
 it more "broadly, in the words of a recent writer, 
 Palaeolithic man was "ignorant of pottery" — a very 
 bold statement of a negative, when it is considered 
 how little we know of the said men, and which might 
 be contradicted at once could we discover the site 
 of one of their villages instead of mere cave shelters 
 and drifted implements in river gravels. The theory 
 might, however, prevent any such discovery, for if the 
 site of a village of the men who used the Amiens flint 
 implements should be discovered, and if it contained 
 fragments of pottery and polished hatchets, we might 
 be told that it belonged to the Neolithic age, and it 
 should be separated by countless centuries from the 
 Palaeolithic period. We shall see in the sequel how 
 this applies to the remains of a "Palaeolithic" village 
 discovered at Soloutre, in France. If, however, it 
 should appear that neither Palaeolithic man nor his 
 wife actually did make pottery, this would prove not 
 so much their barbarism as their nomadic mode of 
 life, and they may have made and used, like the North 
 American hunter tribes, the most beautiful baskets 
 and bark boxes, which would serve their purposes 
 better than rude pottery. 
 
 It must not, however, be lost sight of that Fournal 
 and Christie have recorded the discovery of fragments 
 of pottery in caverns in the south of France, in mud 
 and breccia containing bones of man mingled with 
 those of extinct animals, among which are mentioned 
 the hyaena and rhinoceros. As the material had been 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 99 
 
 washed into these caves, we have no absolute certainty 
 that the association may not have been accidental. 
 Still the evidence is quite as good as that relied on 
 for the association of so-called Palaeolithic implements 
 with bones of extinct mammalia in river gravels and 
 in other caves filled by water driftage. Fragments 
 of pottery have also been found by Dr. Fraas in the 
 cave of Hohlefels, in Swabia, amidst the debris left 
 by a Palaeolithic people who fed on the cave bear, the 
 extinct rhinoceros, and the reindeer; and the vase 
 found in the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium, has already 
 been mentioned. The fragments of pottery found in 
 the debris from Kent's cave may perhaps be rejected 
 as uncertain. 
 
 The bill of fare of ancient Hochelaga was somewhat 
 varied. Bones are found of nearly all the wild mam- 
 mals of the country, and of many birds and fishes. 
 Those of the beaver, however, largely predominate, 
 and remains of the bear, more especially lower jaws, 
 are quite numerous. The dog seems to have been 
 used as food, and the variety kept was that small 
 breed seen among many Indian tribes, and sometimes 
 called the fox-dog. The dog was no doubt the only 
 domesticated animal. Grains of Indian corn are not 
 infrequent, and fragments of the charred ear are also 
 found. The variety cultivated was similar to the 
 smaller kinds of early corn now used in Canada. 
 More rare are cotyledons of the bean, Phaseolus 
 vulgaris. The specimens of these preserved are of 
 course only those which had been accidentally charred 
 
100 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 in the fire. In one spot was found a cache of charred 
 acorns, probably those of the white oak, which after 
 being buried in the ground for a time become edible. 
 Stones of the wild plum are very abundant, and it 
 has been observed that this tree grows abundantly on 
 the sites of most old Indian villages. The stones of 
 wild cherries and the shells of the butternut have also 
 been observed. All this fully accords with Carrier's 
 narrative and with those of the other early French 
 explorers, who inform us that while the semi-civilized 
 Indian tribes cultivated the ground, they also made 
 tributary to their use all the wild animals and fruits 
 of the country. It is instructive, however, to observe 
 how little remains to indicate the somewhat extensive 
 agriculture of these people, even in their central town, 
 while it is obvious that in the remains of their hunt- 
 ing encampments nothing would be preserved except 
 bones and weapons belonging to merely savage life. 
 
 One fragment obtained from a heap of kitchen 
 refuse suggests some strange questions. It is a por- 
 tion of the lower jaw of a human being, evidently 
 broken before being imbedded. It has belonged to a 
 very aged person, and from its size and proportions 
 probably a woman. It is also remarkable for the 
 narrowness and thickness of the bone, the smallness 
 of the chin, and the forward projection of the sockets 
 of the teeth. In these respects it more nearly re- 
 sembles the celebrated jaw described by Dupont from 
 the pre-historic cave of Naulette, in Belgium, than any 
 other I have seen. Is it an indication of cannibalism? 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 101 
 
 and if so, did it belong to a captive from some distant 
 and perhaps more barbarous tribe, or to an aged 
 woman slain to prevent the death of her relatives by 
 starvation ? Unhappily, instances parallel to both 
 of these are on record among the American tribes. 
 We read in. Champlain's narratives, of the bodies of 
 slain enemies cut up and carried off for triumphal 
 feasts, and even in more modern times there have 
 been instances of parties of roving Indians being 
 driven by the pangs of hunger to devour each other. 
 If such things occurred in Hochelaga, they must have 
 been rare, for this one bone alone raises the question. 
 Even it may admit of a different explanation. It may 
 have belonged to a victim of the final capture of the 
 town ; it may have been accidentally disinterred from 
 some old grave in digging the fire-hole of a new 
 lodge; it may be connected with the fact that the 
 Hochelagans had the custom, like our own heathen 
 ancestors, of using the skulls of their enemies for 
 vessels. Two examples have been found of human 
 parietal bones trimmed round the edges, evidently for 
 the purpose of being used as cups or bowls. One of 
 them has a hole pierced, probably for a means of sus- 
 pension, and may have been carried by some warrior 
 at once as a trophy of victory and as a drinking-cup. 
 The old races of the two hemispheres may claim 
 kinship in their cruelties and barbarisms, as well as in 
 higher traits. I believe, however, that no certain 
 instance is yet on record either of cannibalism or of 
 the use of human bones as implements or vessels 
 
102 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 among the men of the Mammoth age in Europe, so 
 that perhaps these are later practices of more de- 
 graded tribes. 
 
 In closing this chapter, let us reflect for a moment 
 on the picture which it presents. The apparently 
 flourishing town of Hochelaga, surrounded with its 
 fields, and probably for long ages the residence of a 
 settled and semi-civilized people, disappears suddenly 
 from view. In a century or less its site is covered 
 with a dense and tall young forest. This is cleared, 
 and again becomes cultivated fields, showing no trace 
 of former occupation. In three centuries the remains, 
 when disinterred, are veritable fossils; everything 
 perishable, even hair and the animal matter of bones, 
 has disappeared. Nothing remains but stone and 
 pottery and charcoal, and the mineral matter of bones, 
 which underground might remain unchanged for a 
 hundred centuries as well as for one. Nothing but 
 Carrier's visit of a few hours' duration prevents us 
 from being in a position to attach to these remains 
 the longer date with as much show of reason as the 
 shorter. 
 
 These considerations apply in various ways to the 
 interpretation of European pre-historic remains. First, 
 as to their antiquity. Owing to the entire disappear- 
 ance of Hochelaga, Car tier's narrative has actually 
 been discredited by some modern writers as a fiction, 
 and only the recent discovery of the remains of the 
 town he describes, has established its truth. But 
 Carrier's narrative alone enables us to fix the date of 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 103 
 
 the remains. Were it not for this, there was actually 
 nothing to prevent us from referring them to any 
 antiquity that any hypothesis as to their origin might 
 demand, even as far back as the emergence of the 
 bank of Post-pliocene sand, about 100 feet above 
 the level of the St. Lawrence, in which they are found, 
 from the sea of the Glacial age. Secondly, as to 
 their evidence of culture or barbarism. Though the 
 Hochelagans were an agricultural people, dwelling in 
 houses in a walled town, the indications of this are 
 so slight that they might easily have been overlooked, 
 while the abundant bones of wild animals might lead 
 us to suppose that we had to do merely with hunters, 
 and these undoubtedly of a Stone and Bone age, in 
 which some implements, at least, of the rudest type 
 were used. Yet these relics are those of a central 
 town. The indications left by the same people at 
 their occasional campiug-places, when on expeditions 
 to obtain fish, game, furs, or maple sap, would indicate 
 a far more primitive condition, and might be referred 
 to a still older date. 
 
 In the old world, the now celebrated lake-towns, or 
 Pfahlbauten, of Switzerland, present a type of civiliza- 
 tion near akin to that of Hochelaga, and like it for- 
 gotten until accidentally disinterred as recently as the 
 year 1854. They were laboriously and with some 
 engineering skill built on platforms over the water 
 supported on piles, originally by men with no better 
 implements than those of stone. They afforded a 
 comparatively secure retreat to simple and probably 
 
104 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 peaceful and industrious tribes, driven out of the 
 plains and lower river valleys by the encroachments 
 of wild and savage enemies, and obliged for safety 
 even to forsake the dry land and pitch their abodes 
 over the waters. When these lake villages were 
 accidentally burned, quantities of the property of the 
 inhabitants were lost in the waters, and have in 
 modern times been recovered by the diligent search 
 of antiquarians ; * attention having first been called 
 to these singular abodes by the unusually low state of 
 the water in the Swiss lakes in the year 1854. 
 
 The lake settlements were inhabited from an early 
 period of the Stone age down to the Roman period, 
 and it is not impossible that they furnished some part 
 of the Helvetian tribes with whom the Roman power 
 came into conflict in the time of Caesar. The earliest 
 sites belong to the Stone age, and the successive in- 
 troduction of bronze and iron can be distinctly traced 
 in their remains. It is possible, however, that a Stone 
 period continued in eastern Switzerland after bronze 
 had been introduced into the west, and there are suf- 
 ficient traces of bronze in the oldest of the villages to 
 show that elsewhere there must have been peoples 
 more advanced. In the Stone period the inhabitants 
 were already skilful builders, constructors of boats, 
 cultivators of grain and flax, weavers and potters. 
 They had domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs j 
 in which respect they were far in advance of the 
 village Indians of America. But like them they sub- 
 * More especially Dr. Keller. 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 105 
 
 sisted largely on fish and on wild animals, and laid 
 under contribution all the wild fruits of their country. 
 So far as known, their physical characteristics were 
 not materially different from those of the more modern 
 inhabitants of Switzerland. 
 
 Unlike the Hochelagans, these lake-dwellers dis- 
 appeared or changed their mode of life at so early 
 a period that no mention of them occurs in written 
 history, nor was it suspected that such remains existed 
 until they were accidentally discovered. Yet the fact 
 that their remains, submerged and covered with lake 
 mud, and in some instances with peat, were removed 
 from all destroying or disturbing agencies, has led to 
 their preservation and recovery in a more perfect 
 state than can be the case with similar villages built 
 on the land, which may have been contemporary with 
 them. Thus semi-civilized village-dwellers may have 
 lived in Europe before the dates of the lake habita- 
 tions, without our having any knowledge of their 
 existence. 
 
 The mode of life of these people was not without 
 example in America. Washington Irving has quoted 
 from the narrative of Amerigo Vespucci an account 
 of an Indian town named Coquibacoa, in the Bay of 
 Venezuela, which consisted of twenty large houses, 
 like bells in shape, and supported on piles driven into 
 the bottom of the lake-like bay. From a fancied 
 resemblance to Venice in these structures, the bay is 
 said to have received the name of Venezuela. The 
 debris of such a town would undoubtedly be in the 
 
106 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 main similar to that of the Swiss lake- villages. The 
 remarkable edifices of stone, no doubt of the nature 
 of communistic homes, or pueblos, found by the United 
 States surveyors of the Western Territories,* hung 
 like swallows' nests on the sides of almost inaccessible 
 cliffs and ravines, though different in detail, belong to 
 a condition of society akin to that of the lake-dwellers 
 of Europe, and dependant on the efforts of a weak or 
 peaceful people to escape the attacks of enemies, and 
 possibly also to secure more salubrious abodes. Habi- 
 tations built on piles existed in the time of Herodotus 
 on Lake Prasias, in Thrace, and it is believed that 
 some still exist there. f The same mode of building 
 was practised in ancient times in Ireland, Scotland, 
 and Italy, and it still exists in Borneo and elsewhere 
 in the Austral Islands. 
 
 On the one hand, it would scarcely be reasonable to 
 credit a practice of this kind to an instinct like that 
 of the beaver. On the other, it can scarcely have been 
 an invention communicated by one tribe to another. 
 It is more likely to have been a modification of the 
 primitive village communism suggested to the ingenuity 
 of man by special local wants or dangers, and carried 
 out in the same way by peoples widely separated geo- 
 graphically. 
 
 The facts above detailed may aid in the explanation 
 of what seems to be a village site in Europe of far 
 
 * " Bulletins of United States Geological Survey of the 
 Western Territories." 
 
 f Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times." 
 
THE REMAINS OP CITIES OP THE STONE AGE. 107 
 
 greater antiquity than the Swiss lake- villages, and 
 which may be a veritable " Palaeolithic " antediluvian 
 town. It occurs at Soloutre, near Macon, in eastern 
 France, and has given rise to much discussion and 
 controversy. As described by Messrs. De Ferry and 
 Arcelin, the site is a mound or hillock near a steep 
 rock or precipice. Judging from the great number 
 of hearths and heaps of refuse, it was obviously a place 
 of residence, and it was also a place of sepulture ; and 
 there is some reason to believe, from the distribution 
 of the materials, that it may have been enclosed, per- 
 haps by a palisade. The dead, mostly very aged 
 people and children, are buried in an extended position, 
 and always apparently in such relation to the hearths 
 or fire-places as to show that they were interred under 
 or over them. Either, therefore, these people, like 
 the Greenlanders, some South American tribes, and 
 Australians, buried their dead under their domestic 
 hearths, or like the ancient Canadians they built 
 funeral fires and held feasts for the dead over their 
 remains. But the most remarkable thing about this 
 village site is its relative antiquity, as indicated by 
 the animal remains found in it, which belong to that 
 Post-glacial time in which the land animals of Europe 
 were very different from those at present inhabiting 
 it. It would seem that these include the wild horse, 
 of which enormous numbers occur, the mammoth, the 
 cave-lion, the cave-bear, the saiga,* the cave-hyaena, 
 the wapiti, etc. Bones of some of these animals are 
 * An antelope still extant in Eastern Europe. 
 
108 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 actually found buried with the dead, and the others 
 mixed with the debris of cookery. The remains of 
 the horse are in such abundance, and the whole 
 skeleton is so often present, that it is inferred that 
 they were not killed in hunting like the other animals, 
 but that they must have been driven over the face of 
 the precipice behind the village in battues, or lassoed 
 and led home as captives,* or that they were actually 
 kept in herds as domesticated animals, and slaughtered 
 for food, as amongst the Tartar Khirgis at present. 
 The great depth of the beds of debris at Soloutre, and 
 their stratification in layers, indicate a long term of 
 residence, and it would seem that the remains of the 
 mammoth and other extinct animals extend through- 
 out the whole, and that only implements of stone and 
 bone occur, except in the mere surface soil. 
 
 If, as seems most probable, this remarkable deposit 
 at Soloutre indicates a truly Palaeocosmic f village, 
 it is probably the only instance of this kind extant ; 
 and it destroys utterly the pretension that the men of 
 the Mammoth age were an inferior race or ruder than 
 their successors in the later Stone age. Further, the 
 condition of the objects found carries with it no evi- 
 dence of that extreme antiquity often claimed for the 
 earlier Stone age, and its relations to neighbouring 
 river deposits do not indicate, according to some of 
 
 * It would seem, however, that this would necessitate that 
 he captors should be horsemen. 
 
 f This term was proposed as a substitute for Palaeolithic in 
 a previous publication of the author. 
 
THE REMAINS OF CITIES OF THE STONE AGE. 109 
 
 its explorers an age exceeding 7,000 or 8,000 years. 
 We are informed in the Book of Genesis, that in ante- 
 diluvian times, Jabal initiated the nomadic mode of 
 life. He was the father of those who dwell in tents. 
 This would seem to imply the domestication at that 
 period of some swift-footed beast of burden, probably 
 the horse or the ass. A tribe of such wandering 
 Jabalites might be expected to leave just such a 
 deposit as that of Soloutre. Thus we have here a 
 curious connection between this deposit and sacred 
 history. On the other hand, it has been remarked 
 that the most abundant "totem" engraved by 
 the " Palaeolithic ''* cave-men of France on their bone 
 implements is the horse ; and this would so far 
 connect these cave-men with such a station as So- 
 loutre. Lastly, many of the flint weapons of Soloutre 
 are of the Palgeolithic type characteristic of the river 
 gravels, and the bones found with them are the ani- 
 mals of the gravels ; while other implements and 
 weapons are as well worked as those of the later Stone 
 age.* Thus this singular deposit connects these two 
 so-called ages, and fuses them into one. But in doing 
 this, as explained above, and more fully illustrated in 
 subsequent chapters, it does precisely what a village 
 
 * Kecent discoveries by M. Prunieres in caves at Beaumes 
 Chaudes, seem to show that the older cave-men were in con- 
 tact with more advanced tribes, as arrow-heads of the so-called 
 Neolithic type are found sticking in their bones, or associated 
 with them. This would form another evidence of the little 
 value to be attached to the distinction of the two ages of 
 Stone. 
 
110 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 site might on American analogies be expected to do, as 
 compared with cave shelters and river gravels, where 
 only special remains, not showing the whole conditions 
 of a race, could be supposed likel v to occur. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 
 
 So much has recently been written on chipped and 
 worked flints, and their familiar forms appear in so 
 many popular works, that readers may well be tired 
 of the subject. I shall try, however, in the following 
 pages to avoid as much as possible its trite and hack- 
 neyed aspects. 
 
 As Nilsson well remarks in his excellent work on 
 the primitive inhabitants of Scandinavia, it is well to 
 begin the consideration of stone and bone implements 
 by examining the tools with which they were made. 
 Stone hammers at Hochelaga, aud generally through- 
 out pre-historic North America, were of three kinds : 
 (1) discs, (2) hand-hammers of elongated forms, (3) 
 handled hammers. From the latter the transition is 
 easy to the pogamaugan, or skull-cracker, and to the 
 tomahawk, or hatchet ; and it will be the easier to re- 
 member these uncouth words if we bear in mind the 
 affinity of the first to the Indo-European polce, pugme, 
 pugmiSf and Semitic paga, and that the latter is 
 derived from an Algonquin root (tern or turn — to cut) . 
 The same with the Greek Temno and, perhaps, Hebrew 
 Taman. These are at once mnemonic aids and exam- 
 ples of a vast number of widespread verbal analogies 
 
112 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 between the languages of Eastern America and Wes- 
 tern Asia and Europe, the nature of which may in the 
 sequel engage our attention. 
 
 Disc-hammers are in their rudest form merely flat 
 pebbles, suitable to be held in the hand, for driving 
 wedges or chisels, or for breaking stones, bones, or 
 nuts. In their more finished forms they are carefully 
 fashioned of quartzite or greenstone, with one side 
 convex and the other flat, or even slightly hollowed, 
 and the edge neatly and regularly trimmed. Stones 
 of this kind are found all over America on old Indian 
 sites, and are almost equally common in Europe ; and 
 there can be little doubt from the habits of the modern 
 Indians as to their ordinary uses. They were prob- 
 ably hammers, pounders, and polishers. Held with 
 the convex side in the palm of the hand, they could 
 be used to drive wooden stakes or to split wood with 
 stone chisels, or to crack nuts or to bruise grain and 
 fruits, or to grind paint on a flat stone. With sand 
 or earth they made efficient polishers for dressing 
 skins, and held edgewise they served to trim flint 
 weapons or to crack marrow- bones. One of these 
 hammers must therefore have been an indispensable 
 utensil in every household, and a well-made one of 
 durable stone may have been an heirloom handed 
 down for generations. 
 
 These hammers should not be confounded with the 
 stones having deep hollows in their sides, and which 
 were mortars for grinding pigments, or sockets for 
 fire-drills ; nor should they be confounded with the 
 
1MTLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE. 113 
 
 discs hollowed on both sides, and used for playing the 
 almost universal game of the Indians, which was to 
 them what croquet has recently been to us, and which 
 was named chuiike, or tshung-ke. The game was 
 played on a flat rectangular space of ground prepared 
 for the purpose, and often enclosed. It consisted in 
 one player rolling a disc along the ground, while 
 others tried to throw spears or poles in such a manner 
 as to be near to the disc when it came to a state of 
 rest. The chungke yards figure largely in old Indian 
 sites, especially in the south, and the stones are often 
 found. It would seem that both paint-mortars and 
 chungke-stones occur among pre-historic human re- 
 mains in Europe, even among those which belong to 
 the Palaeolithic period. Stones referable to these 
 uses are figured by Christy and Lartet, and by Nilsson 
 and by Keller. It is to be observed, however, that 
 among rude nations stone implements are often in 
 case of need applied to uses different from those for 
 which they were intended. Hence it would not be 
 wonderful if round hammers were sometimes used for 
 chungke stones, and the reverse. Stones with similar 
 hollows were also used as drill-stones, to obtain fire 
 by the rapid revolution of a wooden stake. In the 
 collection of Mr. Jones, of Brooklyn, I have lately 
 seen chungke discs of large size and most elaborately 
 cut in hard quartzite. The work of forming them 
 must have been that almost of a life-time ; perhaps it 
 was perfected in successive generations. 
 
 The second kind of hammer is of elongated form, 
 
 I 
 
114 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 round or oval in cross-section, and suited to be held 
 in the hand, though, perhaps, in some cases lashed to 
 a wooden handle. It much resembles the ordinary 
 stone axe or celt, but differs in having a blunt end, 
 indented with blows, instead of an edge. This 
 almond-shaped hammer was employed to chip stones, 
 to drive wedges, and to break nuts and bones. One 
 example from Hochelaga has a rough depression on 
 one side, which may have been produced by hammer- 
 ing wedges with the side instead of the end, or may 
 have been intended to give a better hold to the end of 
 the handle. Hammers precisely of this kind are found 
 in the caves of Perigord and in Sweden. The savages 
 of all countries seem to have discovered that dioritic 
 rocks, from the toughness of the crystals of hornblende 
 which they contain, are specially suited for the forma- 
 tion of these hammers, so that wherever greenstone 
 can be found it is employed. 
 
 The third and most artificial kind of stone hammer 
 is that with a groove around it, by means of which it 
 could be attached to a handle or slung upon a tough 
 withe. Such a hammer is sometimes merely an oval 
 pebble with a groove worked around it, but some ex- 
 amples, especially those of the old mound-builders, are 
 elaborately grooved and carefully shaped; and there 
 are some with two grooves, the working of which must 
 have cost much labour. Some specimens are so small 
 as to weigh only a few ounces, and one from the 
 ancient copper mines of Lake Superior, now in the 
 museum of the Geological Survey of Canada, is 11| 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 115 
 
 inches long, and weighs more than 251bs. The larger 
 end of it has been much bruised and broken, and it 
 was evidently a miner's sledge-hammer. Grooved 
 stones of this kind occur on pre-historic sites in 
 Europe, though they have sometimes been regarded 
 as plummets or sling-stones. In America similarly- 
 grooved pebbles are often found in circumstances 
 which lead to the belief that they have been sinkers 
 for nets. These are, however, usually of stone too 
 soft to have been used for hammers, and have no 
 marks of use on the ends. The ordinary sinker for 
 lines and nets is, however, on both sides of the Atlantic 
 a pear-shaped or drop-shaped stone, with a groove for 
 the line at the sharp end. 
 
 Sling- stones, properly so called, we probably have 
 not in North America ; but there are two kinds of 
 stones used as weapons, and which resemble what 
 have been regarded as sling-stones in Europe. The 
 first is grooved, and fastened to a cord the other end 
 of which is attached to the right arm. This stone, 
 Carver tells us, was used as a weapon with deadly 
 effect by certain tribes west of the Mississippi. The 
 other was a sort of slung-shot. As described by 
 Lewis and Clarke, and as appears from specimens in 
 collections, it is a pear-shaped stone, sheathed in 
 leather or hide, and attached by a thong two inches 
 long to a stout handle, with a second thong by which 
 it can be fastened to the wrist. Champlain found a 
 similar weapon in use among the nations of Western 
 Canada, and stones of this kind are used by the South 
 
116 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Sea Islanders. I have a very fine one of calcareous 
 spar from the New Hebrides, and very neatly formed 
 and effective specimens made of heavy iron ore are 
 found on American Indian sites. They occur also 
 among the relics of the Stone age in Scandinavia. If 
 slings properly so-called were used by European pre- 
 historic men, it is likely that, like David of old, they 
 contented themselves with smooth stones from the 
 brook, and did not waste their labour in shaping 
 round stones to be lost the first time they were 
 thrown. The American Indians were, however, in 
 the habit of heaping stones in the inside of their forts 
 to be thrown at their enemies either by hand or by a 
 sling, and it has been suggested that some of the 
 heaps of chipped flints noticed by Foster and by 
 Squier as found in Ohio and Illinois may have been 
 collected for this purpose, though it is perhaps more 
 likely that they were magazines of unfinished wea- 
 pons. 
 
 One implement of the Flint age which has recently 
 attracted much attention, and which has been elabo- 
 rately discussed in the beautiful work of Messrs. 
 Lartet and Christy, is the pogamaugan, or striker, 
 an absolutely universal weapon of the rude hunter 
 and warrior in all ages and countries. One of its 
 earliest forms is that of an antler trimmed into the 
 shape of a sort of pick or hammer, and this, still in 
 use among the Western Indians, occurs under pre- 
 cisely the same form in the cave deposits of the 
 Reindeer period in France. The primitive hunter 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 117 
 
 well knows the effective use of the antler by the deer 
 at bay, and nothing is more natural than that he 
 should adapt this weapon to his own use, so that 
 perhaps the antler is the oldest of all strikers or war- 
 clubs. But the implement has other forms. A stick 
 with a clubbed end was a usual form in America, and 
 corresponds to the waddy so effectively used by the 
 natives of Tasmania and other Austral savages. This 
 was rendered more deadly by a sharp bone or antler, 
 or a chipped flint, firmly socketed in the wood and 
 bound with thongs. Sometimes a row of flints was 
 set along the edge of the handle, as described by 
 Captain Gray in the case of Australian savages, and 
 a saw-edged sword of this kind used by the Mexican 
 tribes, and fitted with very Palaeolithic obsidian or 
 flint blades, was much dreaded by the early Spanish 
 adventurers. Schoolcraft and Catlin figure many 
 strange and grotesque forms of these weapons, and 
 they abound in museums. Those of a more modern 
 date have a metal blade instead of a sharp stone. If 
 the so-called Palaeolithic axes of Western Europe were 
 used as weapons in the state in which they are now 
 found, they must have been handled in this way, by 
 being attached with thongs or cement to pieces of 
 wood or of bone. 
 
 To this class of weapons undoubtedly belong most 
 of those strangely- shaped stone axes and picks, with 
 a socket for a small handle, which are found in primi- 
 tive graves both in the Old and New World (Fig. 24) . 
 They are generally of so small size and weight, and 
 
118 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the socket for the handle of so small diameter, that 
 antiquaries are disposed to regard them as ornaments, 
 or " batons of command/' or sceptres, rather than as 
 weapons. And this impression is strengthened by the 
 fact that they are sometimes made of comparatively 
 soft stone. In most cases, however, they were prob- 
 ably made for actual use in striking men or animals, 
 except where they were intended as mere models of 
 weapons to be buried with the dead or offered in 
 
 Fig. 2i. 
 
 sacrifice. The theory of the implement is that it 
 enables the blow of the arm to be delivered on a 
 limited spot, so as to pierce or fracture the skull of an 
 enemy or a wild animal. For this purpose the wea- 
 pon does not need to be large or heavy. On the con- 
 trary, lightness is necessary to portability, and to that 
 rapidity of stroke which is everything in combat and 
 in hunting. Hence many of the American pogamau- 
 gans and tomahawks are so small and light as not to 
 appear at all formidable ; but, guided by a quick eye 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE. 119 
 
 and wielded by a rapid hand, they were really most 
 deadly weapons, and they were often thrown with 
 great precision and effect. Champlain has depicted a 
 Huron warrior armed for the fight, his small war- 
 hatchet contrasting strangely with his great shield 
 and long bow. To the light and agile Indian or his 
 European prototype, the heavy mace of a mediaeval 
 warrior would have been as great an incumbrance 
 as his ponderous coat of mail. On this subject an 
 interesting letter from Mr. Anderson, published in 
 the " Reliquias Aquitanica3," well deserves perusal. 
 Among other facts, he mentions that a small skull- 
 cracker is carried by the Western Indians in their 
 canoes to kill fish when caught. Specimens of them, 
 recently obtained by Dr. G. M. Dawson in the Queen 
 Charlotte Islands, are so elaborately and elegantly 
 carved that they might be regarded as sceptres, 
 though intended for no more noble use than that of 
 killing halibut or seals. The European aborigines 
 who speared or angled for large fish would have 
 equally needed such weapons ; and it is not unlikely 
 that some of the elaborately carved objects from the 
 French caves, dignified with the name of u batons of 
 command/'' are nothing else than fish-clubs or skull- 
 crackers. 
 
 While on this subject, it may be as well to remark 
 that it is a mistake to suppose that heavy stone axes 
 or large spears would be required to slay such large 
 game as the urus, the woolly rhinoceros, or the mam- 
 moth. The American hunter for such purposes used 
 
120 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the arrow and the javelin, and his object was to have 
 these as sharp and slender as possible, that, urged 
 with the bow or from the arm, they might pierce the 
 vital parts of the animal. We read in the narratives 
 of the early adventurers in America of the rapidity 
 and accuracy with which the Indian could launch his 
 arrows or javelins. Slender arrows of cane, with 
 points hardened in the fire or tipped with small 
 flints or pointed bones, were thrown with such force 
 that they have been known to pierce through the 
 body of a horse or a buffalo from side to side. I 
 have seen the war-arrows of a Western Indian which 
 had actually been used in fight with Europeans armed 
 with firearms, and which were tipped with thin flints 
 less than an inch long and half an inch wide. If the 
 aborginal European really derived any considerable 
 part of his subsistence from very large animals, we 
 may be assured that he did not kill them with stone 
 celts or huge hatchets and so-called spears of chipped 
 flink, but with points as small as those of the smallest 
 flint flakes or bone javelins ; and he probably pursued 
 these animals, like the American Indian, during win- 
 ter, when their action was impeded by the deep snow. 
 We also learn from American examples that a very 
 rude chipped flint may be fitted into an elaborately 
 ornamented handle or shaft, and when the latter has 
 perished by decay, the flint may afford a very imper- 
 fect idea of the skill of the artificer. 
 
 The most primitive of all cutting instruments of 
 stones are flakes chipped or pressed from quartzite, 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE. 121 
 
 jasper, agate, chert, or flint, any of which stones will 
 serve the purpose, and used at once without any other 
 preparation. Such flakes occur in millions in the old 
 European caves and kitchen-middens, in the vicinity 
 of the chalk districts, where excellent flint nodules are 
 so abundant that the old savages could be prodigal 
 of knives. They are also very abundant on ancient 
 Indian sites in America, though it is often impossible 
 to distinguish those intended for use from those 
 thrown away in the preparation of more elaborate 
 chipped implements. Nor can they always be dis- 
 tinguished from the chips broken by frost from 
 siliceous rocks untouched by human hands. Such 
 flakes, while the first, are probably also the last, stone 
 implements used by man. The Mexican barbers at 
 the time of the conquest shaved their customers with 
 such flakes, and the old Egyptians and Jews used 
 them in surgical operations at a time when their 
 general civilization had attained to a very high pitch 
 of advancement. 
 
 But flint is susceptible of much higher uses. Chip- 
 ped by the skilful hand of the practised arrow-maker, 
 it took the form of triangular, tanged, and leaf-shaped 
 arrows and spears, of saws and knives. The forms of 
 these are of the same plan throughout America with 
 very little variation, and these forms are those also of 
 Europe — so much so that a tray filled with European 
 arrrow-heads cannot be distinguished from a tray of 
 American ones. It will be quite unnecessary, there- 
 fore, to enter into any description of them. I may 
 
122 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 content myself with noticing a few points known as to 
 America which may help to explain European facts. 
 
 One of these is as to the mode of their manufacture. 
 Some persons seem to think that when a certain stage 
 of civilization or semi-barbarism had been attained, 
 any one could make neat flint arrows and spears. This 
 is a great mistake. Alike in the ruder and more ad- 
 vanced American tribes, there were professional arrow- 
 makers, whose skill was acknowledged often over wide 
 districts. In pre-historic times, also, the tribes inhab- 
 iting the mountains and rocky districts were especially 
 arrow-makers, and traded the produce of their skill 
 with the tribes of the plains and valleys. We are 
 even told that the travelling merchants of flint 
 weapons were privileged persons, allowed to go from 
 tribe to tribe without molestation. No doubt, any one 
 could in an emergency manage to tip an arrow in some 
 way, but it required long practice to make well-shaped 
 arrow-heads, and it was not every district that could 
 afford the best material for their manufacture. In 
 some modes of making them, indeed, it required two 
 skilled persons, one to hold the stone, the other to 
 strike off small pieces with rapid and dexterous blows 
 of a hammer and chisel. 
 
 It results from this that the rudeness or skill of the 
 manufacture of flint weapons may be no test of age. 
 One tribe had often more skilful makers or better 
 material than others, and a party out on a hunting or 
 military expedition might be reduced to the necessity 
 of making arrows under disadvantageous circum- 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 123 
 
 stances. Hence in the same sites very different kinds 
 of arrow-heads may be found. Thus it happens that 
 on the old Indian sites arrow-heads of the most varied 
 character are found, and that when we succeed in dis- 
 covering the places where arrows were made, we find 
 that various and often distant places had been resorted 
 to for the material of the manufacture. A conclusive 
 evidence of the contemporaneous use of so-called 
 
 Fig. 25.— Sxone Abbow-heads, Modebn. (From Hopkins Island, Canada.) 
 
 Palaeolithic and Neolithic weapons appears to be 
 afforded by the caverns of Beaumes Chaudes, in France, 
 where skeletons of the old type of cave-men are found 
 under circumstances which show that they were slain 
 with arrows of small size and neatly made, portions of 
 which are found actually imbedded in their bones. 
 Thus the " Neolithic " men of Europe must have 
 fought with the " Palaeolithic," a fact which American 
 analogies would quite prepare us to expect. In illus- 
 
124 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 tration of this I have before me three Canadian arrow- 
 heads from the collection of a friend (Fig. 25). They 
 are of two types, the long and short, and are made of 
 similar kinds of dark quartzite. They are from Hop- 
 kins Island, in the St. Lawrence, a place to which the 
 Indians resorted in pursuit of wild fowl, in killing 
 which these arrows, larger than those commonly em- 
 ployed in war, were probably used. These specimens 
 were selected from a large number, showing all sorts 
 of gradations from the rudest to the most perfect, and 
 yet all probably made and used by the same tribes at 
 the same time and in the same circumstances. The 
 southern Indians are shown by Jones to have used 
 large arrow-heads with chisel-shaped ends for striking 
 off the heads of small birds, and some of their arrow- 
 heads which at first sight seem rude and misshapen 
 are found to have been bevelled with opposite slopes 
 on the sides, so as to give a rotatory motion, consti- 
 tuting as it were rifled arrows. 
 
 In America the rudest of all rude implements, 
 similar to the Palaeolithic type of the European 
 archaeologists, were used not by the ruder tribes but 
 by the more settled and civilized agricultural nations. 
 They are found most abundantly in the river valleys 
 occupied by the southern tribes of the United States, 
 and in the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio. It is 
 the opinion of most American archaeologists that 
 they were hoes or spades, and this is probably the 
 most rational explanation of their use. The more 
 civilized American tribes, from the gulf of Mexico to 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 125 
 
 the valley of the St. Lawrence, were agriculturists, 
 
 and their culture of maize, beans, pumpkins, and 
 
 tobacco, was all carried on by manual labour, with 
 
 hoes made of wood, or headed with bone, shell, or 
 
 stone, which were used in great numbers in the 
 
 spring, and then cast away or laid by in heaps, or 
 
 buried in the ground until again required. Hunting 
 
 tribes had no need of such tools. Even the more 
 
 highly civilized nations of the Mississippi valley, who 
 
 possessed copper implements, and were skilful artists 
 
 in many ways, have left behind them vast numbers 
 
 of rudely-chipped discs and flat flints, probably used 
 
 in their agriculture.* They are found in caches, or 
 
 deposits of many together, as if quantities were used 
 
 at one time. This would agree with the idea of 
 
 their agricultural use. They would be prepared in 
 
 large quantities for the planting time, when the whole 
 
 tribe mustered, like the South Africans described by 
 
 Livingstone, to till their fields ; and when the work 
 
 was over they would be gathered and hidden in some 
 
 safe place till the next season, or perhaps buried as 
 
 an offering to the god of the harvest. Abbott, in his 
 
 " Stone Age in New Jersey/' figures one example 
 
 found with 149 others in a ploughed field. They 
 
 were buried in the ground with the points up, and 
 
 he remarks that such implements are not met with 
 
 * Kau, " Smithsonian Eeport for 1868," describes several 
 forms of stone hoes ; some having notches for attachment to 
 a handle, others oval in form. Thin, flat, sharp-edged stones 
 of various forms, found on old Indian sites, may often have 
 been agricultural implements. 
 
125 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 singly j like arrows, hatchets, and other weapons. In 
 the museum of the Historical Society of Brooklyn I 
 saw a hoe similar to those described by Abbott, and 
 which had like them been found with many others 
 arranged in a circle under the ground ; and Mr. Jones, 
 of the same city, the author of an excellent work on 
 the antiquities of the Southern Indians, showed me 
 some of these hoes with the edges evidently worn by 
 use, and pointed out to me that Carver refers to the 
 care and secrecy with which the Indians were in the 
 habit of hiding their stores of stone implements and 
 weapons. Squier describes large deposits of these 
 in Ohio. He also states that at a place called Flint 
 Rid^e, in the same state, where certain concretions of 
 chert suitable for these implements are found, count- 
 less pits, dug for these flints, occur for many miles. 
 These excavations are often ten or fourteen feet deep, 
 and acres in extent. 
 
 In connection with this, it is be observed that in 
 localities where flint weapons or implements were 
 fabricated, great quantities of imperfectly made speci- 
 mens were left behind, as well as of chips. Further, 
 it was a well-known practice of American tribes to 
 carry off from the quarries roughly-shaped implements, 
 to be afterwards more carefully shaped at leisure. 
 These facts may account for many deposits of so-called 
 Palaeolithic weapons, as well as for the occurrence of 
 so-called " transition M deposits, in which imperfectly 
 and well made flint objects are found mixed together, 
 as in the celebrated pre-historic flint mines of Cissbury, 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 127 
 
 in England. In one of the mounds of Ohio, Sqnier 
 and Davis discovered an immense number of rudely- 
 shaped flint discs placed on end. They are on the 
 average six inches in length, and weigh about two 
 pounds each. They are evidently unfinished imple- 
 ments, and Rau regards this as a depot or magazine 
 from which supplies of flint could be obtained as re- 
 quired, and where the material could be kept damp, 
 so that it might be the more easily chipped. 
 
 A somewhat similar place is described by Leidy in 
 a recent report on the geology of the Western Terri- 
 tories. It is at the base of the Uintah Hills, in Wyom- 
 ing, where vast quantities of jasper, agate, and other 
 stones suitable for implements, have been swept down 
 upon the plain. Immense numbers of these have 
 been chipped and broken into angular fragments, 
 whether by art or nature does not seem evident ; but 
 from the number of arrow-heads and other definitely- 
 formed objects, it is evident that the place was for 
 ages resorted to as a quarry and manufactory. Nor 
 need we wonder at this when we consider the dense 
 agricultural population evidenced by the mounds and 
 earthworks of the old Alleghans in all the alluvial 
 plains of the West, and that thousands of industrious 
 flint-chippers and migratory traders must have been 
 constantly employed in working the agates and jas- 
 pers of the hills, and transporting them to the towns 
 and villages of the plains, where they are still found 
 in great numbers. 
 
 I suggested many years ago, when writing of a visit 
 
128 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 to the celebrated gravel-pits of St. Acheul, tliat these 
 may have been worked in pre-historic times like the 
 American flint-beds, and I find that Mr. Belgrand, in 
 his recent report on the Paris Basin, which solves 
 so many difficulties as to the French river gravels, 
 regards these beds, and also those of Hoxne in Eng- 
 land, as sites of manufactories of implements, though 
 he thinks the manufacture was carried on when the 
 water flowed at the height of these gravels. Rau has 
 described in the Smithsonian Reports hoes from 
 Illinois 1\ inches long and 6 inches broad, neatly 
 chipped, and with two notches in the upper part for 
 the attachment of a handle. Foster has figured two 
 specimens from the same State, of rude form and 
 without notches. One of them is no less than 13 
 inches long. They show in the lower part an abrasion 
 attributable to long use in digging. Many of these 
 American hoes, of the ruder forms first mentioned, 
 are scarcely distinguishable from the broader styles 
 of so-called Palaeolithic implements found in Europe, 
 while there is a sharper and narrower European type 
 sometimes also found in America, and which may 
 have been used as a pick rather than a hoe. It is 
 quite true that in our ignorance, born of too great 
 civilization, it is often difficult for us to distinguish 
 hoes from spears, tomahawks, or scrapers ; but this 
 renders all the more futile any attempt to assign these 
 to distinct ages from one another, or from more 
 polished implements. In any case, American ana- 
 logies would lead us to refer some of the larger forms 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 129 
 
 of Palaeolithic chipped implements to agricultural popu- 
 lations, and we should expect to find such imple- 
 ments in great numbers in the vicinity of alluvial 
 grounds or near to river valleys, and unmixed with 
 the household utensils and weapons of war and hunt- 
 ing, which might remain in connection with habita- 
 tions or fortresses. Their abundance in the European 
 river gravels gives countenance to the supposition that 
 in Europe, as in America, the earliest pre-historic 
 peoples were agricultural, though there may, no doubt, 
 have been contemporary hunting tribes in the districts 
 less suited for cultivation. 
 
 In connection with these facts, it may be pertinent 
 to inquire whether we have formed any definite con- 
 ceptions of the habits and implements of the dense 
 agricultural populations implied in the narrative of 
 the antediluvian period in Genesis. Had they domes- 
 ticated the horse or ox to plough their fields, or was 
 all done by manual labour, as in America? Is it 
 likely that they possessed metallic tools in sufficient 
 quantity for agricultural use, even after the date, the 
 seventh generation from Adam, assigned to the dis- 
 covery of the metals ? Is it not likely that their agri- 
 culture was carried on principally with primitive stone 
 hoes? If so, we may expect to find in the river 
 valleys of Western Asia vastly greater quantities of 
 Palaeolithic flints than those which the gravels of 
 Europe have afforded, and it would not be wonderful 
 if millions of these rude implements should be re- 
 covered without our meeting with any other evidence 
 
 K 
 
130 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of civilization or of human agency. There must also 
 have been quarries and excavations of great magni- 
 tude, out of which the demand for flints among this 
 primitive population was supplied. It is much to be 
 desired, in the interest alike of scientific and biblical 
 archaeology, that thorough explorations should be 
 made of those lands which are historically the cradle of 
 our species, to ascertain what traces remain of the pre- 
 historic people who must have swarmed on the table- 
 lands and river valleys of Asia, before they were swept 
 away by the diluvial catastrophe which is recorded 
 alike in the pages of Moses and the clay tablets of 
 Assyria, and the dread memory of which survives in 
 the traditions of nearly every family of mankind. It 
 is well known that all over Asia and Northern Africa 
 implements and weapons of chipped flint were used 
 in historic times along with those of metal ; but it is 
 doubtful if we know anything of the antediluvian 
 agricultural populations. American analogies would 
 lead us to suppose that their only remaining traces 
 might be the roughly-chipped flints which they 
 probably used in cultivating the soil. Should these 
 be found, however, they would be assumed by most 
 archaeologists to be the implements of a rude and 
 savage race, scarcely elevated above the brutes. 
 
 Chipped- stone scrapers, knives, and borers exist 
 among the American tribes, of similar patterns to 
 those of pre-historic Europe; but we must now 
 pass on to the polished stone implements made of 
 quartzite, diorite, and other hard rocks. Those in 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 131 
 
 America do not belong to a different age from those 
 of chipped flint, nor is it conceivable that they could 
 have done so. The makers of chipped implements 
 must have possessed at least stone hammers ; and in 
 districts where cleavable flints could not be found, 
 the primitive men must have had recourse to other 
 stones; and the use of the teeth, antlers, and horns 
 of animals must from the first have led to imitations 
 in stone and bone. In the oldest cavern deposits of 
 Europe there is abundant evidence of the use of teeth 
 and antlers as cutting implements, and it is absurd 
 to suppose that the men who made the bone spears 
 and other implements of Kent's Cave and the French 
 caves could not, if necessary, have made implements 
 of polished stone. If they did not do so, it was 
 because they lived in a region where the abundant 
 supply of excellent flint rendered unnecessary the 
 laborious operation of polishing fragments of more 
 refractory stones. Axes, chisels, and celts of polished 
 stone run in parallel series to the hammers already 
 mentioned; corresponding to the grooved hammers 
 we have grooved axes. The hand hammers have 
 correspondingly shaped celts and chisels, and the 
 hammers with handle holes have their correspond- 
 ing " Amazon axes," as they have been called in 
 Europe. 
 
 I shall here merely make a few remarks on one or 
 two of the kinds. The chisels show in their broken 
 and battered heads the marks of the hammers with 
 which they were driven in splitting wood. The axes 
 
132 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 for handling, on the other hand, are smooth and some- 
 times pointed at the top, or have a groove or grooves 
 worked round them to give a more firm attachment by 
 thongs or withes. In most cases the stone axe has 
 not been furnished with a socket, but was fastened 
 into a hole or cleft in the handle, or was merely tied 
 to it with thongs. Those with holes or sockets were 
 usually small, elaborately worked, and often made of 
 soft kinds of stone. There is no good reason, how- 
 ever, to believe that they were merely ornamental. 
 They were, no doubt, unsuited for cleaving wood, but 
 they could as already explained, be used as toma- 
 hawks for killing fish and small animals, or even in 
 war, and the Indian had the art of throwing them 
 with great force and precision. They were, in short, 
 to the American what the boomerang is to the 
 Australian. Sir John Lubbock conjectures that such 
 axes were not used till after metallic tools were in- 
 troduced ; but this will not apply to America. 
 
 The hollow chisel, or gouge, is a very common im- 
 plement among the Northern Indians, but less com- 
 mon apparently in the south. It was always long, 
 smooth, and often broken by hammering at the upper 
 end ; but some specimens have the upper end worked 
 into a sharp edge. Like the hoes already referred 
 to, these chisels are often found in groups or nests, 
 indicating that they were used by parties or companies 
 of people. This accords with the prevalent belief 
 already mentioned, that they were the implements for 
 tapping the maple-tree in spring to extract its sap. 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 133 
 
 This seems to have been universally used among the 
 Northern Indians, and is highly valued as the first and 
 most delicious gift of nature in the opening of spring. 
 In the east the sugar maple and white maple are 
 tapped, and in the west the allied Negnndo, or ash- 
 leaved maple. The juice was then boiled into syrup, 
 but Charlevoix states that among the Canadian Indians 
 at least, it was not crystallized into sugar until after 
 the arrival of the Europeans. 
 
 In Europe these gouges are supposed to have been 
 used for hollowing canoes, but it is precisely in those 
 regions in America where bark canoes, and not those 
 of hollow logs, were used, that these hollow chisels 
 most abound. In some cases also, the hollow is cut 
 the whole length of the chisel, so that it forms a 
 spout which might be used to collect the sap as well 
 as to make the incision. These gouges were, how- 
 ever, probably used to hollow wooden troughs to 
 contain the juice, an operation which the modern 
 backwoodsman performs with an adze or a chisel. 
 The modern Scandinavians make sugar or syrup from 
 the birch, and as, according to Nilsson, the hollow 
 gouges of that country are found in nests or groups, 
 they may mark the sites of sugar camps. In that 
 country, however, it is probable that canoes were prin- 
 cipally made from trunks of trees, and the Polynesians 
 who used hollow stone chisels, must have employed 
 them in making such canoes. No hollow chisels ap- 
 pear as yet to have been found in connection with so- 
 called Palaeolithic remains, so that we do not know 
 
134 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 whether the oldest European tribes tapped trees or 
 dug out troughs or canoes. Still, as these hollow 
 chisels, if they existed, would be found by themselves 
 and not associated with chipped implements, the in- 
 veterate prejudice which regards polished and chipped 
 implements as of different ages would probably dis- 
 sociate them from the contemporary remains. 
 
 Bone was extensively used in America as in Europe, 
 for a great variety of purposes, but the perishable 
 nature of bone implements causes them to be difficult 
 of recovery even from sites so modern comparatively 
 as that of Hochelaga. Fortunately, however, some of 
 these implements may still be found in use among 
 our western tribes. The American bone fish-spear or 
 harpoon is constructed on the same plan with that 
 of pre-historic Europe, and the visitor to the British 
 Museum may see bone harpoons from the caves of the 
 reindeer folk in France, so like those in the same col- 
 lection from Greenland and Terra del Fuego that all 
 might have come from the same workshop. As Eau 
 has pointed out, they have even the little grooves 
 cut in the barbs to allow the blood of the wounded 
 animal more readily to flow, a requirement not found 
 in some of the American harpoons, or in those of more 
 modern times, though attended to in the arrow-shafts 
 of the Plain Indians who hunt the buffalo. The fish- 
 spear was always an important means of subsistence 
 with the American savage. In the south large fish 
 were killed with spears made of canes, with the point 
 sharpened and hardened in the fire. In the north 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE. 135 
 
 barbed bone spears were used, and also little un- 
 barbed bones with two elastic pieces of wood at the 
 sides to hold the body of the fish between them when 
 pierced with the spear. Even in winter the Indian cuts 
 a hole through the ice, and sitting beside it spears 
 the fish that are attracted by the light. Pointed bone 
 implements, explicable as spears, arrow-heads, bod- 
 kins, piercers, and potters' stamps, are not uncommon 
 in the kitchen-middens of old Hochelaga, though often 
 
 Fig. 26. — Bone Needle and Spears, Hochi laga. 
 
 softened and impaired by decay. Their appearance 
 may be learned from the figures which I give of a few 
 of them, and which will recall the pre- historic European 
 bone implements which the reader may have seen either 
 in museums, or figured in books, and many of which date 
 back to the oldest deposits in caves of the Mammoth 
 age. The simplest form of spear is that with notches 
 along one side, though even this implies some thought 
 and skill in the arrangement of its barbs, and the plan 
 of these seems to have been nearly alike in all times 
 
136 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 and places. I figure in illustration (Fig. 27) four 
 examples : one modern, from Terra del Fuego ; three 
 ancient, from Nova Scotia, from Denmark, and from 
 Kent's Cave in Devonshire. All of them were pro- 
 bably used for capturing fish. 
 
 One very neat little bone implement found at 
 Hochelaga has on one end a round stamp to make 
 rings on pottery, while the other end is pointed, and 
 may have been used for drawing lines. Others art 
 explained, by the habits of the modern tribes, as needles 
 for weaving snow-shoes, and others are similar to the 
 piercers to this day used by the Northern Indians ifi 
 making holes for the watep, or cord of spruce or larch 
 roots, used for stitching together the birch-bark of 
 their canoes. Instruments very similar to these are 
 figured by Lartet and Christy from the French caves, 
 and by Dupont from those of Belgium. 
 
 The ancient pre-historic people of France and Bel- 
 gium made, according to Lartet and Dupont, very 
 neat and serviceable sewing-needles of bone, and 
 similar, though coarse, needles were used in Canada. 
 One of them in my collection from Hochelaga is 
 flattened and bent like the collar-needles used by 
 saddlers, and has an eye large enough to receive 
 pack-thread (fig. 26). It may have been used in 
 sewing skin garments with sinews of deer. We can 
 easily imagine the surprise of women accustomed to 
 such rough handiwork when they were first introduced 
 to the French fashions of those days, as seen on 
 the persons of Cartier and his gentleman volunteers. 
 

138 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 They crowded around them, touched their garments, 
 and wept, as he says, for joy, but perhaps merely 
 because they were thoroughly overcome by the con- 
 templation of such rare and inimitable woman's work, 
 the like of which they had not seen, nor had they 
 heard of such things excepb in the vague and uncertain 
 rumours of the cotton-clad Mexicans and mound- 
 builders, which may have reached the valley of the 
 St. Lawrence. Bone needles much finer than those 
 above figured were used by the Esquimaux, and 
 also by the American Indians. They abound in the 
 caves of the "Reindeer period" in France, and that 
 they were used in the still earlier u Mammoth age " 
 seems to be proved by the discovery by Dr. Riviere of 
 needles in the Mentone Cave, and also by the character 
 of the ornamental head-dress of the Mentone skeleton, 
 Pengelly has also described a needle from below the 
 upper stalagmite of Kent's Cave, belonging therefore 
 to the period of the cave hyaena and mammoth. He 
 regards it as too delicate to pierce the skins of 
 animals, but forgets that the skins sewed with it may 
 have been those of small fur-bearing quadrupeds, or 
 that it may have been used for embroidering with hair 
 or with vegetable fibres. We shall find, however, in 
 the sequel, reason to believe that by the ancient 
 Europeans, as well as by the Americans, they were 
 used to sew skin bags made to hold pemmican or 
 preserved meat, and that this may account for their 
 association with cracked bones in the caves. Their 
 use among the Americans was not only to sew to- 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 139 
 
 gether their skin garments with the sinews of the 
 deer, but to embroider them with patterns, and to 
 attach to them the beads and perforated shells with 
 which they were ornamented. They were also used 
 in making nets, and in weaving the network of snow- 
 shoes. There is no reason as yet to believe that 
 the earlier pre-historic peoples of Europe could make 
 textile fabrics. These appear for the first time in the 
 Swiss lake-habitations, but there are figures of human 
 arms apparently with embroidered sleeves, in Lartet 
 and Christy's collections, and which are sufficient to 
 show the same love of needlework which is observed 
 among the modern Esquimaux and Indians, and which 
 was so conspicuous among all early historic nations 
 of the Old World. If the people of the Mammoth 
 age already practised the art of embroidery, this fact 
 would imply the careful tanning of skins, the manu- 
 facture of needles, the preparation of thread from 
 animal or vegetable fibres, and probably some know- 
 ledge of vegetable dye-stuffs ; and some proficiency in 
 all these arts is so widely diffused that there seems no 
 improbability in their being even thus ancient. 
 
 According to Cartier, the most valuable of all the 
 possessions of the people of Canada and Hochelaga 
 was that which they called "Esurguy/' the same 
 known more familiarly to us by its New England name 
 of " wampum." The great original wampum of 
 America was probably that which still stands at the 
 head of all kinds of beads, the pearl, which seems to 
 have been collected by the Southern Indians, and is 
 
140 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 mentioned by the early Spanish adventurers as an 
 abundant and valued possession of the chiefs. Next 
 to this came polished and perforated pieces of the 
 shell of the pearl oyster and of other shells. The 
 solid columella of the great Strombus, and other large 
 univalves, was used by the Indians of the south. The 
 New England Indians used the hard shell of the 
 "Quahog" (Venus rnercenaria), the purple spot at the 
 posterior end of the shell forming the more precious 
 blue wampum. The more northern coast tribes some- 
 times used the shells of the great Clam [Mactra 
 solidissima). The inland nations purchased wampum 
 from those of the coast, and, like the Coast Indians, 
 they used small shells perforated with holes. The 
 wampum of the Iroquois, and also of the Hoche- 
 lagans, was made of freshwater univalves, probably the 
 Melania. They also ground into perforated discs for 
 beads the pearly shells of freshwater Unios. The 
 Indians of the west coast use the long tubular shells 
 of the Dentalium. Copper beads and long bugles 
 were worked out of the native metal, and a cheaper 
 kind of bead was made of clay, moulded into orna- 
 mental discs and baked. (Fig. 28.) Whatever the 
 form or material, wampum was in universal use for 
 ornament or dress, and as necklaces, bracelets, and 
 anklets, both among men and women. It was also a 
 medium of exchange, and was buried with the dead 
 as a possession valuable even in the world of spirits. 
 Cham plain informs us that the Huron girls accumu- 
 lated strings of wampum for their dowry, and lavishly 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OP THE STONE AGE. 141 
 
 adorned themselves with it on occasions of festivity. 
 In another chapter I have reproduced (P. 156), in 
 illustration of this, his drawing of a Huron belle 
 dressed for a dance. 
 
 That it was carried to great distances is shown 
 by the discovery of tropical shells far to the north, 
 in the interior of America. I have seen the remains 
 of a necklace found in a grave at Brockville, on the 
 St. Lawrence, composed in part of shells of Purpura 
 lapillus from the distant coast of New England, and 
 in part of rude beads of native copper from Lake 
 
 Fig. 28.— Shell and Terka Cotta Beads, Hociielaga. 
 
 Superior. When Car tier left Stadacona with Donna- 
 conna as his prisoner, the people brought twenty-four 
 strings or necklaces of wampum as a ransom for 
 their chief, no doubt thinking that even in the distant 
 country of the stranger so large a quantity of treasure 
 would be a fortune too tempting to be refused. So 
 when a great chief died, treasures of wampum were 
 placed with him to enrich him in the other world ; 
 and even the infant had strings of it twined around 
 its little corpse, to secure a welcome in the happy 
 fields of the west. 
 
142 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 In his universal use of wampum the American was 
 but kin to all men from the beginning. If we turn 
 to the pages of Genesis, we find the gold, pearls, and 
 agate of Havilah as the riches of primitive man. If 
 we turn to those old graves of the Mammoth age, 
 which reveal to us the habits of the oldest men known 
 to geology, wampum appears to be the universal 
 treasure. Perhaps one of the most curious illustra- 
 tions of this is the skeleton discovered by Dr. Eiviere, 
 in a cave at Mentone, on the borders of France and 
 Italy. This and some companion caves are situated 
 in a rocky cliff bordering a narrow terrace overlooking 
 the sea, and which seems to have been a highway, or 
 pass, from pre-historic times to those of modern rail- 
 ways. Among the earliest lodgers to whom these 
 caves afforded a resting-place in their wanderings, and 
 a place of sepulture, were some of those tribes who 
 are believed to have used only roughly chipped imple- 
 ments, and to have been contemporary with the now 
 extinct mammoth and woolly rhinoceros of the Post- 
 pliocene period. A man of one of these tribes had 
 been buried here, having probably died from wounds 
 while on the march. As we shall find when we 
 come to consider physical characters, this man was 
 essentially in face and frame an American, as were 
 also his contemporaries in other parts of Europe, and 
 their habits and modes of sepulture were American 
 as well. His head had been covered with a cap or 
 chaplet, ornamented with the perforated shells of a 
 Nassa, thickly plaited into the network of the head- 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE. 143 
 
 dress. Around the edge was a fringe of perforated 
 canines of the deer; two flint arrows — trophies, per- 
 haps, of war — were fixed on the back, and in front 
 was a bone pin, which had probably supported his 
 long hair. Bracelets and anklets of similar shells 
 adorned his stalwart limbs, and to complete the re- 
 semblance, a little oxide of iron was placed in front 
 of his face, the " war paint M wherewith to appear in 
 presence of his ancestors. Could this old brave of 
 Mentone, belonging to a tribe whose very name is 
 unknown to history, spring again into life, he would, 
 in garb, arms, and appearance, have shown no marked 
 difference from the tribes that inhabited the St. Law- 
 rence valley three hundred years ago. This is not an 
 isolated case, for we find that the same customs with 
 regard to wampum prevailed throughout Western 
 Europe in the oldest pre-historic times known to us, 
 and that shell beads were transported by trade or 
 migration to great distances, exactly as in America. 
 There is no good reason to assign to these pre-historic 
 men of Europe the fabulous antiquity claimed for 
 them by some ; but they carry back the customs of 
 America to a time as old as any known to us by human 
 remains and works of art. 
 
 In America the wampum had a still higher use. 
 Woven into belts of various patterns, into which dates 
 and histories and national treaties were " talked/' it 
 formed the records of the American tribes; com- 
 mitted to the care of " wampum-keepers/' it was 
 handed down from one generation to another, and 
 
144 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 regarded in the same light as that in which we view 
 our most precious national archives. The treaty of 
 the Lenni-Lenape with Pennin 1682 is commemorated 
 by a great belt of white and purple wampum, still 
 preserved in Philadelphia, and probably made of the 
 Venus shell. The great charter of the Iroquois 
 league, according to Morgan, was made of fresh- 
 water univalves, and in the early records of New 
 France we constantly read of belts or strings of 
 wampum as being presented in confirmation of 
 engagements or claims. Wilson well states the ana- 
 logy of all this with the quipus, or knotted strings, 
 which formed the records of the Peruvians, and which, 
 like the wampum of the north, were sometimes buried 
 in their graves as records of their lives and deeds. 
 Of this use of wampum as a substitute for letters we 
 have, I believe, as yet no trace in Europe ; but may 
 we not hope yet to find the buried quipu or historic 
 wampum of some pre-historic man or tribe ? 
 
 Among the most mysterious of the objects found 
 among the ancient relics in European caverns, are 
 slender bones, marked with notches or scratches in 
 variable number. They have been held to be tallies, 
 or aids to memory, and it has even been suggested 
 that they make a rude approach to the beginning 
 of historical writing. This may be so ; but of the 
 American objects which they resemble, the most 
 striking are the gambling sticks used by the Western 
 Indians. In the Queen Charlotte Islands, for example, 
 the Haida carries a leather bag containing, perhaps, 
 
IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF TOE STONE AGE. 145 
 
 fifty small rods, a few inches long, and made of 
 wood, ivory, or the leg-bones of birds. They are 
 marked with rings or notches, differing in number on 
 each piece, and giving them different values in the 
 games played with them. They appear to be dealt like 
 cards, and each player throws down in turn the pieces 
 he may have, which are rated according to their marks. 
 If such games were in use among the old cave-men of 
 Europe, this would account for the frequency of the 
 tallies, or gambling sticks, in their former habitations. 
 The strange and ghastly custom of preserving 
 portions of the bodies of slaughtered enemies as 
 trophies of victory, belongs to the American in com- 
 mon with some of the races of the Old World. In 
 scalping the slain he agrees with the ancient Scythians 
 as described by Herodotus, and with the modern 
 aborigines of Formosa, according to the reports of 
 missionaries to that country. Our own heathen fore- 
 fathers made drinking bowls of the skulls of the dead, 
 and two specimens illustrative of this have been dis- 
 interred in Hochelaga. They are human parietal 
 bone3, trimmed around the edges so as to form flat 
 bowls, and one of them has a hole at the edge, 
 probably for a string to suspend it. That customs of 
 this nature were prevalent in antiquity we have evi- 
 dence even in the monuments of civilized nations ; but 
 as yet, I believe, no traces of them have been found 
 among human pre-historic remains. Perhaps such prac- 
 tices were as yet unknown to pre-historic men, and be- 
 longed to the moral degradation of historic times alone. 
 
 L 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 
 
 Nothing is more clearly shown by American analogies 
 than the illusory nature of the popular modes of 
 reasoning as to the progress of pre-historic races in 
 the arts, from the remains which they have left in the 
 soil. Chipped stone as distinguished from polished 
 stone may depend altogether on the material acces- 
 sible. The rudest and most savage tribes of hunters 
 may chip or grind their weapons more elaborately than 
 tribes far higher in general civilization. When metal 
 tools begin to come into use, the more elaborate and 
 costly kinds of stone implements cease to be made, 
 though some of the ruder ones may still be employed. 
 As tribes adopt settled habits and become agricultu- 
 rists, they may have less need for the carefully made 
 flint implements used in hunting, and less time to 
 make them. Long-continued peace and prosperity 
 will enable a tribe to accumulate stores of well-formed 
 weapons; sudden attacks or military reverses may 
 oblige them hastily to manufacture the rudest kinds in 
 order to resist their enemies. Arts long pursued and 
 carried to much perfection may, by the introduction 
 of new objects of trade, or from other causes, perish 
 and become forgotten in a single generation. Thus, 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 147 
 
 as we have already seen, the potter's art, in itself the 
 germ of many others, has perished from the Indian 
 tribes of North America, and the art of making gold 
 jewellery from the Indian tribes of Central America, 
 while many important arts practised by the old mound- 
 builders are now wholly extinct among their successors 
 in the same regions. 
 
 Perhaps few illustrations of this are more striking 
 than those afforded by what is known as to the art of 
 drilling, perforating, and carving hard stones, as 
 practised by nations not acquainted with the use of 
 metals. This art was universal among the primitive 
 people of the northern hemisphere, as evidenced by 
 the stone hatchets with sockets for handles found both 
 in Europe and America, and by the marvellously 
 carved and bored pipes made of the hardest stones by 
 the American Indians. Professor Rau, of New York, 
 who has given much attention to this subject, has 
 shown that the means employed to bore round holes 
 was either a hollow cane or a solid round stick, sup- 
 plied with sand and water, and rotated with a drill 
 bow, either of the kind called the " pump -drill," and 
 used by the Iroquois and other tribes, or of the kind 
 now commonly employed by artisans, and which was 
 known to the Alleghans and other primitive nations. 
 This zealous and judicious observer further tried the 
 experiment of boring in this way, and found it most 
 tedious work. 
 
 " The deeper the drill penetrated into the stone, the 
 more difficult the work became, which induced me, 
 
Fig 29. — Grotesque Figure Showing Totemic Emblems Carved in Black 
 Argillaceous Stone by Natives of the Queen Charlotte Islands, West- 
 ern America. (From a Photograph by J. C. Weston, Geological Survey of Canada.) 
 {Eeduced). 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 149 
 
 after having drilled through half the thickness of the 
 stone, to begin another bore at the opposite side. In 
 due time it met the first exactly in the middle. It 
 was originally my intention to drill a hole of about 
 three-quarters of an inch in diameter ; but I had not 
 made sufficient allowance for the lateral friction of the 
 sand, and hence it happened that the two conical 
 cavities forming the perforation acquired, much against 
 my wish, greater proportions than I expected, measur- 
 ing, in fact, an inch and a quarter in their widest 
 diameters. They would have become narrower, as well 
 as more cylindrical, if I had used a drill half as thick 
 as that which served in the operation ; but when I 
 made this discovery the work was already too far 
 advanced to be commenced again." 
 
 With regard to the process of manufacturing pipes 
 of hard stone, he writes as follows : — 
 
 " The manufactures of stone which evince the great- 
 est skill of the former inhabitants of North America, 
 are by no means their pierced axes, but those remark- 
 able pipes, often made of the hardest stones, that have 
 been found in the so-called sacrificial mounds of the 
 Western States, but more especially in Ohio. These 
 ' mound-pipes' usually represent bowl and tube in one 
 piece, thus differing from the modern Indian pipe, 
 which consists of a bowl and a long wooden stem, and 
 bears a distant resemblance to the chibouk of the 
 Turks. A great number of pipes of the above- 
 mentioned antique shape were disentombed by Messrs. 
 Squier and Davis during their survey of the ancient 
 
150 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 earthworks in the Mississippi valley, and are described 
 and figured in their work, which forms the first volume 
 of t€ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge." The 
 accompanying cut (Fig. 30) presents the outline of 
 the mound -pipe in its simple or primitive form. The 
 drawing is about half the size of the original, which 
 was exhumed with many similar articles from a mound 
 near Chillicothe, Ohio. It will be seen that the bowl 
 
 Fi<i. 30.— Pipb Carved out op Hard Porphyrittc Stowe by the Aeleghajts 
 op the Ohio. 
 
 n. Bowl drilled down to the base. 
 
 b. H(-le drilled through the base to the bowl. The bowl and base are covered 
 with small drilled holes for ornament. 
 
 rises from the middle of a flat and somewhat curved 
 base, one side of which communicates by means of a 
 narrow perforation (b), one-sixth of an inch (about 
 four millimetres) in diameter, with the hollow of the 
 bowl (a), and represents the tube, or rather the mouth- 
 piece, of the pipe, while the other unperforated end 
 forms the handle by which the smoker held the imple- 
 ment and approached it to his mouth. Bowl and 
 base arc ornamented with small cup-shaped holes. 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 151 
 
 This pipe consists of hard porphyry, and is wrought 
 from a single piece, like all others of a similar charac- 
 ter. I have already stated that it may be considered 
 as the simple or typical form of this class of imple- 
 ments. In the more elaborate specimens the bowl is 
 formed in some instances in imitation of the human 
 head, but generally of the body of an animal, and 
 in the latter cases the peculiar characteristics of the 
 species which have served as models, comprising 
 mammals, birds, and amphibia, are frequently ex- 
 pressed with surprising fidelity; a modern artist, 
 indeed, notwithstanding his far superior instruments, 
 would find no little difficulty in reproducing the more 
 finished of these objects, especially when carving them 
 from porphyry, which was the kind of stone chiefly 
 employed by the manufacturers." 
 
 What wonder is it that time, which "antiquates 
 antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, 
 hath yet spared these minor monuments ; " and how 
 strangely does it illustrate the religious fervour of the 
 old mound-builders that they could sacrifice hundreds 
 of these precious trophies of skill and labour in the 
 fires of their altar hearths. Whatever the objects of 
 their worship, or the ends they hoped to attain, they 
 could give no costlier offerings unless they had offered 
 their own lives on the altar. Lafitau informs us that 
 the shaping and perforation of a tomahawk was some- 
 times the work of a lifetime, and might be left un- 
 finished by the patient artist whose life-work it had 
 been. It is said that perforated pieces of rock-crystal, 
 
152 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 worn by the chiefs of some South American tribes, 
 cost the labour of two men's lives. It is not surprising 
 that arts like these perish immediately on the intro- 
 duction of the implements of more civilized races, and 
 drop out of the memory of the successors of the artists 
 in a few generations. 
 
 It is only under peculiar circumstances that arts 
 implying so much labour as well as contrivance can 
 flourish. The man whose whole energies are occupied 
 in providing for the ordinary wants of life cannot take 
 time to select particular kinds of stone, to construct 
 drills, and to work patiently for months or for years 
 in order that he may possess an unusually perfect or 
 finished implement. Hence, of two peoples similarly 
 constituted, and in a similar stage of culture, one may 
 be quite unable to indulge in such luxuries of art, 
 while another more favourably situated may abound 
 in them. 
 
 It is interesting also to observe that under certain 
 conditions of external influence, the arts of a people 
 may change without any corresponding advance in 
 general civilization. For example, the natives of the 
 Queen Charlotte Islands, on the west coast of British 
 America, are remarkable, like other tribes on that 
 coast, for strange and grotesque carvings in a black 
 argillaceous stone, and which sometimes remind one 
 of Chinese carvings in agalmatolite. Yet some of 
 these tribes, since they have come into contact with 
 Europeans, and have found their carvings capable of 
 being made into articles of merchandise, have invented 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 153 
 
 or borrowed new patterns. A little farther progress 
 of civilization will probably turn the attention of this 
 people into new channels, and their later works, as 
 well as their own earlier grotesque figures, will become 
 obsolete and forgotten; and if exhumed by anti- 
 quaries, might give very false impressions as to the 
 history and progress of the tribe, unless some historical 
 account of the circumstances were preserved. 
 
 The case of the Queen Charlotte Islanders might be 
 made to indicate even a change of religion as well as of 
 art, for their grotesque carvings are their penates, the 
 tokens or signs of their guardian manitous (Fig. 29), 
 to which their more modern carvings, often copied 
 from European models, bear no relation. 
 
 The Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 
 when first visited by Europeans, dwelt in villages 
 composed of large houses, laboriously constructed of 
 wooden planks, and in front of each house was an 
 immense obelisk or pillar of wood, often so large that 
 the doorway was cut through its substance. This 
 pillar was elaborately carved with great labour, from 
 top to bottom, with totems or armorial bearings of the 
 family. They used vessels of wood and of the horns 
 of the mountain sheep and goat, which were in like 
 manner adorned with carvings of animal and grotesque 
 forms. Their masks, rattles, and maces, used in their 
 dances, were all highly finished pieces of carving, 
 and often inlaid with pearly plates of the shell of 
 the Haliotis. Their canoes, constructed out of a single 
 large tree, were beautifully modelled, carved and 
 
154 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In short, these people 
 had made great progress in decorative art, or had 
 brought such art from Asia, or received it through 
 occasional Japanese junks wrecked on their coasts. 
 All this primitive art is now rapidly perishing, and 
 will soon be replaced by European arts and manufac- 
 tures, though the manner of life and subsistence of the 
 people remains in the main the same as before. The 
 Haida is still a fisherman, though tin pails may re- 
 place the carved wooden dishes of his fathers, and his 
 house may want altogether the grand carved posts, 
 replaced perhaps by a flag-staff. 
 
 Agriculture may be extensively pursued by primi- 
 tive tribes, and if these tribes perish, or if they are 
 driven by reverses to adopt a nomadic life, their culture 
 of the earth may leave no appreciable remains behind, 
 and so far as antiquities are concerned, they may 
 appear to be a ruder people than one that has lived by 
 hunting or fishing. Tribes living in rock shelters, 
 or obliged to build with stone or earth, may leave 
 remains altogether exceptional in amount compared 
 with those which commemorate the existence of com- 
 paratively cultivated people living in wooden houses 
 and tilling the soil. The introduction of new tools 
 by foreign trade may indicate the very reverse of any 
 progress in culture or civilization in the rude tribes 
 who receive such new objects. 
 
 Cartier, in 1535, found around the town of Hochelaga 
 " goodly and large M cultivated fields, and he speaks 
 of the Mountain of Montreal as tilled round about — 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 155 
 
 implying a large amount of cultivated land. This 
 culture, too, must have been of long standing; for 
 the removal of the " goodly great oaks " that originally 
 cumbered the ground was a work of time, especially 
 to people without iron implements, and who must 
 have destroyed each tree by laboriously girdling it, or 
 by scorching its bark with fire, and must have carried 
 on their culture amidst the tall, scathed trunks, until 
 these were broken down by the winds, aided by decay ; 
 and then they must have removed them by burning. 
 All these processes had long ago been complete, else 
 the French narrative could not have spoken of goodly 
 and large fields. But what was cultivated in these 
 fields ? Cartier mentions as the principal crop maize, 
 or Indian corn, and with this there were beans, dif- 
 ferent, he says, in appearance from those cultivated 
 in France, great cucumbers or melons — by which he 
 probably means pumpkins, — and probably tobacco. 
 He mentions also several kinds of fruits, but whether 
 wild or cultivated he does not say. The wild Cana- 
 dian plum, the choke-cherry, a hawthorn producing 
 edible fruit, and the wild grape, still abound in the 
 vicinity of the ancient Hochelaga, and may have been 
 cultivated or cared for and collected by the Hoche- 
 lagans. It was shortly after harvest when Cartier 
 visited the town, and they then had great store of all 
 the productions of their fields. They had on the tops 
 of their houses granaries, or possibly corn-cribs, for 
 preserving the Indian corn, probably to secure dry- 
 ness and prevent the attacks of vermin. For keeping 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 157 
 
 the smoked fish of which they laid in quantities for 
 winter use, they had large bins or vessels probably 
 made of wood or bark. Their corn was ground in 
 wooden mortars, as was usual with the Canadian and 
 neighbouring tribes (see Fig. 31), and baked in cakes 
 or made into various kinds of pottage. What a picture 
 we have here of agricultural plenty ! and this was, no 
 doubt, repeated in all the villages along the St. 
 Lawrence, and thence to the southward. 
 
 Let us further note that of the plants cultivated as 
 field crops at Hochelaga, all belonged to species not 
 found wild north of the Gulf of Mexico, more than a 
 thousand miles to the southward. Yet these plants 
 had found their way from tribe to tribe to the banks 
 of the St. Lawrence, and were at the time of Cartier 
 cultivated as far north as the climate will allow them 
 to be cultivated now. These plants are indigenous 
 to America, and their properties and uses must have 
 been discovered or recognised by the people living 
 where they are native, and from them transmitted, 
 either by migrations or by commercial intercourse, to 
 the far north. Further, the culture of these plants in 
 Canada is attended with much greater difficulty than 
 it is at the south. Early varieties require to be 
 selected, and I have evidence that the variety of corn 
 cultivated at Hochelaga three hundred years ago was 
 similar to one of the early varieties cultivated still in 
 Canada. More careful tillage and manuring also are 
 needed, and precautions to avoid the effects of late 
 frosts in spring. Yet all this was known to the old 
 
158 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Hochelagans. Similar agricultural towns, some of 
 them on a larger scale, existed among the Hurons and 
 Iroquois. Gaensera, a town of the Iroquois, destroyed 
 by the French in 1687, is described as built of wood 
 and bark, with granaries of bark, in the form of 
 towers, fifteen feet in diameter. Besides this, there 
 was a detached and fortified granary on a neighbouring 
 hill. The French reported that in this town, which, 
 judging from the number of fighting men, must have 
 been inhabited by three or four thousand people, they 
 destroyed 100,000 minots of corn in the granaries, 
 and 150,000 standing in the fields, or perhaps 750,000 
 bushels in all. Yet this and other cities destroyed in 
 the Indian wars were not rebuilt, the Iroquois being 
 disheartened and reduced in numbers, and they now 
 exist only as mounds and old earthworks, many of 
 them with no written history. 
 
 Cartier tells us that the women were the principal 
 agriculturists. The men were hunters, fishermen, and 
 warriors. The women tilled the ground and carried 
 on most of the domestic manufactures. This was the 
 case generally among the semi-civilized Americans, 
 and, according to our modern notions, it gives the 
 women a more advanced place than the men ; and as 
 women were often taken prisoners in war, it might be 
 a means of spreading the arts of life among the more 
 barbarous tribes. On the other hand, it allowed a 
 very speedy relapse into the condition of barbarous 
 hunters when a tribe was driven from it» ancient 
 abode. 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 159 
 
 Let us now ask what trace of this ancient culture 
 remains ? The cornfields of Hochelaga, not even 
 ridged with the plough, would be overgrown with tall 
 trees within fifty years of the abandonment of the 
 site. The corn-cribs and wooden mortars had been 
 burned or have mouldered away. The plants culti- 
 vated were too tender to survive in a wild state. The 
 wooden hoes which Cartier tells were the ordinary 
 agricultural implements, have long ago perished, and if, 
 as was probably sometimes the case, they were tipped 
 with a flat stone, this was so roughly shaped, if 
 shaped at all, that when found it would scarcely be 
 recognised as even a Palaeolithic implement. May 
 not, then, the whole tale be a myth, its materials 
 furnished by the narratives of more southern voyagers, 
 and intended to exalt the new country in the opinion 
 of the French Government ? For all that could be 
 proved by any but a few slight indications, the search 
 for which was prompted by Car tier's narrative, it 
 might have been so, aud Hochelaga might have been 
 inhabited by a tribe as rude as the Pakeolithic people 
 of Europe are supposed to have been. The micro- 
 scope shows traces of charred corn-meal encrusting 
 the necks of some of the earthen pots ; and after 
 sifting a cartload or two of the kitchen-midden stuff 
 through wire sieves, I became the possessor of a dozen 
 or two of charred grains of corn and a cotyledon and 
 a half of the bean. Another collector found a charred 
 " corn cob." Besides this, I found evidence that the 
 wild plum and cherry, and even the acorn, had been 
 
160 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 used as food. Let it be observed, further, that a 
 grain of corn or a bean could not have escaped decay 
 unless it had happened to be accidentally charred, and 
 some accident of this kind, occurring in connection 
 with cookery, alone provided this slight confirmation 
 of the story of the agriculture of Hochelaga. 
 
 Perhaps in no respect is it usually supposed that 
 primitive man is more to be contrasted with modern 
 races in an imperfect state of civilization, than in 
 his knowledge of distant regions and the intercourse 
 which he carries on .with them. In this respect, 
 according to Dupont, there is evidence that the 
 Paleeolithic men had more extensive commerce than 
 their successors of the Reindeer age, and perhaps 
 both of them more than the peasant of mediasval 
 or modern times. Just as we find evidence in the 
 French caves, and the older dwellings built on piles 
 over the Swiss lakes, that their inhabitants had com- 
 munication with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, 
 and could procure the sacred and useful jade of the far 
 east, the coral of the Mediterranean, the amber of the 
 Baltic and the improved wheat of Egypt,* so was 
 it in pre-historic America. The Hochelagans who 
 accompanied Cartier to the summit of Mount Royal, 
 and the ancients of Stadacona with whom he conversed 
 after his return, concurred in informing him that the 
 great river of Hochelaga, which he called the St. 
 Lawrence, extended many days' journey beyond the 
 point to which he had penetrated, and that it issued 
 
 * Keller, "Report on Swiss Lake Habitations." 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 161 
 
 from great lakes or seas of fresh water so vast that 
 they knew little of their farther shores. That the 
 river which we now call the Ottawa, from the name of 
 an Algonquin tribe inhabiting its banks, ran from a 
 western land which they called Saguenay, a name 
 now applied to a river far to the east of Quebec, from 
 a geographical confusion arising from the fact that 
 the Saguenay river was one of the outlets in ancient 
 times of the more western land of that name. It 
 was from this western land that their copper imple- 
 ments came, and this not by the St. Lawrence route, 
 but by that northern line of communication from 
 Georgian Bay to the Ottawa, which the modern 
 Canadian Government has, so far unsuccessfully, been 
 endeavouring to open out, and which enabled the old 
 Hochelagans to trade with Lake Superior through the 
 domains of friendly tribes. Further, they knew that 
 to the south were countries where the people were 
 clad in woven fabics, where delicious fruits and spices, 
 unknown to Canada, were produced, and where 
 there was no frost or snow, even in winter. These 
 countries could be reached by the Richelieu river, 
 or from the great western lakes ; but unfortunately 
 there lay between, tribes of people fierce and warlike, 
 who in recent times had cut off all communication 
 between the nations of the St. Lawrence and the 
 sunny lands of the south. Still it was from these 
 southern lands that their ancestors, in older and 
 happier times, had procured the seeds of the maize, 
 beans, pumpkins, and tobacco, which they still culti- 
 
 M 
 
162 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 vated, and whose culture they had extended as far to 
 the north as it yet reaches. 
 
 Similar facts occur even among the ruder hunting 
 tribes. The Micmacs of Nova Scotia seem scarcely if 
 at all to have cultivated the soil. But as hunters and 
 fishermen they had explored all the natural riches of 
 their country and its neighbouring waters. They 
 knew the haunts and habits of every useful animal of 
 the land and of the sea, and had devised means for its 
 capture at the appropriate season ; and their graves, 
 and the heaps left by their makers of stone weapons, 
 show that they had discovered all its treasures of 
 greenstone, jasper, agate, and native copper, and 
 habitually turned them to account. Shortly after the 
 first French colony had settled at Port Royal,* some 
 alarm was caused to them by a visit of 800 Micmac 
 warriors who encamped near the little settlement. 
 But it appeared that they were engaged in an expe- 
 dition against some tribe inhabiting the coast of what 
 is now New England, and for this purpose they 
 crossed the Bay of Fundy in their bark canoes. These 
 same adventurous savages carried on naval and mili- 
 tary expeditions far up the St. Lawrence, and were 
 acquainted with the names and distribution of the 
 tribes on that river, and even farther west. Cartier 
 heard of them, or of the allied Malicetes, at Quebec, 
 as dangerous and predatory savages, under the name 
 of Tudemans. Their traditions told of a primitive 
 people whom they had driven from Nova Scotia, and 
 * Now Annapolis. 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 163 
 
 the remnants of this people, the Bed Indians, they 
 pursued into Newfoundland, crossing the stormy sea 
 which separates this island from Cape Breton, in their 
 bark canoes. As the opposite coast could rarely be 
 seen, they were in the habit of kindling large fires 
 upon the northern point of Cape Breton which they 
 called Sakpeediah, the Smoky Cape, and steering from 
 these in the direction of Newfoundland. Such adven- 
 tures, though perhaps not comparable with the voyages 
 of the islanders of the Pacific, show us what primitive 
 man can do, and how rapidly he may overspread the 
 earth.* The present condition of the Micmacs, re- 
 duced to pauperism and destitute of any spirit of pro- 
 gress or adventure, tells how readily the life and spirit 
 of rude peoples can be crushed out by oppression. 
 
 The learned archaeologist, Uau, has, in a memoir on 
 Ancient Aboriginal Trade, f collected a great number 
 of interesting facts showing the remarkable extent to 
 which in pre-historic times the productions of North 
 America had been utilized and conveyed from place to 
 place. He shows that the produce of the copper mines 
 of Lake Superior had been dispersed over the whole 
 continent to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic 
 coast. In like manner, the celebrated red pipestone 
 
 * The Micmacs seem also to have a tradition of the North- 
 men who visited their coasts in the tenth century, in a people 
 whom they call Chenooks, who are said to have had hearts of 
 ice, a terrible war-whoop, to be of immense strength, to sail in 
 canoes of stone, to possess magical powers, and to use weapons 
 of brass. Rand has preserved this tradition. 
 
 f " Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1872." 
 
164 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of the Coteau des Prairies, on the head waters of the 
 Missouri, had been distributed as far as the State of 
 New York, and I believe one of the pipes found at 
 Hochelaga to be made of it. Plates of mica quarried 
 in the metamorphic districts of the Appalachians, 
 have been abundantly diffused over the plains of the 
 Mississippi and the Ohio, and were used as orna- 
 ments and perhaps as mirrors. The chert from the 
 u Flint Ridge " of Ohio is shown to have been trans- 
 ported at least 400 miles from the quarries ; and 
 Rau holds, with good reason, that the flint was first 
 formed into flattish or disc-shaped pieces, and in 
 this state transported to distant places, where it was 
 stored up till required to be fashioned into arrow- 
 heads or other weapons. These stores of partly 
 formed objects were also buried in the ground in 
 order that they might not be injured by the drying in- 
 fluence of the air. It is in this way that we account for 
 the " caches n or buried deposits of imperfectly formed 
 flint implements which are often discovered ; and no 
 doubt many of the deposits of the so-called Palaeolithic 
 implements in Europe admit of a similar explanation. 
 Sea shells also, pearls and wampum beads, used as 
 ornaments, objects of religious veneration, or media 
 of exchange, were distributed in pre-historic times 
 throughout the length and breadth of the continent. 
 All this internal trade is now as much a thing of the 
 past as that carried on by primitive man in Europe ; 
 but its evidence remains to show how much can be 
 done even by men despised as savages. 
 
LOST AETS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 165 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that our researches on the 
 site of Hochelaga have disclosed so few relics of this 
 trade and intercourse which existed between the 
 nations of distant parts of America, and of which, as 
 we have seen, we have evidence in the narrative of 
 Cartier, as well as in the objects found elsewhere. 
 Of this the relics of Hochelaga show little except a 
 few copper beads ; and, beside the two small pieces of 
 metal already referred to, nothing of the numerous 
 tools and trinkets left by Cartier himself. Yet one of 
 these fragments — the little piece of brass mentioned 
 in a previous paper — may have been a part of one of 
 Carrier's crosses, which it is not unlikely were cut up 
 into small pieces and distributed to different persons, 
 or disposed of in trade with less fortunate tribes. 
 This absence of evidence of commercial intercourse 
 may be accounted for in one of two ways. At the 
 time of Carrier's visit, the people of Hochelaga, owing 
 to the hostility of the Hurons on the west, and of 
 the Iroquois on the south, were very much isolated, 
 and may for a long time have lost the intercourse 
 with foreign nations which they had once enjoyed. 
 Changes of this kind tending to isolate tribes, often 
 reduce them to great scarcity or absolute want of 
 foreign commodities, and may account for such re- 
 markable differences as have been observed in this 
 respect between the people of the older and more 
 recent Palaeolithic ages in Europe by Dupont and 
 others, the oldest European race being evidently 
 better supplied with foreign objects than that which 
 
1G6 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 succeeded it. Again, at the destruction of Hoche- 
 laga, its treasures may have been thoroughly plun- 
 dered by the conquerors, a fate which has no doubt 
 befallen many of the old haunts of primitive men in 
 the Old World. 
 
 I fear such considerations are too often overlooked 
 by observers who study such remains, and who may 
 reach the most opposite results from the investigation 
 of different localities occupied contemporaneously by 
 tribes precisely in the same stage of civilization. 
 Thus of three or four sites occupied by different sec- 
 tions of a tribe, simultaneously or at times not very 
 remote from each other, one may have been destroyed 
 and plundered by an enemy ; another may have wit- 
 nessed the hurried manufacture of a quantity of rough 
 weapons for an emergency ; another may have been 
 only abandoned from slow decay. Each of these 
 would be so dissimilar from the others that it might 
 be regarded as having belonged to times remotely 
 distant. 
 
 But a careless or too enthusiastic antiquary might 
 commit still graver errors of this kind. A village like 
 Stadacona or Hochelaga had its outlying stations. 
 Its pottery would be made at some clay-bed, probably 
 distant from the town. It must have had its mines 
 or quarries of flint and other useful stones, perhaps 
 far away within the confines of friendly tribes on the 
 Ottawa. Its hunting and fishing parties had their 
 places of resort, where in spring, autumn, or winter, 
 they may have spent weeks together in the pursuit of 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 167 
 
 particular animals requiring special kinds of tackle or 
 weapons. Many tribes on the sea-coasts had their 
 summer stations near to oyster-beds, on the produce 
 of which, along with sea-birds and fish, they sub- 
 sisted during a part of the year, though we know that 
 in winter the same tribes dwelt inland, and hunted 
 deer and other large animals. After the extinction 
 of the tribe these different stations would present the 
 most diverse appearances. One would yield a great 
 collection of mis-shapen and half-made implements, 
 difficult to understand, and rude and primitive in 
 aspect. Another would apparently be the shelter or 
 station of a tribe provided only with implements for 
 hunting, and leaving behind it abundance of the bones 
 of deer and other large game. Another would show a 
 people living solely on fish, and with implements of 
 entirely different form, and mostly of bone. Another 
 would present gouges for tapping maple-trees, and 
 kettles of pottery broken in the boiling of sugar* 
 Another on the coast might show little beyond heap*> 
 of oyster-shells, and a few of the stones used iu 
 opening them for use. The main town would have 
 the aspect, in its kitchen-middens and stores of 
 pottery, of the settlement of a far more advanced 
 people. I do not say that all of our modern archae- 
 ologists have failed to appreciate the meaning of these 
 differences, but it is impossible to overlook the fact 
 that many of their researches have been vitiated to 
 some extent by neglect of considerations so simple, 
 that the most ordinary observers of the pre-historic 
 
168 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 monuments of America scarcely think them deserving 
 of mention.* It must, however, be confessed that 
 American writers also, taken by the infection wafted 
 from the Eastern Continent, have sometimes allowed 
 their fancy in such matters to get the better of their 
 judgment. 
 
 In Scandinavia, Prof. Steenstrup deserves great credit 
 for the constancy with which he has maintained the 
 identity of age between the shell-heaps, or Kjokken 
 moddings, of the coast, and the inland tumuli of the 
 Stone age, though the one contain scarcely anything 
 «lse than rude implements, useful in opening shells, 
 and the others well-formed implements of polished 
 stone. He has shown conclusively that even a few 
 exceptional implements of the latter class found in 
 the shell-heaps are enough to redeem them from the 
 imputation of being the deposits of an earlier and 
 ruder people. 
 
 Even among hunting tribes, culture and the arts 
 are not wholly dormant. In the ancient Acadia j- the 
 immense abundance of deer, water-fowl, and fish, 
 enabled the Micmac to live in plenty on the produce 
 of fishery and the chase, each season having its ap- 
 propriate animal, while the rocky character of many 
 parts of the country was not favourable to agriculture. 
 
 * This has been markedly shown in the attempts which 
 have been made to assign the deposits of different caves in the 
 valley of the Vezere, in France, to widely separated ages, and 
 in the foregone conclusion that the rnde implements of the 
 river gravels indicate a very barbarous people. 
 
 f Now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 169 
 
 Hence the Micmac was almost wholly a hunter, and 
 the arts of life had reference mainly to the implements 
 for the chase, and for fishing, or for the preparation of 
 meat and skins; and as he must necessarily move 
 from place to place according to the seasons for differ- 
 ent kinds of fish and game, he dwelt in tents, or wig- 
 wams (his oik or wicli), made of birch bark, and could 
 easily pack his family and property in his bark canoe, 
 or transport his whole house and furniture on the 
 backs of his party, or on a tobogan drawn over the 
 snow. Mambertou, a celebrated Micmac Sachem, and 
 one of the first converts of the French missionaries, 
 when taught the petition, " give us this day our daily 
 bread," which, by the way, was practically a mis- 
 translation on the part of the missionaries, objected, 
 "Why is no mention made of our fish and venison ? " 
 and very properly, since these two in his former creed 
 were gifts of the Great Spirit, and were to him much 
 more than bread. Yet the Micmacs were not only 
 adepts in the more delicate and difficult parts of the 
 art of chipping flints, but as we have seen, were geo- 
 graphers and travellers of no mean intelligence, and 
 made their name and power known and felt widely 
 over the American coast, both to the north and to the 
 south ; and this, perhaps, just for the reason that they 
 were hunters rather than farmers. 
 
 Another illustration may be taken from the now 
 extinct Eed Indians of Newfoundland. McCormick, 
 in his expedition to discover this people, found that 
 they had built across the country long fences of wood 
 
170 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 to arrest the migrations of the reindeer, and deter- 
 mine them to certain points where a deer battue on 
 an extensive scale might give them a supply of food 
 for months. One such erection he traced for forty 
 miles across the country. It appeared to be intended 
 to force the herds of deer towards a lake, and oblige 
 them to take to the water, where they could be easily 
 killed by the natives in their canoes. Similar plans 
 were used by the Indians on the great Canadian lakes, 
 though it does not appear that they executed so great 
 public works to contribute to this end as the Red 
 Indians. I may add, that in the Hudson's Bay dis- 
 tricts, immense numbers of cariboo are killed in the 
 spring when crossing certain rivers, where they are 
 waylaid by the natives. Such facts serve to explain 
 some of the deposits of bones of the reindeer found in 
 France. When, by such means as those above men- 
 tioned, a tribe had succeeded in killing several hun- 
 dreds or thousands of deer, there would not only be a 
 great feast and much cracking of marrowbones, but a 
 long time would be occupied in drying and preparing 
 the flesh and skins, and working the antlers up into 
 implements. In these processes multitudes of flint 
 knives and scrapers would be used, and when the 
 tribe left the place, a deposit of remains of the rein- 
 deer period would be left. This might recur year 
 after year at the same place, till the tribe might be 
 driven from the country by some enemy, or till the 
 deer became exterminated, or were obliged to migrate 
 in some other direction. At other seasons of the year 
 
LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 171 
 
 the reindeer hunters might be living as fishermen on 
 the coasts, or even as farmers in particular valleys. 
 Even if the people in question were merely rude 
 hunters, they could not have lived on reindeer all the 
 year, and must have left elsewhere deposits indicating 
 their mode of life at the seasons when deer could not 
 be had. 
 
 I may connect these illustrations of perished arts 
 with a reference to a now obsolete implement — the 
 grooved hammer, noticed in the chapter on imple- 
 
 Fig. 32- Grooved Hammeb, with Handle oe Withe and Thong, as used 
 by Akickahee Indians for Breaking Marrow-bones of Buffalo. From a 
 paper by Ju organ, in the Report of the Regents of University of New York. 
 
 ments. Such hammers were the common tools of 
 the ancient copper miners of Lake Superior. Evans 
 informs us that they are found in ancient copper 
 mines in Wales, also in Staffordshire and in the 
 north of Ireland, and in Scandinavia, as well as in 
 ancient mines in Spain and in Saxony. They also 
 occur in the old Egyptian turquoise mines of Wady 
 Meghara, in Arabia. In North America they are 
 not limited to the mining districts. I figure a speci- 
 men with its handle of tough wood and raw hide 
 
172 FOSSTL MEN. 
 
 (Fig. 32), as now, or lately, used by the Arickarees, 
 a people of the western prairies. Morgan, from whom 
 the illustration is taken, states that it is used to 
 drive stakes, and for cracking buffalo bones to extract 
 the marrow. I have seen similar hammers brought 
 by Dr. Bell, of the Canadian Survey, from the 
 country of the Dakotas or Sioux and other western 
 tribes, who constantly use them for breaking marrow- 
 bones of the buffalo. Thus, the grooved hammer 
 may be equally a relic of the civilized Egyptian or 
 Alleghan miner, or of the rude hunter of the plains. 
 But, even in the case of the latter, it may not be a 
 token of absolute barbarism. The American hunter 
 does not merely use it to break bones, that he may 
 at once devour their marrow. On the contrary, 
 he often breaks up the marrow-bones of his game, 
 that he may refine and preserve the precious oil 
 for future use, or may employ it as an ingredient 
 of his carefully prepared pemmican, which is his 
 dependence in his long journeys, and one of his 
 most valuable sources of income. As he says, the 
 agricultural white man may have plenty of bread, 
 but he is " hungry for buffalo meat/'' while the 
 Indian, with plenty of pemmican, may be "hungry 
 for bread," or may be desirous of the goods of the 
 European trader. What if some of the old cave men 
 of Europe were not merely savage gorgers on flesh 
 and marrow, but industrious preparers of pemmican, 
 for future use or trade, and if the caves were their 
 temporary workshops at the season of preparing this 
 
LOST ARTS OP PRIMITIVE RACES. 173 
 
 valuable product, aud the implements therein their 
 knives for cutting up the flesh, their hammers for 
 breaking the bones, and their bodkins and needles 
 for sewing up the skin bags in which it was finally 
 put up for the markets of the Stone age. If we take 
 this view, so accordant with American analogies, it 
 will explain why the greater part of the chipped bones 
 in many cave deposits bear no traces of cooking; 
 and will relieve the cave men from the suspicion 
 which has been cast upon their memory, that they 
 habitually ate raw venison. 
 
 In a previous chapter I referred to the old quarries 
 of flint in the Flint Ridge on the Ohio, and to the 
 mines of the ancient Alleghans in the copper districts 
 of Lake Superior. These mining arts, like the agri- 
 culture of many of the more settled tribes, have 
 become lost to the modern Indian, and in the case 
 of his flint mines, even to the white men who have 
 succeeded him, and who, while they have at a com- 
 paratively recent time reopened his copper mines, 
 have found that in all the more important of these 
 they had been anticipated by the Indians. In like 
 manner there are obsolete mines of the flint age in 
 Europe. Evans describes those of ' ' Grimes Graves " 
 at Brandon, where 250 flint mines have been found. 
 They are shafts sunk through chalk, in some cases to 
 the depth of thirty-nine feet, to reach a layer of 
 specially good flint. Galleries had been run out from 
 them horizontally in this layer. The miners had 
 worked with picks and chisels of deer's antlers and 
 
174 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 basalt ; and the traces of their sagacious industry are 
 now only traditional u graves M to the agricultural 
 peasants who have succeeded them. Still more 
 extensive ancient mines of the flint period exist in 
 Belgium. That the men who made these excavations 
 were industrious and ingenious we cannot doubt, yet 
 their flint knives and arrows are to us the indices of 
 a still ruder stage of humanity than that to which 
 we would refer their antler-pointed picks and basalt 
 chisels. 
 
 It should perhaps somewhat moderate our pride 
 of higher civilization when we find that, with the ex- 
 ception of a few u flint Jacks/' we have not only 
 lost the art of fabricating the beautiful chipped imple- 
 ments of the flint age, but that throughout the east, 
 and even among the peasantry of western Europe, 
 they are, when found, regarded as the work of super- 
 natural beings ; and as " elfin bolts," and under other 
 names, have strange talismanic virtues ascribed to 
 them, at which their ancient makers would have 
 smiled. Still these fancies have a venerable origin. 
 Among the flint folk themselves a flint-headed arrow 
 was a type of efficiency, as compared with one tipped 
 with bone, horn, or hardened wood. Hence, in the 
 traditions of the Micmacs, as collected by Mr. Eand, 
 and in old Norse Sagas referred to by Nilsson, it is 
 always a flint arrow that is used in slaying the giants 
 and other monsters of their tales. Such stories would 
 readily, after flint weapons fell into disuse, lead to the 
 belief in their magic powers ; nor is a great lapse of 
 
LOST ARTS OP PE1M1T1VE EACES. 175 
 
 time necessary to effect such results. Already, in 
 some districts of America, the Indian has so lost the 
 tradition of the arts of his ancestors, that when 
 questioned as to their implements, he says the Great 
 Spirit alone knows by whom and for what they were 
 made.* 
 
 Thus, even if we confine our attention to the one 
 subject of lost arts, it can be shown that changes, 
 many of them tending rather to degradation than to 
 elevation, have taken place in America since its dis- 
 covery, which are comparable in amount with those 
 extending in Europe from the Palaeolithic age to the 
 present day. That they occurred as rapidly in Europe 
 I do not affirm, yet there is no good reason to doubt 
 that many of those diversities to which vast periods 
 have been assigned, were either not successive, or 
 required for their production times not much greater 
 than that which has elapsed since the voyages of 
 Columbus. It may be asked, If this is so, what 
 reliance can be placed on archaeological investiga- 
 tions ? I answer : — Much, if observers will carefully 
 study facts, and compare them with their modern 
 analogues, and will avoid hasty generalisations, and 
 the common error of making the facts conform to 
 preconceived hypotheses. Geologists require also to 
 learn that the methods which apply to the succession 
 of formations, in which we have to do only with 
 
 * An interesting discussion of this subject will be found in 
 Tylor's " Eesearches into the Early History of Mankind," 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
176 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 physical causes, and with the structures and instincts 
 of irrational animals, will not suffice when we have 
 to deal with the results of the many-sided intelligence 
 of man, which, even in his most primitive and rudest 
 states, gives him a god-like supremacy over many 
 external conditions to which mere animals succumb, 
 and vastly complicates all his relations with nature. 
 
 Note. — The facts in this chapter, and elsewhere, relating to 
 the inhabitants of the Queen Charlotte Islands, are from un- 
 published notes of Dr. G. M. Dawson, F.G.S., who, while 
 engaged in the geological survey of these islands, in 1878, 
 made large collections of works of art, photographs of build- 
 ings, etc., and memoranda as to customs and superstitions. 
 (1882) These observations have been published with illus- 
 trations in the Keport of the Geological Survey of Canada for 
 1878-9, and afford many interesting facts as. to the manners 
 and arts of a very primitive and secluded people. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 The part of our subject on which we now enter may 
 well be compared to the prospect presented to the 
 prophet Ezekiel when he was introduced to a valley 
 filled with bones, and observed that they were " very 
 dry." Yet if the reader will bear with a little disqui- 
 sition on the dry bones of pre-historic humanity, we 
 may promise him that in the end we shall find that 
 these bones will come together and be clothed with 
 flesh, and that their owners will fall into the ranks 
 of the great army of mankind as known to us in our 
 more modern times. 
 
 The attempts which have been made to draw such 
 lines of distinction as would serve for race characters 
 between the different varieties of man have necessarily 
 been only partially successful, since these race cha- 
 racters shade into each other, and this in several 
 directions, depending on the particular lines of 
 comparison followed. More particularly, when we 
 have merely bones to rely on, classification becomes 
 less satisfactory; and though it is easy to divide 
 any number of skulls into dolichocephalous, or long- 
 headed, and brachycephalous, or short-headed, and 
 these again into those that are orthognathous or 
 
 N 
 
178 J088IL MEN. 
 
 prognathous, that is, with more or less prominent 
 jaws and retreating forehead, yet these pass into each 
 other by imperceptible gradations, and the differences 
 are not altogether coincident with those of race as 
 established on other grounds. 
 
 I have long thought that this matter of comparison 
 of skulls and skeletons requires to be placed on a 
 somewhat different basis, which is well indicated in 
 the note furnished by Professor Huxley to Sir Charles 
 Lyell in connection with the pre-historic skulls of the 
 Belgian and Neanderthal caves. He contents him- 
 self with a broad distinction between skulls of the 
 low and high types ; that is, of the ruder and the 
 more civilized nations, and informs us that even in 
 rude and homogeneous races like the Australians there 
 is great cranial variety ; while it is well known that 
 any skull, ancient or modern, except those that have 
 been artificially flattened, may find its counterpart in 
 a large collection of European skulls. 
 
 The practical point, therefore, is to ascertain what 
 cranial characters are necessarily or generally con- 
 nected with those other characters which we perceive 
 in different races, and so to apply the whole as to 
 obtain definite information regarding the state of 
 civilization and general habits of life which they in- 
 dicate. From this point of view the mere length or 
 shortness of skulls does not seem a very important 
 feature, except locally. There are rude and uncivil- 
 ized races with both forms of cranium. The Laps 
 are a rude people, somewhat comparable with the 
 
PHTSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HI8TORIC MEN. 179 
 
 Greenlanders, and, like them, of small stature, bat 
 they have short orthognathous heads, while those of 
 the Greenlanders are dolichocephalic and prognathous. 
 Of the most ancient skulls taken from caverns, as we 
 shall see, some are long-headed, others very short. 
 Those of the more northern American Indians tend to 
 a lengthened form, but in the south they become short 
 and broad. Of modern civilized races, the Germanic 
 race seems to have shorter and more broadly oval 
 heads than the English and Swedish, and these than 
 the purely Celtic peoples. The greater or less pro- 
 minence of the jaws or recession of the forehead is, 
 on the other hand, more an indication of lowness of 
 culture and civilization than of difference of race. In 
 civilized countries the ruder peasantry present most 
 of this prognathous character, and it belongs to nearly 
 all the more barbarous nations. A similar statement 
 may be made respecting breadth and prominence of 
 the cheek bones and of the angles of the lower jaw, 
 though these probably have reference rather to the 
 constant use of coarse and tough food than to want 
 of mental culture. Small capacity of the brain-case is 
 also a mark of an inferior race, though some highly 
 intelligent people have small heads. On the whole, 
 the smaller development of the anterior and upper 
 regions of the cranium, and the greater proportionate 
 development of the face and jaws, are marks of the 
 lower races. Habits of life may have mechanical 
 connections with skull forms. Independently of the 
 attempts made by some tribes to modify the skull 
 
180 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 artificially, modes of carrying infants may have an 
 effect. Wilson has pointed this out in the case of the 
 connection of the American cradle-board with a flat 
 form of occiput. So there is some reason to believe 
 that severe work on the part of the mother tends to 
 produce long heads in the children, and that less 
 constant work, as well as nomadic habits, tends to 
 shortness of head. 
 
 Let us sum up these remarks in a few general state- 
 ments, and then proceed to inquire how they apply 
 to the American Indians and to pre-historic men in 
 Europe. First, then, forms of skulls are often merely 
 individual, and much variety thus exists in the skulls 
 of one and the same race. Secondly, when a suf- 
 ficient number of skulls are compared, certain general 
 characters for a race, at any given time of its history, 
 can be obtained. Thirdly, the cranial characters of 
 races being dependent on external circumstances and 
 on culture, may vary in the lapse of ages. Fourthly, 
 cranial characters are thus of even more importance 
 in determining the low or elevated condition of a 
 people than the race from which they have been 
 derived. Fifthly, the small development of the frontal 
 and superior regions of the skull, and the large size of 
 the jaws and facial bones, are marks of low type. 
 Sixthly, long heads with low frontal region generally 
 belong to the lowest race; short and broad heads 
 often to an intermediate stage of culture ; and regu- 
 larly oval heads to the highest type. 
 
 If we connect these different forms of skull 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 181 
 
 with what is known of the functions of the brain, 
 we should infer that a large brain would be cor- 
 related with great muscular energy ; and since 
 experiment shows that the lateral portions of the 
 cerebral hemispheres are those connected with motor 
 nerves influencing the limbs, we might infer that 
 heads relatively broad would indicate active and 
 powerful limbs. Again, since it is probable that the 
 frontal part of the cerebrum is more especially em- 
 ployed in correlating the impressions of the senses 
 with the actions, heads long and prominent in front 
 should be connected with general intelligence. Lastly, 
 as the posterior part of the brain seems to minister 
 more largely to the emotional nature, length posteriorly 
 would indicate active passions and emotions. These 
 criteria, if applied to pre-historic skulls, would indi- 
 cate great cerebral powers of all kinds in the earliest 
 European race, inferior powers, but relatively greater 
 bodily activity, in the second race. The artificial 
 flattening of the head, if it had any effect on the 
 functions of the brain, would tend to subdue specu- 
 lative and emotional energy, and to develop activity 
 of limb. The distortion of the skull is said not to 
 diminish the intelligence; but Paul Kane* remarks 
 that the infants whose heads are subjected to pres- 
 sure never cry or moan, and seem to be more dull and 
 torpid than usual, which would agree with what is 
 known of the functions of the front and back regions 
 bf the head, as above stated. Possibly the accidental 
 * Quoted by Wilson in " Pre-historic Man." 
 
182 TOSSIL MEN. 
 
 discovery of facts of this kind may have led to the 
 practice. 
 
 Dr. Wilson, of Toronto., has devoted much study to 
 American skulls, and the American race is to form our 
 term of comparison in this chapter. We may begin 
 therefore with his description of the typical head of 
 Eastern America. It is short and broad, or somewhat 
 elongated, with largely developed maxillaries and 
 zygomata, prominent superciliary ridges, a compari- 
 tively narrow and poorly developed frontal region, and 
 flattened or truncated occiput, great facial breadth, 
 both at the cheek-bones and in the square massive 
 lower law, and prominence in the nasal bones. To 
 this we may add as a consequence of the widening of 
 the face, a somewhat elongated or less round form of 
 the orbits, and that in many tribes the occiput is by 
 no means flattened. According to the same careful 
 observer, the Esquimaux of North America have long 
 heads, resembling in form those of the Tschuktchi of 
 North Asia, and also those of the northern tribes of 
 Indians, differing, however, from the proper Indian 
 type in smaller nasal bones and more projecting jaws. 
 In regard to mere length of head, the American 
 Indians proper divide themselves into two groups: 
 the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Lenape races, extending 
 across the northern and eastern regions, being long- 
 headed; and the southern and south-western races, 
 including the mound-builders, being short-headed. 
 The two types graduate into each other, and among 
 long-headed tribes occasional short heads occur; while 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OP PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 183 
 
 on the other hand, short-headed races present occa- 
 sional long-headed specimens. These varieties some- 
 times depend on the presence of captives, or on 
 conquests and intermixture of tribes, but they show at 
 least a primitive identity with modifications. Further, 
 some of the short heads and flat occiputs seem to have 
 been at least aggravated by the use of the cradle- 
 board to which the " papoose n is strapped in infancy 
 among all the migratory tribes. Among some western 
 tribes, as well as among some now extinct peoples 
 of the south, the forehead was flattened by pressure 
 in infancy, a practice which obtained also among 
 some Turanian tribes of the Old World. It would 
 also seem that a remarkably short form of head was 
 characteristic of the ancient Alleghan race, and that 
 some of their heads were high in front, while others 
 had remarkably retreating foreheads.* It is curious 
 to notice this indication of low intellectual capacity 
 in this old semi-civilized race; but if it really indi- 
 cates the position of these people, it may readily be 
 accounted for. Living undisturbed for ages in a rich 
 alluvial region, with stationary and fixed institutions, 
 and with the energies of the individual cramped by a 
 system of tribal communism, their intellectual powers 
 may well have been reduced to a lower point than that 
 
 * On the monuments of Central America we find represen- 
 tations of men with high, almost conical, heads. These resemble 
 in outline the form at present produced among some tribes on 
 the coast of British Columbia by artificial pressure, and were 
 probably of this character; as were also the elongated Peru- 
 vian skulls, and perhaps also those of the old Alleg!ians. 
 
184 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of the rude hunter tribes, except in the case of those 
 men of higher caste who had to manage public affairs. 
 Men may become degraded by too great peace and 
 prosperity, along with unvarying routine, quite as 
 much as by the exigencies and hardships of savage 
 life. These mound-builders, with their peculiar, yet 
 American heads, are perhaps the oldest men of the 
 Western Continent known to us, if we except some 
 stray bones found under circumstances which have 
 been supposed to indicate a still greater antiquity. 
 One of the most remarkable of these, the w Calaveras" 
 skull from California, is stated by Professor Wyman 
 to be of somewhat larger capacity than those of 
 modern Indians of that country, but of the same 
 type. We thus find in America a characteristic type 
 of head, but under this a great many varieties of long 
 and short, straight and prognathous, natural and dis- 
 torted forms ; and this American type of skull on the 
 whole resembles that known as Turanian in the Old 
 World. Further, the possessors of these American 
 heads were found in the most varied stages of civil- 
 ization and barbarism ; though, as stated in a previous 
 chapter, the more ancient and civilized peoples had 
 more delicate and refined forms of face and head than 
 the ruder tribes. 
 
 Nothing is more distinct in the intimations, both 
 of tradition and of monuments, than the existence 
 in the Old World in pre-historic times of two types of 
 men representing respectively the American Indian 
 and the Esquimaux — the one of large stature and 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OP PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 185 
 
 powerful frame, the other comparatively small and 
 feeble. Nilsson well argues that all the northern 
 tales of giants, dwarfs, and elves, arise from this 
 source, and he refers, as parallel cases, to the terror 
 of the Israelites at the gigantic size of the Anakim, 
 and of the Eomans when informed of the bulk and 
 strength of the Germans. In the oldest historic 
 times of Scandinavia and of Britain of which we 
 have any certain information, there seem to have 
 been contemporary races of small and large men, 
 and the latter seem to have been encroaching on the 
 former. In the various mixtures and movements which 
 have taken place, races of these different types some- 
 times remain distinct and sometimes have been blended. 
 In Scandinavia, the Laps are still a very distinct people 
 from the Swedes, just as the Esquimaux are distinct 
 from the eastern American Indians ; but in Scotland 
 the little men of the north and the gigantic men of the 
 west speak one language, and are regarded as equally 
 Celts, and in western America the Esquimaux and 
 Indians graduate into each other. 
 
 There is nothing to prevent our believing that races 
 thus distinct in stature, and to some extent in form of 
 head, may be of common origin. Unfavourable cir- 
 cumstances and deficient food may depauperate races 
 of men, and there is no reason to think that the stunted 
 Fuegian is of different race from the gigantic Pata- 
 gonian, or the feeble Hare Indian of the north from 
 his better-developed brethren who feed not on hares 
 but on deer. Still, such differences mark at least long 
 
186 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 continuance of the different modes of life, and they 
 necessarily lead to hostility of races, one of which 
 prides itself on strength and power, the other on finesse 
 and cunning. 
 
 It was at one time difficult to say whether in America 
 and Europe the large or the small races were the earlier, 
 or whether there is any difference in this. It used to 
 be maintained that in Europe generally, as the Scandi- 
 navian antiquaries still believe with reference to that 
 country, the smaller short-headed race was the earlier ; 
 but recent discoveries in the French, caves and rock 
 shelters seem to negative this, and to show that a race 
 of great stature and large cranial development had the 
 precedence. So while in historic periods the Indians 
 of eastern America have been destructive to the Esqui- 
 maux, and have been at least restricting their range, 
 there seems no certain evidence that, on the western 
 coast, where the two races graduate into each other, 
 they may not have been contemporaries from the first, 
 and some have regarded the Esquimaux as the later of 
 the two. In any case, the graduation of the one race 
 into the other in the west, while they are markedly 
 distinct on their confines in the east, is an important 
 fact. Just as, even in antediluvian times, there were 
 Nephelim, or men of strength and of violence as dis- 
 tinguished from the rest of the world, and as in ancient 
 Palestine there were certain races noted for their 
 stature, and as the same differences obtain at the 
 present day, so they may have always existed both in 
 Europe and America, and may have fluctuated in their 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 187 
 
 boundaries and extent. Changes in physical character 
 may also have occurred, — as feeble races driven to the 
 more bleak and unproductive districts became for that 
 reason more feeble, or as the less muscular races suc- 
 ceeded by superior energy and sagacity in overcoming 
 and reducing to subjection the stronger, as the Hebrews 
 did in Syria, the Romans in Germany, and the Nor- 
 mans in England. Further, all such movements and 
 conquests lead to intermixtures of these divers races. 
 
 In any case we have these parallel facts, that while 
 the Esquimaux are a small race corresponding to the 
 Laps, and to the extinct elves and dwarfs of other 
 parts of Europe, the American Indians are men of 
 large stature and of great muscular development, 
 corresponding in this to the pre-historic men of Men- 
 tone and of the Perigord caves in Europe. This sta- 
 ture, and the great development of muscular processes 
 in the bones of the limbs, are consequences of abundant 
 food and a temperate climate, and of roving habits in 
 a wild country, and without beasts of burden. Cartier 
 mentions on several occasions the stature of the Indians 
 as compared with his Breton sailors ; and in his visit 
 to Hochelaga, when his men were tired with a long 
 walk, the savages took them up like children and 
 carried them on their shoulders. This accords per- 
 fectly with the great power of limb of the American 
 Indian, and with his known capability of carrying 
 immense burdens over portages. The strongly carinate 
 thigh-bone, the flattened tibia, and large fibula, ob- 
 served in the oldest pre-historic skeletons of Europe, 
 
188 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 show that they belonged to men possessing similar 
 power. 
 
 The beautiful work of Lartet and Christy has vividly 
 portrayed to us the antiquities of the limestone plateau 
 of the Dordogne — the ancient Aquitania — remains 
 which recall to us a population of Horites, or cave- 
 dwellers, of a time anterior to the dawn of history in 
 France, living much like the modern hunter- tribes of 
 America, and, as already stated, possibly contemporary, 
 in their early history at least, with the mammoth and 
 its extinct companions of the later Post-pliocene plains 
 and forests. We have already noticed the arts and 
 implements of these people ; but what manner of people 
 were they in themselves ? The answer is given by the 
 skeletons found in the cave of Cro-magnon. This is a 
 shelter or hollow under an overhanging ledge of lime- 
 stone, and excavated originally by the action of the 
 weather on a softer bed. It fronts the south-west and 
 the little river Vezere; and having originally been 
 about eight feet high and nearly twenty deep, must 
 have formed a cosey shelter from rain, or cold, or 
 summer sun, and with a pleasant outlook from its 
 front. All rude races have much sagacity in making 
 selections of this sort. Being nearly fifty feet wide, 
 it was capacious enough to accommodate several 
 families, and when in use it no doubt had trees or 
 shrubs in front, and may have been further completed 
 by stones, poles, or bark placed across the opening. 
 It seems, however, in the first instance to have been 
 used only at intervals, and to have been left vacant for 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OP PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 189 
 
 considerable portions of time. Perhaps it was visited 
 only by hunting or war parties. But subsequently it 
 was permanently occupied, and this for so long a time 
 that in some places a foot and a half of ashes and car- 
 bonaceous matter with bones, implements, etc., was 
 accumulated. By this time the height of the cavern 
 had been much diminished, and instead of clearing it 
 out for future use, it was made a place of burial in 
 which four or five individuals were interred. Of these, 
 two were men, one of great age, the other probably 
 in the prime of life. A third was a woman of about 
 thirty or forty years of age. The other remains were 
 too fragmentary to give very certain results. 
 
 These bones, with others to be mentioned in con- 
 nection with them, unquestionably belong to the 
 oldest human inhabitants known in western Europe. 
 They have been most carefully examined by several 
 competent anatomists and archaeologists, and the 
 results have been published with excellent figures in 
 the " Reliquiae Aquitanicaa." They are, therefore, of 
 the utmost interest for our present purpose, and I 
 shall try so to divest the descriptions of anatomical 
 details, as to give a clear notion of their character. 
 The " Old Man of Cro-magnon " was of great stature, 
 being nearly six feet high. More than this, his bones 
 show that he was of the strongest and most athletic 
 muscular development — a Samson in strength; and 
 the bones of the limbs have the peculiar form which 
 is characteristic of athletic men habituated to rough 
 walking, climbing, and running : for this is, I believe, 
 
190 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the real meaning of the enormous strength of the 
 thigh-bone., and the flattened condition of the leg in 
 this and other old skeletons. It occurs to some 
 extent, though much less than in this old man, in 
 American skeletons. His skull presents all the cha- 
 racters of advanced age, though the teeth had been 
 worn dowu to the sockets without being lost, which 
 again is the character of some, though not of all, 
 aged Indian skulls. The skull proper, or brain-case, 
 is very long, more so than in ordinary modern skulls, 
 and this length is accompanied with a great breadth, 
 so that the brain was of greater size than in average 
 modern men, and the frontal region was largely and 
 well developed. In this respect this most ancient 
 skull fails utterly to vindicate the expectations of 
 those who would regard pre-historic men as approach- 
 ing to the apes. It is at the opposite extreme. The 
 face, however, presented very peculiar characters. 
 It was extremely broad, with projecting cheek-bones 
 and heavy jaw, in this resembling the coarse types of 
 the American face ; and the eye-orbits were square, 
 and elongated laterally. The nose was large and pro- 
 minent, and the jaws projected somewhat forward. 
 This man, therefore, had, as to his features, some 
 resemblance to the harsher type of American physiog- 
 nomy, with overhanging brows, small and transverse 
 eyes, high cheek-bones, and coarse mouth. He had 
 not lived to so great an age without some rubs, for 
 his thigh-bone showed a depression which must have 
 resulted from a severe wound, perhaps from the horn 
 of some wild animal, or the spear of an enemy. 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 191 
 
 The woman presented similar characters of stature 
 and cranial form, modified by her sex, and must in 
 form and visage have been a veritable squaw, who, 
 if her hair and complexion were suitable, would have 
 passed at once for an Indian woman, but one of un- 
 usual size and development. Her head bears sad 
 testimony to the violence of her age and people. She 
 died from the effects of a blow from a stone-headed 
 pogamogon or spear, which has penetrated the right 
 side of the forehead with so clean a fracture as to indi- 
 cate the extreme rapidity and force of its blow. It is 
 inferred from the condition of the edges of this wound 
 that she may have survived its infliction for two weeks 
 or more. If, as is most likely, the wound was received 
 in some sudden attack by a hostile tribe, they must 
 have been driven off or have retired, leaving the 
 wounded woman in the hands of her friends to be 
 tended for a time, and then buried, either with other 
 members of her family or with others who had per- 
 ished in the same skirmish. Unless the wound was 
 inflicted in sleep, during a night attack, she must have 
 fallen, not in flight, but with her face to the foe, per- 
 haps aiding the resistance of her friends, or shielding 
 her little ones from destruction. "With the people of 
 Cro-magnon, as with the American Indians, the care 
 of the wounded was probably a sacred duty, not to be 
 neglected without incurring the greatest disgrace, and 
 the vengeance of the guardian spirits of the sufferers.* 
 
 * Prof. Boyd Dawkins, in "Cave Hunting," has thrown some 
 doubts on the antiquity of the skeletons of this type. A 
 
192 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 The skulls of these people have been compared to 
 those of the modern Esthonians or Lithuanians, but 
 on the authority of M. Quatrefages, it is stated that 
 while this applies to the probably later race of small 
 men found in some of the Belgian caves, it does not 
 apply so well to the people of Cro-magnon. Are, 
 then, these people the types of any ancient, or of the 
 most ancient, European race ? We have already 
 noticed the remarkable skeleton of Mentone, in the 
 south of France, found under circumstances equally 
 suggestive of great antiquity. Dr. Biviere, in a 
 memoir on this skeleton, illustrated by two beautiful 
 photographs, shows that the characters of the skull 
 and of the bones of the limbs are precisely similar 
 to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton, indicating a 
 perfect identity of race, while the objects found with 
 the skeleton are identical in character. 
 
 The ornaments of Cro-magnon were perforated 
 shells from the Atlantic, and pieces of ivory. Those 
 at Mentone were perforated Neritinge from the Medi- 
 terranean, and canine teeth of the deer. In both cases 
 there was evidence that these ancient people painted 
 themselves with red oxide of iron ; and as if to corn- 
 comparison, however, of all the cases of their discovery in 
 France and Belgium fully vindicates the opinions entertained 
 on this point by Continental geologists ; and some of the more 
 recent discoveries in the French caves, and especially in that 
 of Laugerie Basse, where traces of the mammoth also occur, 
 place this beyond doubt. The comparison by Dawkins of these 
 people with the Esquimaux applies to some of their imple- 
 ments and weapons, but not to their physical characteristics. 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OP PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 193 
 
 plete the similarity, the Mentone man had an old 
 healed-up fracture of the radius of the left arm, the 
 effect of a violent blow or of a fall. Skulls found at 
 Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1869 are described 
 by Professor Broca and Mr. Fleurens as of the same 
 general type, and the remains found at Gibraltar and 
 in the cave of Paviland, in England, seem also to have 
 belonged to the same race. The celebrated Eagis 
 skull, believed to have belonged to a contemporary of 
 the mammoth, is also of the same type, though less 
 massive than that of Cro-magnon ; and, lastly, even 
 the somewhat degraded Neanderthal skull, found in a 
 cave near Dusseldorf, though, like that of Clichy, in- 
 ferior in frontal development, is referable to the same 
 peculiar long-headed style of man, in so far as can be 
 judged from the portion that remains. (See Fig. 33.) 
 
 Let it be observed, then, that these skulls are pro- 
 bably the oldest known in the world, and they are all 
 referable to one race of men; and let us ask what 
 they tell as to the position and character of Palaso- 
 lithic man. The testimony is here fortunately well- 
 nigh unanimous. Huxley, who well compares some 
 of the peculiar features of these ancient skulls and 
 skeletons to those of Australians and other rude tribes, 
 and of the ancient Danes of Borreby, a people not 
 improbably allied to the Esthonians and Fins, re- 
 marks that the manner in which the individual heads 
 of the most homogeneous rude races differ from each 
 other "in the same characters, though perhaps not 
 to the same extent with the Eagis and Neanderthal 
 
194 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 skulls, seem to me to prohibit any cautious reasoner 
 from affirming the latter to have necessarily been of 
 distinct races." My own experience in American 
 skulls, and the still larger experience of Dr. Wilson, 
 fully confirm the wisdom of this caution. The figures 
 given in this chapter will show this in the case of two 
 
 Fig. 33.— Outlines of Three Pre-historic European Skuixs compared 
 with one from Hochelaga. Outer outline, Cro-magnon skull; second out- 
 line, Engis skull; third outline (dotted), Neanderthal skull ; inner figure, 
 Hochelagan skull on a smaller scale. 
 
 skulls, both from the ancient cemetery of Hochelaga. 
 He adds : — u Finally, the comparatively large cranial 
 capacity of the Neanderthal skull, overlaid though it 
 may be by pithecoid bony walls, and the completely 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 195 
 
 human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, 
 together with the very fair development of the Engis 
 skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the pri- 
 mordial stock, whence man has been derived, need no 
 
 Fig. 31.— Outline of a Cbo-mag^ox Skull as seen in Fbont, and Hoche- 
 lagan Skull ok Smalleb Scalb. The resemblance of the two skulls would 
 appear greater but that their attitude is not precisely the same. 
 
 longer be sought by those who entertain any form of 
 the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest 
 tertiaries, but that they may be looked for in an epoch 
 
196 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 more distant from that of the Elejphas jprimigenius, 
 than that is from us." If he had possessed the Cro- 
 magnon and Mentone skulls at the time when this was 
 written, he might well have said immeasurably dis- 
 tant from the time of the Elejphas jprimigenius. Pro- 
 fessor Broca, who seems by no means disinclined to 
 favour a simian origin for men, has the following 
 
 Fig. 35.— Fbont View of Anotheb Hochelagan Skull oe a Similae Type 
 but op Higheb Cranial Development, closely resembling the Mentone 
 Skull as Photographed by Db. Kiviebe. 
 
 general conclusions which refer to the Cro-magnon 
 skulls : — " The great volume of the brain, the develop- 
 ment of the frontal region, the fine elliptical profile 
 of the anterior portion of the skull, and the ortho- 
 gnathous form of the upper facial region, are incon- 
 testably evidences of superiority which are met with 
 usually only in the civilized races. On the other hand, 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTOPJC MEN. 
 
 197 
 
 the great breadth of face, the alveolar prognathism, 
 the enormous development of the ascending ramus of 
 the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of the muscu- 
 lar insertions, especially of the masticatory muscles, 
 give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal race." 
 
 He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen also 
 in the limbs, as well as the skull, accords with the 
 evidence furnished by the associated weapons and 
 
 Profile View of Savk Skull. 
 Both the Hochelagan skulls are from photographs by Henderson, of Montreal. 
 
 implements of a rude hunter life, and at the same 
 time of no mean degree of taste and skill in carving 
 and other arts. He might have added that this is 
 precisely the antithesis seen in the American tribes, 
 among whom art and taste of various kinds, and much 
 that is high and spiritual even in thought, co-existed 
 with barbarous modes of life and intense ferocity and 
 
198 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 cruelty. The god and the demon were combined in 
 these races, bub there was nothing of the mere brute. 
 
 Riviere remarks, with expression of surprise, the 
 same contradictory points in the Mentone skeleton. 
 Its grand development of brain-case, and high facial 
 angle, even higher apparently than in most of these 
 ancient skulls, combined with other characters which 
 indicate a low. type and barbarous modes of life. 
 
 Another point which strikes us in reading the 
 descriptions, and which deserves the attention of 
 those who have access to the skeletons, is the indica- 
 tion which they seem to present of an extreme lon- 
 gevity. The massive proportions of the body, the 
 great development of the muscular processes, the 
 extreme wearing of the teeth, among a people who 
 predominantly lived on flesh, and not on grain, the 
 obliteration of the sutures of the skull, along with 
 indications of slow ossification of the ends of the long 
 bones, point in this direction, and seem to indicate a 
 slow maturity and great length of life in this most 
 primitive race. 
 
 The picture would be incomplete did we not add 
 that in France and Belgium, in the immediately suc- 
 ceeding or Reindeer age, these gigantic and magni- 
 ficent men seem to have been superseded by a feebler 
 race of smaller stature and with shorter heads ; so that 
 we have, even in these oldest days, the same contrasts, 
 already so often referred to as occurring in the races 
 of the north of Europe and the north of America in 
 historical times. 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 199 
 
 It is further significant that there are some indica- 
 tions to show that the larger and nobler race was 
 that which inhabited Europe at the time of its greatest 
 elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, 
 and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds 
 now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the 
 possession of a greater continental area than that now 
 existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute 
 rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not 
 improbable that this early race became extinct in 
 Europe in consequence of the physical changes which 
 occurred in connection with the subsidence which 
 reduced the land to its present limits, and that the 
 dwarfish race which succeeded came in as the appro- 
 priate accompaniment of a diminished land surface 
 and a less genial climate in the early Modern period. 
 Both of these races are properly Paleolithic, and are 
 supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; 
 but this may, to a great extent, be a prejudice of 
 collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion 
 as to the distinctness of these periods : its validity 
 will be discussed in our next chapter. Judging from 
 the great cranial capacity of the older race, and the 
 small number of their skeletons found, it would be 
 fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes 
 belonging to races which elsewhere had attained to 
 greater numbers and culture. 
 
 Lastly, both of these old European races were 
 Turanian, Mongolian, or American, in their head-forms 
 and features, as well as in their habits, implements, 
 
200 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 and arts. To illustrate this, in so far as the older of 
 the two races is concerned, I have figured from photo- 
 graphs two Hochelagan skulls of the extreme types 
 found there, and have placed in connection with one 
 of them tracings in outline of the forms of some of 
 the oldest European crania above referred to (Figs. 
 33-35). One may be fairly compared in its characters 
 with the Mentone skull, and the other with those of 
 Cro-magnon, Engis, and Neanderthal; and so like 
 are these and Huron, Iroquois, and other northern 
 American skulls to these ancient European relics and 
 others of their type, that it would be difficult to affirm 
 that they might not have belonged to near relatives. 
 On the other hand, the smaller and shorter heads of 
 the race of the Reindeer age in Europe may be com- 
 pared with the Laps, and with some of the more 
 delicately formed Algonquin and Chippewyan skulls 
 in America. If, therefore, the reader desires to realize 
 the probable aspect of the men of Cro-magnon, of 
 Mentone, or of Engis, I may refer him to modern 
 American heads. So permanent is this great Tu- 
 ranian race, out of which all the other races now 
 extant seem to have been developed in the milder and 
 more hospitable regions of the Old World, while in 
 northern Asia and in America it has retained to this 
 day its primitive characters. 
 
 The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from 
 history, may be disposed here to ask : Must we 
 suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian 
 men, like the old man of Cro-magnon ? In answer 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 201 
 
 I would say that there is no good reason to regard 
 the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or 
 an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more 
 muscular mould. But the gigantic Palaeolithic men of 
 the European caves are more probably representatives 
 of that fearful and powerful race who filled the ante- 
 diluvian world with violence, and who re-appear in 
 post-diluvian times as the Anakim and traditional 
 giants, who constitute a feature in the early history 
 of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more 
 curious in the revelations as to the most ancient 
 cave-men, than that they confirm the old belief that 
 there were " giants in those days." 
 
 And now let us pause for a moment to picture these 
 so-called Palaeolithic men. What could the old man 
 of Cro-magnon have told us, had we been able to sit 
 by his hearth, and listen understandingly to his 
 speech, which, if we may judge from the form of his 
 palate bones, must have resembled more that of the 
 Americans or Mongolians than of any modern Euro- 
 pean people ? He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to 
 his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and 
 over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. 
 He may have bestridden the wild horse which seems 
 to have abounded at the time in France, and he may 
 have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. 
 His experience and memory might extend back a 
 century or more, and his traditional lore might even 
 reach to the times of the first mother of our race. Did 
 he live in that wide Post-pliocene continent which 
 
202 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 extended westward through Ireland ? Did he know 
 and had he visited the nations that lived in the valley 
 of the great Gihon, which ran down the Mediterranean 
 valley, or that nameless river which flowed where the 
 German Ocean now lies. Had he visited or seen from 
 afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could 
 almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? 
 Or did he live at a later time, after the Post-pliocene 
 subsidence, and when the land had assumed its 
 present form ? In that case he could have told us of 
 the great deluge, of the huge animals of the ante- 
 diluvian world, known to him only by tradition, and 
 of the diminished strength aud longevity of men in his 
 comparatively modern days. We can but conjecture 
 all this. But mute though they may be as to the 
 details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his 
 contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in 
 which they coincide with the Americans and with the 
 primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that 
 primitive man had the same high cerebral organization 
 which he possesses now, and we may infer the same 
 intellectual and mora] nature, fitting him for com- 
 munion with God and headship over the lower world. 
 They indicate also, like the mound-builders who pre- 
 ceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier 
 state was the best, that he had been a good and 
 noble creature before he became a savage. It is not 
 conceivable that their high development of brain and 
 mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a 
 mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FEE-HISTORIC MEN. 203 
 
 remnants of a noble organisation degraded by moral 
 evil. They thus justify the tradition of a golden and 
 Edenic age, and mutely protest against the philosophy 
 of progressive development as applied to man, while 
 they bear witness to the identity in all important 
 characters of the oldest pre-historic men, with that 
 variety of our species which is at the present day at 
 once the most widely extended, and the most primi- 
 tive in its manner and usages, the great Turanian or 
 Tartar race of Northern Asia and America. 
 
 We have seen, or shall see in subsequent chapters, 
 that this race underlies in Europe and Asia, and 
 probably in Africa as well as in America, the older 
 historic peoples, and that it presents throughout an 
 animistic religion, a great and marked devotion to the 
 doctrine of immortality in connection with certain 
 forms of sepulture, the classificatory system of relation- 
 ships, a permanent and unchanging temperament, and 
 great constructive and artistic tendencies. In this 
 division of the human family also, we find — as in the 
 Peruvians, the Natchez, and the Flatheads in America, 
 and in the ancient Macrocephali and more modern 
 tribes in Asia — the singular practice of artificially 
 distorting the head. In other words, we find in that 
 post-diluvian, or historic race, which most nearly 
 coincides with the ante-diluvian or palaBOCOsmic type 
 of man, and which is the most widely diffused of all, 
 characteristics which indicate its place as the main 
 stem of humanity in historic times, from which the 
 Semitic and Aryan civilizations budded out, and to 
 
204 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 which can be traced back the rudiments of their arts, 
 their science, their literature, and not a little of 
 their religion. Here, again, America has preserved 
 the oldest and most unchanged type of humanity, 
 even if in many cases much degraded. 
 
 Note. — As confirmatory of some of the views stated in this 
 chapter, I have much pleasure in quoting the following, from 
 the address of Dr. Tylor, F.R.S., at the Meeting of the British 
 Association in 1879 : — " There appears no particular reason to 
 think that the relics from the drift-beds or bone-caves repre- 
 sent man as he first appeared on the earth. The contents of 
 the caves especially bear witness to a state of savage art, in 
 some respects fairly high, and which may possibly have some- 
 what fallen off from an ancestral state in a more favourable 
 climate. Indeed, the savage condition generally, though rude 
 and more or less representing early stages of culture, never 
 looks absolutely primitive, just as no savage language ever 
 has the appearance of being a primitive language. What the 
 appearance and state of our really primaeval ancestors may 
 have been seems too speculative a question, until there shall 
 be more signs of agreement between the anthropologists, who 
 work by comparison of actual races of man toward a hypo- 
 thetical common stock, and the zoologists, who approach the 
 problem through the species adjoining the human." Other 
 points in this address, and in recent papers by Dawkins and 
 others, received when these pages were in type, may be no- 
 ticed in an appendix. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to the 
 duration of the human period in America. If we 
 were to accept without question the statements which 
 have been made as to the finding of flint implements 
 and a human skull in the ancient gold gravels of 
 California, we might carry back the human occupancy 
 of America even into the Pliocene age, or further than 
 any authentic remains have yet carried it in Europe. 
 But these reports so require confirmation that we 
 cannot rest on them. The same remark may be made 
 with regard to the discovery of implements and 
 human bones in those more modern estuarine and 
 lacustrine deposits in which the bones of the mastodon 
 are entombed, though a sufficient number of probable 
 indications appear to make it not unlikely that man 
 had reached America before the disappearance of the 
 mastodon. If so, there was an ancient American 
 population little known to us, and coeval with the 
 oldest cave-men of Europe, and who possibly, like 
 these old cave-men, may have been swept away before 
 the advent of the more modern races. It is remark- 
 able, however, that some of the indications relied on 
 
206 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 as evidence of this early race, would go to show a 
 degree of culture equal to that of the more civilized 
 modern tribes. Of this kind are the beautiful polished 
 plummet or ornament, and polished spear heads, found 
 in the California auriferous gravel at great depths, and 
 the baskets and pottery described by Hilgard and 
 Fontaine from the salt-beds of Petite Anse. To the 
 same effect is the fact stated by Professor Wyman, 
 that the Calaveras skull from the gravels of California 
 is of the ordinary American type, and rather larger in 
 cranial capacity than those of the modern Indians of 
 the same region. Still, the probability is that all 
 these remains are of somewhat modern date.* This 
 applies, for example, to the discovery in California of 
 polished implements and stone mortars in the auriferous 
 gravels, which also contain bones of the mastodon. 
 Some of these objects are stated to have been found 
 at depths exceeding 300 feet in gravel, capped by 
 beds of lava and tufa, and attributed to the Pliocene 
 age. They would go to prove that the " polished 
 stone age M had been established in California at that 
 somewhat early Tertiary period. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, they occur in deposits known to have been 
 worked by the Mexicans for gold, and in which deep 
 shafts of ancient date have been found, and as the 
 mortars and other objects are those likely to have been 
 used in the search for gold, this would seem to afford 
 the most probable explanation of their presence. In 
 the more northern part of America no remains what- 
 * Whitney's Memoir (1879) must be noticed in an appendix. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 207 
 
 ever have been found to connect man with any of 
 those terraces and raised beaches which mark the 
 elevation of the land out of the glacial seas. 
 
 The actual American race can make no monumental 
 pretensions to a great antiquity, for its oldest remains, 
 those of the ancient Alleghan nations, situated as they 
 are on the modern alluvium of the western rivers, claim 
 no greater antiquity than the similar mounds on the 
 banks of the Tigris, and possibly are much less 
 ancient. The only actual evidence of great age known 
 in connection with them — that afforded by the growth 
 of forest trees — would not carry them back farther 
 than the earlier centuries of our era, and the decayed 
 condition of the bones in the burial mounds is well 
 known to be a criterion of very uncertain value. The 
 languages, customs, and religions of the Americans, 
 as well as their physical characters, are allied to those 
 of Post-diluvian nations of the Old World, and though 
 they indicate migrations belonging to an early part 
 of the historical period, while the Turanian race was 
 still dominant, go no farther back than this. The 
 American traditions of the Atlantis, of the Deluge, 
 and of the huge extinct quadrupeds, can scarcely be 
 held as proving anything more than a common inherit- 
 ance. Thus our primitive American men seem to fall 
 short in interest of those pre-historic races in Europe 
 with which we have been comparing them, and which 
 are by many believed to reach backward to a time 
 enormously exceeding that to which any history, 
 sacred or secular, extends. The real interest of the 
 
208 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 American peoples depends, as we have already seen, 
 on their reproducing to us the conditions of these 
 ancient men, and showing us that under the eyes of 
 Europeans the same people, with the same usages, 
 have been living in America, and are still living in 
 some remote parts up to our own time. The American 
 tribes thus bring near to us the living picture of the 
 almost forgotten men of the pre-historic time of the 
 Old World, while their rapid disappearance in the 
 presence of European colonisation shows how those 
 rude peoples of the Old World may also have perished. 
 Bat may they not aid also in settling some of the still 
 disputed questions respecting the antiquity of pre- 
 historic man in Europe ? This will be best ascertained 
 by summing up the evidence for that antiquity, and, as 
 we proceed, noting the points where American facts 
 may aid us. 
 
 We have already, in the introductory chapter, in- 
 quired as to the import and validity of the ages of 
 Iron, Bronze, and Stone, now so strenuously insisted 
 on by European archa3cjogists. At the time of the 
 discovery of America it was the age of Bronze and 
 Gold in Peru, of Copper in Mexico and the valley of 
 the Mississippi, and of Stone and Bone everywhere 
 else. Possibly even then the Greenlanders may have 
 had some weapons of native iron, and some few iron 
 and steel implements may have found their way to the 
 west coast by means of wrecked Japanese junks. In 
 less than four centuries the Iron age had established 
 itself in all except a few remote localities. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 209 
 
 The progress in the Old World was slower, and has 
 been already noticed. If we rely on the narrative in 
 Genesis, it was but the seventh generation from Adam 
 when the greatest of all discoveries in the mechanical 
 arts was made, and an artificer arose in copper and 
 iron. At the date of the Exodus iron was widely 
 used ; and though bronze was still more abundant and 
 cheaper, the Phoenicians, and the tribes of Canaanites 
 trading with them, had enough of the metal to enable 
 them to arm their war-chariots with it. Yet we also 
 find that stone implements were used in Assyria and 
 Egypt up to a late date, along with those of metal. In 
 Europe, in the Homeric poems, we can trace the age 
 of Bronze, then beginning to decay among the Greeks, 
 though there were soldiers in the army of Xerxes, long 
 after, who used stone weapons; and the discoveries of 
 Schliemann show that on the site of Troy a people 
 using stone implements succeeded one using bronze, 
 while in Santorin we find the indications of an early 
 Greek people using stone implements. In the ancient 
 Greek tombs at Mycena3 stone arrow-heads are found 
 along with the richest and most artistic objects of 
 gold, and throughout Europe there is in ancient tombs 
 and battlefields a most inextricable mixture of bronze, 
 and even iron, with stone. The Roman age was one 
 of iron everywhere, so that even the Britons who 
 fought with Caesar used iron weapons; still stone 
 lingered much later in remote places, in Britain and 
 in Scandinavia, for there seem to have been stalwart 
 Saxons at Hastings who smote Norman skulls with 
 
 P 
 
210 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 lignis imjposita saxa, probably stone-headed clubs, or 
 stone battle-axes.* Such facts, of which any number 
 are furnished to us by history, show that in any abso- 
 lutely general sense we cannot rationally divide the 
 pre-historic time into ages of Stone and Metal. The 
 only sense in which such classification can be accepted is 
 locally, and even then with some reserve. Admitting, 
 then, a certain local value of the Iron, Bronze, and 
 Stone ages in western Europe, with such modifications 
 as the American and other facts already discussed 
 require, it remains to satisfy ourselves as to the possi- 
 bility of distinguishing separate ages of chipped and 
 polished stone, or Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages, and 
 as to the nature of the line of separation between these 
 supposed periods and the times to which they belong. 
 In America the age of polished and chipped stone, 
 used together, and with some intermixture of copper 
 and bronze, existed unchanged up to the discovery 
 by Columbus. In Europe the Stone age is usually 
 supposed to have given place to that of Bronze almost 
 before the dawn of history, except in certain remote 
 places. If we inquire what were the causes which 
 at so early a date caused the introduction of bronze 
 and iron in northern Europe, the answer is not diffi- 
 cult. It was foreign trade with the more civilized 
 nations inhabiting the Mediterranean — nations which 
 had possessed these metals from a still earlier period, 
 
 * "William of Poictiers." A different meaning has been 
 attached to this by some ; but stone weapons were used in 
 Treland and Scandinavia to quite as late a date. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 211 
 
 and were to these people of northern and western 
 Europe what the latter in modern times have been to 
 America. It is evident, however, that in the dawn of 
 history, in Egypt, Syria, and Greece, the quantity of 
 iron and bronze was scarcely sufficient for purposes 
 of extensive foreign supply ; and tin, an essential in- 
 gredient of bronze, was especially expensive. If we 
 ask for an explanation of the spread of bronze into 
 northern Europe, the most probable is that it dates 
 from the time when the Phoenicians discovered the 
 rich tin mines of Cornwall, yielding for the first time 
 a large and cheap supply of the metal. We have no 
 certain date for this, but cannot be far wrong in fixing 
 it between 800 and 500 year8 before Christ. From 
 this time the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were able 
 to supply their customers in all parts of Europe with 
 this beautiful and useful alloy of copper and tin at 
 low prices ; and as this alloy could easily be recast, 
 even by rude peoples, and was not liable, like iron, to 
 decay by rust, the implements and weapons obtained 
 by the natives were retained, and when worn out re- 
 cast into new forms ; and the metal thus accumulated 
 in sufficient quantity to replace to a great extent the 
 old stone implements. At a later date, when the 
 Carthagiuian power was broken down, iron, supplied 
 by the Roman traders, took the place of bronze. Any 
 other view than this is negatived by the fact that tin 
 could be obtained abundantly only in Cornwall, that 
 this source of supply was in the hands of the Phoeni- 
 cians, that the antique bronze of all parts of Europe is 
 
212 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 similar in composition, and the implements of similar 
 patterns, and that there is no evidence that any ot 
 the pre-historic races of northern Europe could either 
 smelt copper or tin. 
 
 We may therefore reasonably conclude that, except 
 in the regions on the Mediterranean coasts, the Stone 
 period extended unbroken up to the sixth century before 
 Christ — in other words, to the time of the early kings 
 of Rome and the decay of the Hebrew monarchy, and 
 we know from history that it lasted in some places much 
 longer. Thus in graves in Russia and Scandinavia, and 
 even in Germany, France, and England, stone weapons 
 are found associated with remains of the tenth and 
 even of the twelfth century. It is also to be observed 
 that in every country some objects of stone — as arrow- 
 heads, hammers, sling stones, and sharp flakes — were 
 in current use long after the introduction of daggers, 
 swords, and spears of bronze or of iron. 
 
 The question, How far back in time did the Stone 
 age extend ? is less easily answered, and we may con- 
 sider it under three heads: 1st. The validity of a 
 Paleolithic as distinguished from a Neolithic age. 
 2nd. The question of the contemporaneousness of the 
 men of the earlier Stone age with mammals of the 
 Post-pliocene period now extinct. 3rd. The physical 
 revolutions which are proved to have occurred since 
 the origin of man. Having considered these points, 
 we shall be in a position to decide whether there is 
 any reality in the idea of an extreme antiquity of man 
 in the old continent, and more especially in Europe. 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 213 
 
 First, with regard to the reality of the two ages of 
 Stone. The current doctrine is that there was an 
 earlier age in which men were possessed only of rude 
 implements of chipped flints, and in which they are 
 supposed to have been ignorant of pottery and of the 
 metals. This was succeeded by a later Stone age, in 
 which polished stone implements were used, and 
 which later age passed into that of Bronze. These 
 statements are of course to be taken only locally, as 
 referring to western Europe. They must also be 
 taken with some limitations, as pottery has been found 
 in at least one cave in France referred to this age ; 
 and the book of Genesis and all early history would 
 lead us to infer that the metals gold and copper at 
 least were known from the earliest times, though 
 there must have been then as in more modern days 
 extensive regions in which they were unknown. 
 
 There appears farther, as we have stated in the last 
 chapter, to be a twofold division of the earlier Stone 
 age, into that of the Mammoth with the men of large 
 stature, and that of the Reindeer with the men of small 
 stature ; and these ages were probably separated by 
 considerable physical changes. Further, the latter of 
 these periods evidently graduates into that of polished 
 stone; while the carvings in ivory and the highly 
 artificial bone implements which are traced back into 
 the older age, and the probability that the people who 
 chipped stones possessed stone or bone hammers for 
 the purpose, renders the distinction of Palaeolithic and 
 Neolithic ages far less clear than it appears to be at 
 
214 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 first sight. In the Dordogne caves, for example, some 
 supposed to be older than the others show roughly- 
 made implements along with bones of extinct animals; 
 but there are associated with them others, both of 
 stone and bone, which could be referred to the Neo- 
 lithic age; and the same is the case with the Aurignac 
 cave, if of the great age originally attributed to it. 
 Even Kent's Cavern, in England, has produced highly 
 artificial bone implements from the bed of clay holding 
 remains of extinct mammalia, and no reason can be 
 shown why men capable of carving bone and ivory 
 could not have polished stone. If they did not do so, 
 it may have been merely because the plentiful supply 
 of flints in their vicinity rendered it unnecessary. 
 Further, our American investigations show us that 
 people who used the best stone implements used also 
 the rudest, and even naturally-shaped stones, for some 
 purposes ; so that out of any American village site we 
 could pick out a collection of Palaeolithic and of Neo- 
 lithic implements. Besides this, in any place where 
 the raw material abounded and where stone imple- 
 ments were made, we should necessarily find a very 
 large preponderance of the ruder types. Again, a 
 people living where the material was plentiful and 
 easily chipped, would probably be in the habit of 
 making rude implements and throwing them away 
 carelessly, as they could be so easily replaced by 
 others. After carefully going over the several de- 
 posits of remains ascribed to the Palaeolithic time, as 
 summed up by Lyell and Lubbock, I think we must 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 215 
 
 exclude from the true Palaeolithic period, as defined 
 above, all the known cases, except those of the river- 
 gravels and shore-gravels of the cretaceous districts of 
 western Europe, because all the other repositories, 
 even those containing bones of the mammoth, show 
 implements of more advanced construction. It is 
 further obvious that with regard to these gravels the 
 exceptional conditions above referred to come into full 
 force. First, the implements occur principally in 
 those cretaceous regions in which flints well suited for 
 chipped implements abound. Hence it is likely that 
 rude tribes migrating from place to place might not 
 care to take with them ordinary implements, but 
 might make a new supply wherever they happened to 
 be, and then abandon them. A very few such imple- 
 ments as those found at Amiens would be burdensome 
 to a savage in his journey, and when he knew that at 
 any place in the district he could procure flints and 
 make a new supply in an hour or two, he would not 
 fatigue himself with their weight. He would be more 
 likely to carry a light hammer of stone or antler or 
 tooth, with which he could chip flints as he required 
 them. Secondly, independent of this, a region so 
 abundantly supplied with flint might be visited by 
 remote tribes who might spend weeks in the chipping 
 of flints, and then leave the locality, taking with them 
 those which were most suitable for use, or for further 
 working into finer weapons. Resident tribes also, if 
 sufficiently powerful to prevent others from visiting 
 the gravel-beds, might manufacture or roughly block 
 
216 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 out weapons, and supply neighbouring tribes in the 
 way of trade. A remarkable illustration of this is 
 afforded by the fact that the numerous flint flakes 
 found by Dupont in some caves of the Reindeer age in 
 Belgium, are believed to have been imported from 
 Pressigny, in France, where a variety of flint, known 
 from the most ancient times for its excellence, exists, 
 and where vast numbers of cores, or " nuclei/' from 
 which flakes have been struck off are found. We may 
 imagine in the Reindeer age makers of nuclei and 
 flakes at Pressigny, and itinerant traders carrying 
 their productions into Belgium, or distant tribes mak- 
 ing long journeys to reach the locality of such precious 
 stone. We know from American examples that in 
 this way the produce of the flint-beds might be con- 
 veyed for hundreds of miles into districts not naturally 
 provided with so good material. Thirdly, another 
 consideration comes in here, which has been strangely 
 overlooked by some writers on the subject. The 
 objects known as flakes, knives, scrapers, and cores, 
 are unquestionably of natural or accidental origin far 
 more frequently than artificial in the proper sense. 
 My own limited experience in the chalk districts con- 
 vinced me of this many years ago. I picked up in 
 the flint-heaps by the roadside near Amiens and at 
 Dover many broken flints of this kind, and some that 
 even approached in perfection the implements of the 
 gravel-beds, and Mr. Whitley fully establishes this 
 view for large districts in England and France.* 
 * " Transactions of Victoria Institute." 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 217 
 
 Savages no doubt were in the habit of picking up and 
 using such flakes, and even of carrying them to dis- 
 tricts where they were less abundant, and of chipping 
 them for themselves when natural ones could not be 
 found ; but no one can distinguish those which man 
 has used from the vastly greater number which nature 
 has produced and man has not touched, except when 
 they are found in association with unquestionable 
 human remains. Taking these considerations into 
 account, it appears to me that the Palaeolithic period, 
 as a distinct age, fades away from view, and is rather 
 a local phenomenon than one relating to time. It is, 
 perhaps, rather a product of the imagination of over- 
 zealous antiquaries, whose fancies have too readily 
 been accepted as facts by geologists. There is, in- 
 deed, no good evidence that the people of the earliest 
 Stone age in Europe were materially different in grade 
 of civilization from the aborigines of America at the 
 period of its discovery, a conclusion confirmed by the 
 fact that their skeletons were so remarkably similar in 
 type, and that their brains were in no respect inferior. 
 If, therefore, we are to make any twofold division of 
 the people of the Stone age, it should be on some 
 other ground than the quality of their implements. 
 They may be divided into the men of the Mammoth 
 age and of the Reindeer age, after the French and 
 Belgian archaeologists; or, as this is merely a local 
 distinction, — the reindeer not being found in Italy, for 
 instance, — we might regard them as men living before 
 and after the last subsidence of the land, or as Ante- 
 
218 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 diluvians and Post-diluvians ; or, to avoid committing 
 ourselves to historical connections, I have elsewhere 
 proposed the names Palceocosmic and Neocosmic. * 
 
 In any case, I think that American archaeologists 
 and geologists must refuse to accept the distinction of 
 a Palaeolithic from a Neolithic period until further 
 evidence can be obtained. If, therefore, man in 
 Europe was contemporary with the extinct Mammalia 
 of the Post-pliocene, and existed there before the 
 latest great physical revolutions of climate and sur- 
 face, he did not belong to an imaginary rude and 
 semi- simian race. He not only displayed a good 
 physical organization, but had some knowledge of the 
 arts of life, and by virtue of this was able to shelter 
 himself from the severities of climate and to cope 
 with the wild animals which surrounded him. 
 
 Of course we should not maintain that in the earlier 
 Stone age there may not have been progress in civili- 
 zation, as well as differences between the peoples 
 of different localities. In the Cresswell caves, de- 
 scribed by Dawkins,f we are informed that " in the 
 lowest stratum implements of the rudest and roughest 
 form, made of quartzite pebbles from the neighbour- 
 ing Permian conglomerate, were the only tools left 
 behind by the hunter. In the middle stratum, com- 
 posed of red earth, he used better implements, of flint 
 brought from a distance; while in the upper portion of 
 
 * " Story of the Earth and Man." 
 
 f " Journal Geological Society, 1877 : Manchester Proceed- 
 ings, 1877." See also Appendix. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 219 
 
 the cave earth, and in the breccia, all his cutting imple- 
 ments were made of flint, and are of a higher order." 
 Here also are implements of bone and antler, and 
 even specimens of artistic carving. This sequence 
 may represent either a gradual elevation of one race, 
 or a succession of races, or the first rude efforts of a 
 small company of new settlers, as compared with their 
 condition when more fully established and with a 
 wider circle of intercourse, or the makeshifts of men 
 cut off by war or accident from their usual supplies. 
 The Micmacs resident in or visiting Prince Edward 
 Island, often had to use rude arrow-heads made from 
 the quartzite pebbles of the Triassic conglomerate, 
 though in Nova Scotia they employed beautiful 
 weapons of agate and jasper. 
 
 We can imagine even stragglers from civilization, 
 destitute of metals and obliged to begin a rude manu- 
 facture of flints. Remarkable illustrations of this 
 occur at a later time in the remains of those extra- 
 ordinary villages built on platforms supported on 
 piles in the Swiss lakes, and which have afforded so 
 many curious relics. If the oldest of these villages, 
 as described by the Swiss antiquaries, belong to an 
 early part of the Stone age, they point unmistakably, 
 by the presence of several kinds of grain, of woven 
 cloth, and of a few objects of metal found in them, to 
 a greater civilization existing to the south ; and if the 
 Danish shell heaps, which exactly correspond to our 
 Indian shell heaps on the American coast, are contem- 
 porary, then they also point to a ruder pecple living 
 
220 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 in the north. Had a civilized traveller visited one of 
 these Swiss villages in the Stone age, he would have 
 been told of highly civilized agricultural countries to 
 the south, and of rude tribes to the north, just as the 
 Hochelagans could give similar information to Cartier. 
 This much being settled, we may enter on the con- 
 sideration of the absolute antiquity of the age of Stone 
 in Europe. The evidence of the high antiquity claimed 
 for the early Stone age, extending even to 100,000 
 years, or as an enthusiastic advocate of human anti- 
 quity has recently inferred, possibly to 500,000 years, 
 resolves itself into two theses which were held by Sir 
 C. Lyell to be proved, or at least rendered somewhat 
 probable, by the evidence obtained : — 
 
 1. Man existed in western Europe at the same time 
 with the mammoth and its contemporaries, or in the 
 later Post-pliocene period of geology. 
 
 2. Man existed in western Europe before certain 
 great physical changes of denudation and elevation 
 and subsidence, which must have required a vast lapse 
 of time. 
 
 We may take these up in succession, premising that 
 neither gives any positive date in years. 
 
 Long before the present inquiries into the antiquity 
 
 (of man began, it was known that certain animals con- 
 temporary with our ancestors in early historic times 
 were now extinct, at least locally. In the British 
 Islands, for instance, and over large portions of Europe, 
 the beaver and the wolf, once plentiful, have disap- 
 I peared. The urus, or great wild bull, and the rein- 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 221 
 
 deer, were found by Caesar in the forests of Germany. , 
 The one is extinct, the other is now confined to 
 Lapland. The aurochs, or European bison, existed in 
 central Europe up to the twelfth century, but is now 
 limited to a single herd artificially preserved in Lithu- I 
 ania. There is also reason to believe that the Irish 
 deer (Megaceros), whose bones are found under bogs* 
 in Ireland, was contemporary with man. These facts ^ 
 are, however, precisely parallel to some known as quite 
 recent in America ; as, for instance, the entire dis- 
 appearance of the wapiti, the noblest of American 
 deer, and of the American bison, or " buffalo," from 
 the regions east of the Mississippi, with the limitation 
 of the latter to one narrow district at the foot of the 
 Rocky Mountains,* and the rapidly approaching ex- 
 tinction of the reindeer or caribou in Nova Scotia and 
 the neighbouring parts of Eastern America. These 
 American facts relate to the comparatively short period 
 since the discovery of America, and are connected with 
 the introduction of fire-arms and the progressive 
 settlement of the country. In Europe such changes 
 were slower ; but there can be no doubt that the in- 
 troduction of bronze and iron, the migrations and 
 conquests which have occurred, and the increase of 
 population, have been instrumental in producing them. 
 More significant facts, as bearing on the antiquity 
 of man, are those which seem to indicate his having 
 
 * It is estimated by Dr. G. M. Dawson, that the buffalo, at | 
 the existing rate of destruction, will be extinct in about | 
 fourteen years. 
 
222 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 entered Europe before the extinction of the mammoth 
 and other animals not known in history, and believed 
 to have survived only to the close of the Post-pliocene 
 period. These facts are now somewhat numerous, and 
 give good ground for the inference that some of these 
 creatures lived up to the human period, though they 
 give no absolute date for the disappearance of the 
 latest of them. They have been obtained chiefly from 
 caverns, and these may be classed as caverns of drift- 
 age, of interment, and of residence. 
 
 To the first class belong the remarkable caves on 
 the banks of the Meuse and its tributaries near Liege, 
 explored by Schmerling. These caves contain scat- 
 tered skulls and bones of men, and occasional imple- 
 ments of bone and stone, mixed with bones of the 
 mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds, and also of 
 many modern quadrupeds, the whole imbedded in a 
 confused manner in mud, and covered with stalagmite 
 produced subsequently by the drippings of the cave. 
 Such deposits cannot give absolute evidence of con- 
 temporaneity, because bones of very different ages 
 may be huddled together in such places, and in a few 
 centuries may all assume much the same coloration and 
 chemical composition. To this extent, therefore, the 
 geological evidence in the case of these and all similar 
 caves is defective. Still, the coating of stalagmite, * 
 and other circumstances, establish an antiquity at least 
 
 * Eecent facts show that under favourable circumstances 
 stalagmite may be deposited in a much shorter time than 
 hitherto supposed. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 223 
 
 pre-historic, and even the modern animals present art 
 believed to indicate a somewhat colder climate than at 
 present. Passing over this doubt, and regarding the 
 bones as those of the contemporaries of man, three 
 hypotheses may be suggested in explanation of their 
 mode of occurrence. (1.) They may be the bones of 
 dead men and animals lying unburied on the surface, 
 or imbedded in alluvial banks cut away by streams. 
 (2.) Sepulchral caves similar to some of those which 
 Dupont has described in the same region, may have 
 been scoured out by water, and their contents mingled 
 promiscuously together. (3.) Men and animals may 
 have been engulfed in open fissures and their bones 
 scattered by subsequent floods of water passing through 
 these caves. Either of these suppositions, and also 
 the present position of the caves, would seem to imply, 
 not merely time, but a large and irregular amount of 
 diluvial force, the precise extent of which it is difficult 
 to ascertain, and in reference to which Sir C. Lyeli 
 suggests changes of level and possible eruptions of the 
 Eifel volcanoes, which are only sixty miles distant. 
 In any case, a cutting or clearing out of the valleys 
 into which these caves open, to the extent of 300 
 feet in some places, seems to be required, and the 
 objects found in the caves show that this must, at least 
 in part, have been effected by inundations. 
 
 With regard to the relative probability of the three 
 suppositions above mentioned, the discoveries of M. 
 Dupont in the neighbouring caves of the Lesse would 
 attach some probability to the second. In some of 
 
224 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 these caves lie found alluvial clay, with bones of the 
 mammoth and what are supposed to be rude flint im- 
 plements, and implements of reindeer-horn ; a single 
 jawbone being the only remains of man. Newer than 
 this was the sepulchre of Frontal, referred by Dupont 
 to the Eeindeer period of the Palaeolithic age, in which 
 were skeletons, well-made flint weapons, wampum of 
 fossil shells, a flint spear, and fragments of pottery. 
 It is remarkable that the objects found imply art and 
 extensive commerce, of which the supposed Neolithic 
 or more modern graves of Belgium show much less evi- 
 dence. Now, if one of M. Dupont' s caves, containing 
 drifted material below and sepulchral material above, 
 were by a new inundation or cataclysm to be again tra- 
 versed by water, so as to mix up its contents, and were 
 then left undisturbed, it would present precisely the 
 appearances described by Schmerling in the Engis cave. 
 Similar remarks apply to other caverns of driftage, 
 except that in caves like Kent's Hole and Brixham, 
 where only implements and not human bones are 
 found, the facts have probably not been complicated 
 with sepulchral arrangements. In any case, to apply 
 to the explanation of such caves the continued opera- 
 tions of merely modern causes, without taking into 
 account floods and other cataclysmic agents, is a stretch 
 of uniformitarianism which the deposits in the caves 
 themselves plainly contradict. Thus the calculations 
 which we can make as to age, rather serve to bring 
 the age of the mammoth up toward us than to throw 
 man back in geological time, while the association 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 225 
 
 itself in the Belgian caves and similar receptaoles is 
 encompassed with grave doubt as to its causes. 
 
 Caves of residence and caves of sepulchre are often 
 associated with each other. It is so in those of the 
 Dordogne and in the Mentone cave, and probably also 
 in that of Aurignac. The latter, however, has bee a 
 lately subjected to so many doubts with reference to 
 its antiquity, that we may for the present leave it out 
 of the account. The caves of the Dordogne and that 
 of Bruniquel, all in the limestone districts of the 
 south of France, indicate very clearly the fact that 
 the ancient tribes which inhabited them hunted the 
 reindeer in a region not inhabited by that animal in 
 historic times, and also in all probability the extinct 
 mammoth; and the testimony of these caves is not 
 complicated with water driftage, except in the case of 
 small deposits of sand due to land floods. The people 
 who inhabited these caves were not abject savages, but 
 well-developed men of what we may call the American 
 type. They were well provided with implements of 
 stone and bone, and were not inferior to some of the 
 American tribes in the art of carving in bone and 
 ivory. They must have inhabited their caves for a 
 long time, and attempts have been made to subdivide 
 the Dordogne cave-dwellers and their relics into dis- 
 tinct ages of great duration. 
 
 I agree with Sir C. Ly ell, however, in believing 
 that there is but slender and insufficient ground for 
 this. The facts detailed by Lartet and Christy, and 
 more recently by Mortillet, only imply such differences 
 
 Q 
 
226 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 as might obtain among a hunting and migratory 
 people, and the animals on which they relied for sup- 
 port, at different seasons or in the lapse of a few- 
 generations — differences much less than those which 
 we know were occurring in almost every generation 
 among the Indian tribes of America before the advent 
 of Europeans. Such conditions would vary among 
 the primitive people of the Vezere valley according to 
 the " success of the hunters or the sojourn of migratory 
 animals in the neighbourhood," and even more accord- 
 ing to the relations of peace or war, victory or defeat, 
 which they might sustain with neighbouring tribes. 
 
 To one of these caves of habitation and sepulchre, 
 that of Cro-magnon, I have fully referred in the last 
 chapter, and may now add a few remarks as to the 
 lapse of time during which it may have been occupied. 
 Such shelters, though now open in front, were prob- 
 ably, when inhabited, walled up on the outer side with 
 logs, wattle, or boughs of trees ; and it is most likely 
 that they were the winter houses of the people. 
 
 The accumulation of ashes, bones, and other remains 
 is in exact accordance with the want of cleanliness of 
 the ruder American tribes, and also with the habits 
 of a people who in summer live in the open air, or in 
 temporary cabins or wigwams, and only in the colder 
 months or in bad weather resort to more secure and 
 permanent abodes. The accumulation of rubbish in 
 such places, and especially at their mouths, is also a 
 much more rapid process than would at first sight be 
 supposed, more particularly as the remains of fir 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 227 
 
 boughs, heather, rushes, and similar substances, taken 
 in as bedding, and also the husks and other debris of 
 vegetable food, may be added to the mass. Further 
 than the accumulation of such debris, which may indi- 
 cate several centuries of continued habitation, and the 
 accumulation of fallen stones which may have been 
 detached by frosts and earthquakes, there is nothing 
 to indicate the great antiquity of these caves and 
 shelters, except the want of metals, the presence of the 
 bones of extinct mammalia, and the coating of stalag- 
 mite covering the remains. 
 
 A remarkable confirmation of this is the fact that, 
 while the physical characteristics of the people of the 
 Dordogne caverns, as well as of the man of Mentone, 
 are essentially those which would indicate American 
 or Turanian habits of life : they are also, according to 
 the elaborate comparisons of Pruner Bey, as given by 
 Christy andLartet, similar in important points to those 
 of the modern Lithuanians — that is, to an existing 
 European race, and one inhabiting the only country 
 where the otherwise extinct bison survives. These 
 Palaeolithic men are, therefore, not of an extinct 
 species, nor even of an extinct variety of man, but 
 identical with races still existing. 
 
 If, then, we have to deal, in the case of these 
 ancient remains, with no extinct species of man, 
 but with a variety allied to modern races ; if he was 
 contemporary in the main with modern mammals; 
 and if some of those that are locally extinct existed 
 in Europe up to historic times, while the others 
 
228 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 present in the condition of their bones and mode of 
 occurrence no evidence of greater antiquity, what geo- 
 logical evidence have we that the residence of man in 
 Europe has been longer than 6000 years ? The answer 
 must be — Absolutely none, as far as the association 
 of man with extinct animals is concerned. Further, 
 when we consider the mode of occurrence and state 
 of preservation of the remains, and their identity with 
 the remains of modern American races, the very long 
 periods assigned by some authors to the residence of 
 man in Europe become ridiculous in their absurdity. 
 
 We may now proceed to consider the second chain 
 of evidence for the antiquity of man — that derived 
 from the physical changes which have occurred since 
 his entrance upon the scene. Reference has already 
 been made incidentally to the depth to which certain 
 river valleys seem to have been cut since the caverns 
 on their sides were filled. In the case of those near 
 Liege, the depth is estimated at 200 feet in some 
 cases, and it is stated as possible that the caves on 
 Opposite sides of certain deep gorges may correspond. 
 If this could be proved, it would show that this great 
 depth had been cut out of the solid limestone of the 
 country. It may well be, however, that old valleys 
 have only been emptied of debris ; and in any case, if 
 an elevation of the land had occurred, and there were 
 floods or volcanic debacles, or a permanently swollen 
 condition of the rivers owing to a more humid climate 
 or a dense covering of forest, the time required for 
 such cutting would be much shortened. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 229 
 
 We shall be better able to judge of these proba- 
 bilities when we shall have considered the next case 
 presented to us, that of the river gravels containing 
 implements believed to have been made by man. If 
 we stand on one of: the beds of gravel quarried at St. 
 Acheul, near Amiens, we may see before us the bruid 
 flat valley of the Somme, with the little stream flowing 
 between banks of alluvium 100 feet below us. But 
 the ground on which we stand is a loess or river mud 
 with fresh-water shells, and below this are many feet 
 of river-gravel made up mainly of the flints which fill 
 the underlying chalk, and in this gravel, at great 
 depths from the surface, have been found numerous 
 flint implements which it seems difficult to explain 
 uuless they have been wrought by man. Ancient 
 miners, it is true, may have worked galleries, since 
 fallen in, through these gravels ; and in visiting this 
 place in 1865, I believe I could perceive some indi- 
 cations of this; but the general impression conveyed 
 is, that they were mixed with the gravel by the floods 
 of a stream representing the River Somme, out strag- 
 gling over the country at a height of 100 feet above 
 its present bed. This implies that at the time in 
 question the valley was either not cut out, or filled 
 with some material since swept away, and that the 
 water-flow of the river was going on in a manner not 
 favourable to erosion of its bed. Such conditions 
 evidently bring before us considerable changes of level, 
 which we must, I think, be prepared to face more 
 ooldly than has been customary with writers on this 
 
230 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 subject. To give such a state of things as that im- 
 plied in these high-level gravels, we must suppose 
 that the Somme valley was flat and filled up with 
 detritus, presenting an alluvial plain over which the 
 river, at times of flood, could spread itself with great 
 ease, while the climate must have been sufficiently- 
 severe to allow ice to float in spring freshets large 
 blocks of stone. This implies a lower level of the 
 country than at present, and probably a very recent 
 elevation out of the sea, followed by a condition of 
 much greater rainfall and more severe floods. Now, at 
 the mouth of the Somme there are beds of peat, the 
 bottom of which is below the level of the sea ; conse- 
 quently this modern peat began to be formed at a 
 time when the land was higher than it is at present ; 
 and the submerged forests with remains of man and 
 modern animals, at several points along the coasts of 
 France and England, give us the same indication. 
 First, then, we learn from the peat that immediately 
 before the historical period the Somme valley was 
 higher than now, and the circumstances more favour- 
 able than at present to its rapid cutting. But the 
 gravels must have been deposited before this in a 
 previous time of lower level. Now, that man existed 
 at this time of lower level, we have evidence elsewhere. 
 Nilsson has described certain skulls found in beds 
 holding marine shells on the coast of Sweden at an 
 elevation of 100 feet above the sea, and infers that the 
 men to whom they belonged were drowned when the 
 sea was at that height on the land. It has long been 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 231 
 
 well known to geologists that the coast of Scotland 
 shows evidence that it was twenty-five feet, possibly 
 forty feet, lower in the early human period than it is 
 at present. Mr. Milne Home has very recently given 
 some interesting illustrations of this in the valley of 
 the Forth, where skeletons of whales occur in the 
 carse of Stirling, at an elevation of twenty or thirty 
 feet above the sea, and with them were found pointed 
 instruments of deer's horn. In the West of Scotland, 
 also, numerous canoes, cut out of solid logs of wood, 
 have been disinterred from marine beds now twenty 
 feet or more above the level of the sea. Human bones 
 have also been found in Cornwall in elevated beds 
 covered with marine shells ; and in Sardinia there are 
 said to be old beaches no less than from 230 to 234 
 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, with frag- 
 ments of pottery associated with sea shells. * 
 
 We do not certainly know that these depressions 
 were contemporaneous, but they all belonged to the 
 early human period, and if this depression extended 
 from Sweden to the Mediterranean, and amounted to 
 from fifty to one hundred feet in the valley of the 
 Somme, it would give precisely the state of things in 
 which the lower part of that valley might be a sort of 
 delta, with banks of gravel to which aborigines of the 
 country might resort for materials for their imple- 
 ments, or into which their rejected or lost implements 
 might be drifted, and these aborigines would be con- 
 temporaries of the drowned men of Stangeness, in 
 * Lyell, M Antiquity of Man," p. 115. 
 
232 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Sweden, and of the ancient Caledonians whose canoes 
 and implements we find in the estuaries of the Clyde 
 and Forth. Before their time there had been a con- 
 tinental period, in which the bed of the German Ocean 
 and Irish Sea had been dry land, and men had been 
 able to walk dryshod to Britain ; their ancestors had 
 witnessed a great, and probably sudden depression of 
 the land, and in their day it was again slowly rising. 
 In subsequent generations it rose still further, and 
 what had been in their day under the sea at Abbeville, 
 became a bog, while the Somme valley, raised to a 
 higher level, became reduced to its present form, and 
 the river shrunk into a deeper channel, its volume be- 
 coming greatly diminished by the increasing dryness 
 of the climate and removal of the forests, changes 
 which also extirpated the last survivors of those species 
 of quadrupeds which had been suited for a wilder and 
 more wooded country. 
 
 These changes are well summed up by Sir C. Lyell, 
 in his " Antiquity of Man," pages 331 et seq., and by 
 tabulating his succession we may clearly understand 
 the position of the supposed Amiens flint-chippers. 
 (See Table on opposite page.) 
 
 All this leaves us, however, still in uncertainty as 
 to the absolute time involved. Our estimate of this 
 must depend on the rapidity or slowness of the os- 
 cillations in the Modern period (No. 4) . If we adopt 
 with Lyell a strictly uniformitarian method, and esti- 
 mate the elevations and depressions of which there 
 is geological evidence at thirty inches per century, 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 233 
 
 Table of Physical Changes in Western Europe in the 
 
 Later Tertiary and Modern Periods. 
 
 (See Lyell, "Antiquity of Man," p. 323). 
 
 Post-pliocene. 
 
 1st. Continental Period. Land ) n ^ . , •, 
 
 . . , ~.. ... [ Cromer Forest bed. 
 
 elevated. Climate mild . J 
 
 2nd. Period of Glaciation and ^ 
 
 Submergence. Land de- Boulder deposits and marine 
 pressed 1,000 feet or more, y Post-pliocene drift. 
 Climate cold and much I 
 floating ice .... J 
 
 3rd. Second Continental Period. 1 
 
 Land again elevated until ! Passage of German flora into 
 much higher than at pre- England. Mammoth and 
 
 sent, and British Islands y Megaceros and Cave Bear 
 united to mainland. Climate etc., living in Europe, 
 
 continental and surface j Advent of man? * 
 
 densely wooded .... J 
 
 Modern. 
 
 Age of Amiens gravels and 
 raised beaches, and close 
 of Palasocosmic and be- 
 ginning of Neocosmic 
 age. Men subjected to 
 great diminution of 
 numbers by floods and 
 subsidences. Several 
 species of mammals be- 
 come extinct. Stone age 
 of antiquaries. 
 
 5th. Modern or historic age. ) Bronze and Iron ages of anti- 
 Land slowly subsiding . . ) quaries. 
 
 * Pengelly, in a recent paper on the Flint Implements from 
 Kent's Cavern, holds thaG man may have existed in Devon- 
 shire in or shortly after the first continental period. This 
 conclusion, however, requires us to believe that the oldest de- 
 posit of Kent's Cavern is of this age, and that the flints 
 found in it are really of human workmanship. Neither of these 
 data can as yet be considered as established (see p. 348). 
 
 4th. Period of depression and 
 oscillation, ending in re- 
 elevation, and present geo- ^ 
 graphical condition of I 
 Europe 
 
234 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 being the rate in modern subsidences now observed, 
 We shall require periods in comparison with which 
 the received chronology of historians shrinks into in- 
 significance. This rate is, however, confessedly "purely 
 conjectural/' and there are many considerations which 
 seem to show that it is based on insufficient data. 
 Such modern elevations as are on record, as for ex- 
 ample those in Italy, the Greek Islands, and South 
 America, have been rapid and paroxysmal ; and the 
 raised beaches of western Europe and of North 
 America show that this must have been its character 
 in former times. Slow and gradual movement, even if 
 interrupted, could not have produced these sharply 
 denned terraces. Modern depressions have, with few 
 exceptions, been gradual ; but their rate is so unequal 
 that we cannot reason with any certainty as to the past. 
 While, therefore, it must be admitted that the physical 
 changes of elevation and subsidence which have taken 
 place since man's arrival may have occupied long 
 periods, it cannot be said that they must have done so. 
 It is much the same with the arguments derived 
 from aqueous erosion. This must have gone on simul- 
 taneously with the elevations and depressions, and 
 must have been greatly modified by these. When we 
 stand by the grassy and tree-clad slopes of a river 
 valley, and consider that they have been just as they 
 are during all the centuries of history, it is difficult 
 to resist the prejudice that they must always have been 
 so, and that vast periods have been required for their 
 excavation at the slow rate now observed ; but if we 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 235 
 
 carry ourselves in imagination to the time when a 
 plain was raised out of the sea, bare and bald, and 
 a river began to run in it, we at once see our 
 error. The river so running and beginning to cut a 
 channel, and cutting back the falls which would occur 
 in its course, must in a few years execute a stupen- 
 dous work of erosion almost diluvial in its character ; 
 but in the course of centuries its work becomes com- 
 pleted, a state of equilibrium succeeds, and its banks, 
 protected by vegetation, scarcely experience any modi- 
 fication. An elevation to a higher level, or a new 
 depression succeeded by re-elevation, or forest fires or 
 other causes laying bare the isurface, would at once 
 initiate a new series of erosions ; but until this occurs 
 all things continue as they were. 
 
 It must also be observed that in the period No. 4 
 (p. 233), there were not only oscillations of level, but 
 apparently a somewhat extreme climate, in which 
 alternate frosts and thaws and violent river floods must 
 have greatly aided the work of denudation ; and also 
 that in a wooded condition of the country, its streams, 
 as we know from sad experience of the effects of clear- 
 ings in America, are large in volume but equable in 
 flow, and that the removal of the forest leads to great 
 floods alternating with periods of desiccation, remark- 
 ably increasing and modifying the denuding power of 
 the streams. Sir Charles Lyell gives some striking 
 illustrations of this in his " Principles of Geology." 
 
 It is, perhaps, necessary here to refer to the conclu- 
 sion recently developed at great length by Dr. James 
 
2c6 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Geikie, in his work, " The Ice Age/' that the re- 
 mains of Palaeolithic men are not Post-glacial, but 
 belong to a Pre-glacial or Inter-glacial period. This 
 is, no doubt, a view forced upon him by his belief in a 
 great continental " ice-sheet," which itself, as I have 
 shown in former works, in all probability without 
 good foundation.* He supports it principally on the 
 geographical distribution of the animals supposed to 
 have been contemporary with Palaeolithic man, and 
 which he tries to divide into two successive groups ; 
 and on the probability that the last period of continen- 
 tal elevation referred to in the table above was not of 
 a character to change the insular climate of western 
 Europe. With reference to the first of these reasons, 
 Dawkins has shown, on the evidence of Cresswell 
 Cave and other bone caves, that no such division of 
 Post-glacial mammals can be made. The hyaena, the 
 reindeer, and the hippopotamus occur together in 
 the same deposits. Again, this Post-glacial fauna has 
 been shown to be of the nature of a continental and 
 prairie fauna, belonging to a state of Europe when 
 it must have presented that condition of steppe-like 
 plains and wooded hills and river courses which is, of 
 all others, the most suited to a varied and abundant 
 group of land animals. I may add that it is most un- 
 safe to reason as to the climate required by extinct 
 mammalia, especially in contravention of the evidence 
 of contemporaneous existence afforded by the occur- 
 rence of their remains. Even the hippopotamus of the 
 * " Story of the Earth and Man," "Acadian Geology." 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 237 
 
 English caves and gravels may have been protected by 
 a coating of fat like the walrus, or of hair like that 
 of the seals. The elevated land of Post-glacial Europe, 
 if it were partly clothed with forests, and partly grassy 
 plains, would have precisely the climatal properties 
 which we know in America and Asia favour the inter- 
 mixture of the animals of different latitudes. Again, 
 that so-called Palaeolithic implements are not found 
 over the boulder deposits of North Britain is merely 
 a consequence of the fact that they are in the main 
 limited to the chalk and flint districts, a circumstance 
 which, as already hinted, throws grave doubts on 
 their being even so ancient as usually supposed, and 
 gives them a local rather than a chronological charac- 
 ter. Further, in Eastern America we know that the 
 higher condition of the land immediately preceding 
 the Modern period was accompanied by a milder 
 climate than that which now prevails, and that this 
 occurred after the close of the Glacial period.* I 
 must, therefore, reject this supposed later Glacial age 
 intervening between Palaeolithic and Modern man, 
 and maintain that there is no proof of the existence of 
 man earlier than the close of the proper Glacial age. 
 
 Some remarkable evidence has lately been found, 
 bearing on the climate of Europe when occupied by 
 the Post-glacial men, and showing that some measure 
 of the rigours of the cold period still continued after 
 their appearance. The presence of the reindeer, musk- 
 
 * "Notes on Post-Pliocene of Canada," by the Author, 
 Montreal. 
 
238 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 ox, glutton, and other northern animals is an indication 
 of this, and we have reason to believe that the mam- 
 moth and the woolly rhinoceros were animals suited 
 to extreme cold. On the other hand, the contempo- 
 raneous existence of the cave hyaena, the cave lion, 
 and the hippopotamus tells a different story, and im- 
 plies at least warm summers and facilities for migra- 
 tion over extensive plains. Possibly, however, these 
 conditions were to some extent changeable, and at the 
 height of the continental period the climate may have 
 been warm in summer and somewhat cold in winter, 
 while in preceding and subsequent periods of depres- 
 sion, it may have been cool and moist. One of the 
 most convincing evidences of refrigeration in the later 
 part of the Palseocosrnic age, or older part of the JSTeo- 
 cosmic, is that afforded by the deposit at Schussenried 
 in Wurtemburg, described by Dr. Fraas, of Stuttgart. 
 The place had been a camping-ground near a stream, 
 and used apparently in the Reindeer age, possibly 
 after the disappearance of the mammoth, and it had 
 been overgrown with moss, in which Professor 
 Schimper recognises the species now characteristic 
 of Alpine and sub- arctic regions. It affords perhaps 
 the best proof of a cold climate in Germany in the 
 Reindeer age. This, let it be remembered, was the 
 age of a population allied to the Laplanders, and prob- 
 ably after the disappearance of the stalwart Turanian 
 race, characteristic of the continental mammoth period. 
 In other words, this age of cold was the early Post- 
 diluvial time. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 239 
 
 It Las been remarked that Paleeocosmic man does 
 not seem to have penetrated into Scandinavia, and I 
 believe the same may be affirmed of the north of Scot- 
 land, Ireland, and other regions of northern Europe. 
 Whether this has arisen from the continuance of gla- 
 cial cold in these regions, or from other causes, we 
 can only conjecture. The point has been discussed 
 by Dr. Torell in a very interesting paper, in which he 
 investigates the various discoveries of pre-historic 
 remains in Sweden, with their probable ages.* 
 
 Torell arranges the later formations of Sweden in 
 three great groups. The first includes the Glacial and 
 Post-glacial formations, the second the Transition be- 
 tween the Glacial and the Modern periods, and the 
 third the Eecent deposits. The first contains the 
 boulder clay, and the overlying clays and sands, with 
 marine shells and a few plants of arctic types. The 
 second consists of gravel terraces and superficial clay, 
 and gravel of the plains. The third consists of elevated 
 sea beaches, with modern shells, freshwater alluvia, 
 and peat bogs. The latter contain remains of some 
 quadrupeds now extinct in Sweden, as the aurochs, 
 the bison, and the wild boar. 
 
 After a careful resume of all the alleged discoveries 
 of remains and works of man in these beds, he con- 
 cludes that human remains are confined to the recent 
 deposits, and that there is no evidence of anything 
 older than the age of polished stone. In other words, 
 in Sweden, as in America, man is contemporaneous 
 
 * "Compte- rendu du Congres Arch ceologi que de Stockholm." 
 
240 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 with the modern fauna, and objects of chipped and 
 polished stone are contemporaneous. 
 
 Further, the physical changes which have occurred 
 in Sweden within the Modern period are most instruc- 
 tive. For example, in enlarging the harbour of Ystad, 
 in 1869, there was found at the depth of eleven feet 
 below the sea level, a forest rooted in situ, and covered 
 with a bed of peat, with freshwater shells, and this 
 with about seven feet of marine sand. The peat con- 
 tained weapons of stone and bronze, and a knife-handle 
 referable to the 12 th century, and the marine sand 
 many objects, the oldest of which are referred to the 
 middle ages. This evidence of great subsidence, 
 growth of peat, and deposition of marine beds within 
 modern times, shows how cautious we should be in 
 referring superficial deposits to remote ages, or in 
 supposing that changes oi level necessarily require 
 vast periods. This caution is more especially necessary 
 with respect to the growth of peat, the period required 
 for which, as tested by actual observation in Ireland, 
 Scotland, and even in France, has been absurdly ex- 
 aggerated in the case of the peats of Denmark and of 
 the Somme valley.* It is to be observed, in connection 
 with this, that the land of northern Sweden is now 
 rising, and that there seems evidence in raised beaches 
 that in the earlier part of the Recent period there was 
 still greater depression than that evidenced by the 
 peat and submerged forest of Ystad. Thus we have, 
 
 * See an able summary of the facts in Soutball's " Epoch 
 of the Mammoth." 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 241 
 
 within the Recent period, several oscillations of land 
 in Sweden ; and similar evidence exists in regard to 
 many other parts of western Europe. 
 
 The facts above presented are suggestive rather 
 than exhaustive; but they tend to show the necessity 
 of suspending our judgment on the antiquity of man 
 until larger inductions have been made, and until the 
 facts known are better understood. Such caution is 
 rendered the more necessary by the numerous instances,, 
 in the progress of this investigation, of errors current 
 for a time, and then exploded. The archaeological lite- 
 rature of the last ten years is strewn with the wrecks 
 of supposed facts establishing the antiquity of man, 
 but which more careful examination has shown to 
 have been wrongly observed or misunderstood.* 
 
 If we attempt to reduce to terms of years such 
 changes as those above discussed, which appear to 
 have happened since the advent of man in Europe, 
 there are two considerations often neglected, to which 
 we must give their due weight. These are, (1) That 
 
 * It may be instructive to mention as instances, the calcu- 
 lations of time based on the Cone of the Tiniere, the peats of 
 Abbeville and of Denmark, the excavation of valleys in north- 
 ern France out of solid chalk, the growth of stalagmite in 
 caverns, and the Sodertelje Hut in Sweden. These have been 
 well exposed by Torell, Andrews, Southall, and others. Or 
 we may refer to the evidences of Pre-glacial man supposed 
 to be furnished by the Victoria Cave, the flint implements 
 of Brandon, the bone cave of Diirnten, the Pliocene man of 
 Denise, the cut bones of Tuscany, the Miocene chipped flints 
 of Thenay and of the Dardanelles. All of these are now re- 
 jected, even by the most advanced advocates of the great 
 antiquity of man. 
 
242 FOSSIL MAN. 
 
 in the north of Europe and Asia very important 
 physical changes have occurred in what are properly 
 historic times, and which may serve to give us some 
 measure for the time necessary, at the same rate, for 
 those which preceded them ; and (2) That the rate of 
 change in historic times is not a certain measure of 
 that in pre-historic periods ; but on the contrary, that 
 there are indications of more rapid changes before the 
 dawn of history, and in the early human period. 
 
 1. With reference to the great physical changes 
 known to have occurred in historic times, I may 
 refer to the fact that it is proved by the occurrence of 
 marine shells and sea beaches at great elevations, that 
 much of the land of the northern hemisphere was 
 depressed under the sea to the amount of from 2,000 
 to 4,000 feet in the later Glacial period, f Evidence of 
 this is accumulating from Great Britain, Scandinavia, 
 eastern and western America. Now, the close of the 
 Glacial age has been estimated on various data at 
 from 7,000 * to 200,000 J years ago. If we take even 
 the lougest of these periods, and suppose that during 
 some considerable part of it the land has remained in 
 a state of repose, or the sea at the same level, the rate 
 of depression and elevation required for this enormous 
 
 * Andrew's calculations, based on the lake terraces of North 
 America, give from 7,000 to 20,000 years. Winchell's, on the 
 Falls of St. Anthony, in connection with the occurrence of our 
 winter in aphelion 11,300 years ago, give 8,859 years. 
 
 t No. 2 of Table. 
 
 | Croll's calculations, based on precession of the equinoxes 
 and eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and accepted by Lyell and 
 others. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 243 
 
 change becomes very great, since during some por 
 tions of the supposed period of 200,000 years the levels 
 of sea and land must have been changing at the rate 
 of four or five feet per century, even if the process was 
 uniform, and not by successive abrupt movements, as 
 the terraces on the margins of our continents would 
 seem to indicate. But man did not, so far as known, 
 appear till the continental period, which succeeded this 
 great depression, and the changes which have occurred 
 since his advent are comparatively small, and must 
 have required a very small fraction of the time inter- 
 vening between the glacial subsidence and the present 
 time. This consideration alone, in my judgment, 
 altogether negatives the claim for such high antiqui- 
 ties, as say 100,000 years, for man. Further, the state 
 of preservation of animal remains, and the amount of 
 atmospheric erosion observed on the raised terraces, 
 at least of America, where alone I have studied them, 
 forbid so great estimates as to time. 
 
 Again, there is reason to believe that in historical 
 times, or since the foundation of the great historic 
 empires of western Asia and northern Africa, say from 
 2,000 to 3,000 years before Christ, great areas in north- 
 ern Asia, formerly sea, have become land, and large 
 islands in the Atlantic have disappeared. The Hyr- 
 canian ocean of the ancients has been dried up, and 
 the continent of Atlantis has gone down. We have 
 already seen that the Danish shell heaps belong to the 
 later Stone age, and yet the shells found ii> them show 
 that they antedate the present brackish water fauna 
 
244 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of the Baltic, indicating a considerable rise of land, 
 of which there are also indications in raised beaches 
 in Scandivania, and in the canoes found in Scotland 
 from seven to twenty feet above the present sea level. 
 One of these canoes found near Glasgow, had a plug 
 of cork, which, must have come from the south, of 
 Europe ; and with others implements of iron, as well as 
 finely polished stone implements, have been found. On 
 the other hand, the case already quoted from Professor 
 Torell, and multitudes of submerged forests on the 
 coasts of Europe, point to very considerable subsidence 
 even within the Christian era. In volcanic regions, 
 such as the south of Italy and the west coast of South 
 America, such changes are much more rapid ; but 
 even in countries remote from volcanic centres, the 
 oscillations of the earth/ s crust during the historic 
 period have been so great that we do not require to 
 allow very much longer time for the date of Palasocos- 
 mic man. 
 
 2. We are also liable to very grave error when we 
 assume that the rate of change in particular cases has 
 been no greater than we observe in modern times. 
 Even the changes in the rate and character of erosion 
 and deposit arising from the clearing of the forests, 
 so familiar to all observers in America, and which so 
 strongly impressed the mind of Sir Charles Lyell, 
 seem often to be left out of the account. In Kent's 
 Cavern the thin film of carbonate of lime which has 
 formed over dates scratched on the rock more than two 
 centuries ago, would lead to the belief that the thick 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 245 
 
 beds of stalagmite in that cave would require even 
 half a million of years for their formation ; but obser- 
 vations in other caverns show that, under favourable 
 circumstances, beds of this thickness might be formed 
 in a thousand years. In point of fact, the solution of 
 limestone by carbon dioxide, and its deposition again, 
 is a process depending on the amount of organic 
 matter going to decay aud furnishing acidulated water, 
 and on the exposure of this water to the air; and the 
 activity of this process must, in any particular case, 
 have varied very much in the lapse of time. The cal- 
 culation of Boucher de Perthes as to the growth of 
 the peat at Abbeville was supposed to give a period 
 of 20,000 years for its accumulation, and yet it all be- 
 longed to the time since the newer or Neocosmic age. 
 But his own observations show that it is a forest peat, 
 the growth of which must necessarily have ceased 
 since the original forest covering of the country was 
 removed; and the observations of D'Archiac show 
 that at present, in this same district, peat, where cir- 
 cumstances favour its growth, may accumulate at the 
 rate of more than two feet in a century. This Abbe- 
 ville peat was formed subsequently to the erosion of 
 the Somme valley, and the deposition of its u palaeo- 
 lithic " gravels ; and if the time required for the 
 growth of the peat has been exaggerated, so has that 
 for the older excavation and deposition. When one 
 considers the little river Somme flowing quietly in its 
 broad green valley, and asks how long time it would 
 require to cut this valley out of the chalk, and to 
 
246 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 deposit the flint, gravel, and stones found in the terraces 
 of its sides, not only may the time required be counted 
 by tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but it may 
 be said to be practically infinite ; for no geologist, 
 acquainted with the facts, and with the nature of river 
 erosion, could affirm that the present river would ever 
 produce such results. They require, in short, the ope- 
 ration of much more powerful forces, and whatever 
 we assume these to have been, whether fluviatile, dilu- 
 vial, or partly marine, they must have operated in a 
 comparatively short time. 
 
 Such illustrations might be indefinitely extended. 
 In short, the great difficulty of dealing with this sub- 
 ject consists in the immensity of the mass of imper- 
 fectly observed facts and crude reasonings that have 
 accumulated with reference to it, and which become 
 positively wearisome in their discussion. The above 
 examples are sufficient to show their nature. 
 
 I conclude, then, that there is no adequate geological 
 reason for attributing the so-called " Neolithic "" men 
 to any time older than that of the early Eastern em- 
 pires, or say 2,000 or 3,000 years before Christ, and 
 that the time required for the Palaeolithic men need 
 not be more than twenty or thirty centuries additional. 
 What evidence the future may bring forth I do not 
 know, but that available at present points to the ap- 
 pearance of man, with all his powers and properties, in 
 the Post-glacial age of geology, and not more than 
 from 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. This abrupt appear- 
 ance of man in his full perfection, his association with 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 247 
 
 animals the greater part of which still survive, and 
 his introduction at the close of that great and as yet 
 very mysterious revolution of the earth which we call 
 the Glacial period, accords, as I have elsewhere en- 
 deavoured to show,* with the analogy of geological 
 science, in the information which it gives as to the 
 first appearance of other types of organic being in the 
 several stages of development of our earth. 
 
 The reader may perhaps ask, If these conclusions 
 are so plain, why has there appeared to be so general 
 an admission of the great antiquity of man on the 
 part of geologists and archaeologists ? The reasons of 
 this are not difficult to discover. They are such as 
 the following : the great intricacy and difficulty of 
 the geological questions connected with the close of 
 the Glacial age and the beginning of the Modern 
 period; the difficulty of verifying alleged facts as to 
 the occurrence of remains in superficial deposits, and 
 of ascertaining the age of these deposits and their free- 
 dom from modern admixtures ; the small number of 
 geologists and archaeologists qualified by knowledge 
 and experience to deal with questions of this kind; 
 the enthusiasm with which novel and startling dis- 
 coveries, and especially those appearing to contradict 
 old and received opinions, are welcomed at present ; 
 the exigencies of the new philosophy of evolution, one 
 
 * See the more full discussion of this subject in the " Story 
 of the Earth," and the " Origin of the World," and in my 
 Address as President of the Geological Section of the Ameri- 
 can Association, in 1876. 
 
248 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 of the stumbling-blocks of which is the recent appear- 
 ance of man, along with an exaggerated and unreason- 
 able application of the doctrine of uniformitarianism 
 in geology. Such reasons are, I think, quite sufficient 
 to account for the swing of opinion in this direction. 
 But there are already indications of a reaction. 
 
 It is a curious conclusion of this part of our inquiry 
 that the history of man, as indicated by Lyell in the 
 above table, presents, after all, such a striking paral- 
 lelism with the sacred and traditional histories with 
 which we have long been familiar. The second period 
 of continental elevation is the equivalent of the early 
 antediluvian times — a period, however, of which we 
 have seen we really know little from archaeology or 
 geology, for they cannot, with absolute certainty' 
 affirm that the oldest skeletons known are of this asre, 
 though this may be regarded as probable. If they are, 
 their extreme rarity, and the paucity of works of art, 
 with the exception of flint implements in the chalk 
 districts, where this material abounds, give the im- 
 pression not of a long, but of a very limited period of 
 residence of antediluvian man in Europe. The period 
 of continental oscillation is the correlative of the later 
 antediluvian period, and the last of these oscillations 
 may have been the traditional deluge. The last 
 period is unquestionably that of the Post-diluvian 
 world. A leading school of modern archaeologists no 
 doubt demands much more time than that of our 
 ordinary chronology, but the succession is the same, 
 Further, this succession, when critically examined. 
 
ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 249 
 
 gives no ground for the belief in the existence, even 
 in the most ancient times, of any race of men more 
 rude than the modern semi-civilized races, or less 
 developed physically. The most ancient man whose 
 bones are known to us may be referred to a race still 
 extant, and perhaps the most widely distributed of all 
 — a fact which tells strongly in favour both of the 
 unity and moderate antiquity of the species, while it 
 is directly opposed to all theories of evolution from 
 brute ancestors. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PRIMITIVE IDEAS OF RELIGION : THE IDEA OP GOD. 
 
 Max Muller, in his lectures on the Science of Reli- 
 gion, rejects the ordinary division into natural and 
 revealed religions, and adopts a threefold grouping, 
 corresponding to the division of languages into Tura- 
 nian, Aryan, and Semitic. Though not quite satisfac- 
 tory, more especially in its treatment of revelation, 
 this method is suggestive of some important thoughts 
 and questions. While we regard, for example, our 
 own religion as revealed, we must bear in mind that it 
 necessarily includes also the elements of natural reli- 
 gion. Further, while it may be classed as Semitic, as 
 coming to us through a Semitic people, yet, according 
 to its own history, in its earlier stages it was much 
 more general than this, and in its earliest stage uni- 
 versal. Still further, we must not forget that it was 
 not all revealed at once — that Adam, for example, 
 could have known very little of it, Noah a little more, 
 Abraham a little more, and so on. Again, the natural 
 religion to which St. Paul refers in the first chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Romans, as sufficient to teach men 
 the power and divinity of God, was never absolutely 
 pure at any time subsequent to the fall of man, and 
 must have always contained some mixture, and this 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 251 
 
 usually more or less corrupted, of what those who 
 believe iu divine revelation would regard as revealed 
 religion. These considerations, from the point of 
 view of the Christian, greatly modify Miiller's classifi- 
 cation. They further lead us to suppose that the 
 Semitic religions will be found to be those most im- 
 pregnated with revealed truth as we hold it, for our 
 God is the " Lord God of Shem." The Aryan reli- 
 gions will be those bearing most evidence of the 
 exuberance of human fancy, for Japhet's destiny is 
 " expansion," if not " delusion ; " while the wild old 
 Turanian races, which I have endeavoured to show in 
 previous chapters are the most primitive of all, may 
 be expected to have religions the least mixed with the 
 later ideas of revelation, and most stamped with the 
 impress of its earliest truths, as well as with the 
 general features of natural religion. 
 
 We have seen that the aboriginal races of America 
 are Turanian in features and in lanemaore and customs, 
 and they existed unmixed with other peoples, and un- 
 visited by missionaries of the " book-religions," up to 
 a very recent period. We can learn with much cer- 
 tainty the tenets of their religious belief, as it existed 
 in tribes and nations both in a state of barbarism and 
 in various stages of civilization. We can scarcely 
 propose to ourselves a more interesting question in 
 the present state of religious controversy, than that 
 which relates to the beliefs of these people. How 
 much did they know of what we regard as truth, 
 whether in the domain of natural or revealed religion ? 
 
252 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 and what relations have their religions to those of the 
 ancient and pre-historic peoples of the Old World ? 
 What do primitive, untutored men like those whose 
 stern, grave faces are presented in the two photo- 
 graphs of Chippewa chiefs reproduced here, believe as 
 to the great questions relating to God and a future 
 state ? There is the more reason to ask these ques- 
 tions, since it has been too much the habit of modern 
 writers to deny to such rude tribes the possession of 
 any religious ideas, because they do not present the 
 forms of religion best known to us. It would seem as 
 if a people not possessing churches, or temples, or 
 images, or pictures, or a caste of priests, must neces- 
 sarily have no religion, just as for similar reasons the 
 early Christians were stigmatised as atheists, and as 
 Laud is said, on returning from a tour in Scotland, to 
 have reported that he could perceive no indications 
 of religion among the Presbyterian people of that 
 country. * 
 
 Our first answer shall be from the narrative of the 
 old Breton seaman, Cartier, who discovered the St. 
 Lawrence three hundred years ago, and who can teach 
 us all the better that he is no missionary, but merely 
 a rough sailor, not recognising any similarity between 
 the traditions of the Indians and those he himself 
 believed. The creed of Stadacona, the ancient Que- 
 bec, according to him might be stated thus : " There 
 
 * For remarkable and curious illustrations of this prejudice, 
 I may refer to the discussion of this subject in Lubbock's 
 " Pre-historic Times." 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 
 
 253 
 
 is one god, known by the name Cudragny. * He 
 speaks often to men, and gives them warning of 
 the changes of the weather ; but when offended, he 
 throws dust in their eyes, or makes them blind. When 
 men die, their souls rise to the stars, and, descending 
 with these to the west, are received into the happy 
 plains where there are beautiful forests and delicious 
 
 Pig. 36.— Chippewa Chiefs, fjhom Photographs. 
 Showing the characteristic Turanian type of the American Aborigines. 
 
 fruits." This creed was that held in one modification 
 or another by all the American tribes, and expressed 
 the fundamental ideas of their religion. The Great 
 Spirit might be the Great Manitou, or Oghee-ma of 
 
 * The word is allied to Mandan OJcee, Sioux Oghee, Iroquois 
 Olce, Esquimaux Aghatt, Algonquin Oghee-ma. It seems to 
 mean the chief or highest one. It resembles the name of 
 the ancient Hindoo god Agni, and is perhaps allied to the Og 
 and Agag of the pre- historic peoples of Palestine. 
 
254 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 the Algonquins ; Okee, or Omaha of the Mandans ; 
 or approaching more nearly to the familiar Aryan 
 Theos and Deus, he might be the Teo of the Mexi- 
 cans; but in every case there was a Great Spirit, 
 though there might be multitudes of inferior deities. 
 So in all these religions there was a distinct recogni- 
 tion of immortality and a future life beyond the 
 grave. Let us consider these two doctrines sepa- 
 rately ; and first, that of the existence of a supreme 
 God interesting Himself in human affairs. 
 
 The American deity was not a Hindoo Brahma, 
 isolating himself from all inferior beings. That is a 
 later conception of a degenerate faith. He revealed 
 Himself to men, and it was the general American 
 belief that this took place in dreams, in " thoughts 
 from visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth 
 upon men," and such revelations were usually made 
 to gifted and chosen men, prophets who had, like 
 Balaam, " their eyes open, and heard the words of 
 God, and saw the vision of the Almighty." The 
 absurdly sounding name, " Medicine men," by which 
 these prophets or Shamans are usually known, seems 
 to be a corruption of the Algonquin word Meda or 
 Medawin, by which their art was designated ; a word 
 which, like many others used by these tribes, has its 
 allies in the Greek and other Indo-European tongues, 
 and may be radically the same with our "medicine." 
 
 That these revelations should relate in great part to 
 the weather, is precisely the same fact which we find in 
 the Pelasgic mythology of Zeus, or the Scandinavian 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 255 
 
 worship of Thor. In either case, the Great Spirit is 
 not the god of the ether, merely, as some closet 
 mythologists suppose, because of a fanciful deification 
 of the elements, but because to a rude people the 
 changes of the weather are the principal natural facts 
 which concern and impress them, and which, being 
 apparently capricious and irregular, they refer to the 
 most direct kind of divine action. Hence it may be 
 affirmed that among all primitive peoples the chief 
 god is more or less a weather-god. In the Old Tes- 
 tament, Baal, the Phoenician sun-god, was eminently 
 a deity of this kind, as was also the Great Amen-Ea, 
 "prince of the dew," and "lord of beams," amoug the 
 Egyptians ; * and even the Elohim of the Hebrews 
 does not disdain to be the Being whose voice is the 
 thunder, who holds the lightning in his hands, who 
 makes the clouds his chariot, and whom the winds 
 and the waves obey. So in the old sacred book of 
 the Quiches of Central America, one of the most re- 
 markable monuments of ancient American religion, 
 the Creator is the Heart of Heaven, the lightning- 
 flash, the thunderbolt, and his name is Hurakan, the 
 storm-god — a name introduced into our own language 
 in the word " hurricane." 
 
 But like many other ancient nations, the Americans 
 were not content with the simplicity of pure mono- 
 theism ; they added many subordinate gods. First 
 among these stands a deification of the sun, arising 
 
 * See the remarkable Hymn in his honour recently published 
 in Bagster's " Eecords of the Past," vol. ii. 
 
256 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 perhaps from a natural confounding of the glorious and 
 world- enlivening orb of day with the Great Spirit 
 his maker, but in many nations taking the form of a 
 separate worship. Among the ancient Peruvians, and 
 possibly also among the Toltecans, this identification 
 of the sun-god with the Supreme Being seems to have 
 been complete. The Mexicans, however, had a separate 
 sun-god, Tezcatlipoca, and in this they agreed with 
 the Iroquois and Algonquins, whose sun-god was a 
 deified hero, the child of the great first mother. With 
 sun-worship was naturally connected fire-worship, and 
 it is interesting to observe that this, which seems to 
 have been the principal cultus of the Alleghans, or 
 extinct mound-builders of the west, and of the Natchez 
 and other southern tribes, had extended from them 
 to the Algonquin peoples of the north. A Chippewa 
 tribe, for example, inhabiting Kewenaw Point, one of 
 the former mining districts of the Alleghans, kept 
 up, according to Schoolcraft, a perpetual sacred fire in 
 a sort of hearth or open furnace. Its chief attendant 
 was the " Great Sun," or " Chief Sun," and one of its 
 priestesses was called the " Woman ever standing in 
 presence of the God," or as it has been quaintly 
 rendered, the " Everlasting standing woman," the 
 Pythoness of this western fire-god. This worship was 
 said to have been derived from the south, and it seems 
 to explain the altar-hearths of the mound-builders. 
 Among the Iroquois and Hurons the sun was in some 
 sense an emblem of their Ares or Mars, Areslwui or 
 Agreskoui, while the Mexicans had a separate war- 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 257 
 
 god, regarded by some as the brother of him of 
 the sun. 
 
 In most cases among the Americans the sun was a 
 beneficent god, associated with light, fertility, and hap- 
 piness, as was also the case among the Indo-European 
 and Semitic races of the Old World ; and he connects 
 himself in some respects with the ideas of a mediator 
 or redeemer. This last thought centres around the 
 great fundamental tradition of the first mother, which 
 figures in all the American mythologies. We may take 
 the Iroquois version of it as given by the early Jesuits 
 and by Schoolcraft. Neo* equivalent to Anu of the 
 older eastern theologies, is the Great Spirit ; Atahocan 
 is the Master of Heaven ; Tarenyaivogan } or the Great 
 Hare (of whom more hereafter), is the Keeper of 
 Heaven. From this trinity originates Atahensic, the 
 first woman, and the American equivalent of Alytta 
 and Astarte of the East, Persephone and Artemis of 
 the Greeks, and the mother-goddess of so many other 
 ancient nations. f Married to one of the six first 
 created men, who seem to represent the six creative 
 days, and expelled from heaven, she produces twins, 
 
 * Supposed by some to be a corruption of the French Dieu, 
 but more likely allied to Mexican Teo. 
 
 f In Smith's translation of the Assyrian account of the 
 Deluge, as given on the clay tablets in the British Museum, 
 Ishtar (Astarte) is introduced as appealing to the gods on 
 behalf of men, as the children she has brought forth, and as 
 weeping over their calamities (lines 110 to 120). This face, 
 ■which I noticed after the above was written, affords an abso- 
 lute confirmation of the idea that the original Astarte is iden- 
 tical with the biblical Eve and the American Atahensic. 
 
258 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 who are Darkness and Light, or " Good mind *' and 
 "Evil mind," and who introduce the knowledge of 
 good and evil on the earth. She afterwards bears a 
 daughter who has two sons, the elder of whom, Yos- 
 keka, kills his brother, and afterwards becomes the 
 parent of mankind. Finally, Atahensic is deified as 
 the " Queen of Heaven," with the moon as her em- 
 blem ; while Yoskeka also becomes a demi-god in the 
 other world, and the sun is his totem or emblematic 
 mark. In Hades, Atahensic, like the ancient Artemis, 
 in one at least of her functions, and like the Scandi- 
 navian Hela, becomes a guardian, and also a judge 
 and castigator of her children after death, while on 
 Yoskeka devolves the more beneficent function of 
 being their advocate and intercessor. This story, 
 which is but a specimen of this part of American 
 theology, as held in various forms by different tribes, 
 bears no remote resemblance to our own familiar nar- 
 rative of Eve and the Fall. But its significance is far 
 greater than this. It shows the connection of the 
 biblical Eve, the introducer of evil, and at the same 
 time the mother of the Redeemer, who is the "seed 
 of the woman," with all those primitive idolatries in 
 which the first woman becomes the object of worship 
 as the Queen of Heaven and mother goddess ; and it 
 shows how natural is that superstition which in like 
 manner, in more modern times, transfers the adora- 
 tion of the Saviour to his mother. Alike in the Ata- 
 hensic of America, the two-horned Astarte of primeval 
 Syria, and the virgin queen of modern Rome, we have 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA. OP GOD. 259 
 
 precisely the same modification of a religious idea, that 
 of the promised seed of the woman, which underlies 
 all the biblical development of the doctrine of the 
 Saviour, and in corrupt forms figures in a host of 
 superstitions, both ancient and modern. 
 
 Perhaps even the old Phoenicians, in the worship of 
 their Moloch, or Melkart, scarcely carried the idea of 
 mediatorial atonement to so tragic a pitch of grandeur 
 as did the Mexicans in their annual sacrifices to Tez- 
 catlipoca. Their priests selected one of the most beau- 
 tiful young men, at once a representative of the god 
 and a sacrifice, and after feasting and honouring him 
 as the impersonation of deity, slew him upon the high 
 altar in the presence of adoring thousands, and held 
 up his dripping heart as a sign that the sins of the 
 people were atoned for. 
 
 The Messianic idea has, however, engrafted itself on 
 the American religions in quite another way. All the 
 Indian nations have traditions of a great benefactor, a 
 teacher of arts, and introducer of humanity and civili- 
 zation. Among the Peruvians he is Manco Capac ; 
 among the Mexicans, Quetzalcoatl ; among the Crees, 
 Gepuchican ; among the Micmacs, Glooscap ; and 
 the Iroquois form of the tradition forms the basis of 
 Longfellow's " Hiawatha." He is represented as a 
 benevolent hero, or demi-god of the olden time, who 
 has left the world or been spirited away, and is to re- 
 turn. We may compare him with Vishnu, Odin, and 
 Balder, with Horus, with Hercules, and a hundred 
 other heroes and demi-gods of the eastern continent, 
 
260 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 all of them outgrowths of the yearnings of the human 
 mind for a great deliverer from all the evils which 
 beset humanity, yearnings which belong to the higher 
 spiritual instincts of our nature, and which for the 
 Christian are satisfied in the person and work of Jesus 
 the Christ. 
 
 I have mentioned above the Iroquois legend of the 
 Great Hare, which forms another, if less intelligible, 
 connection of the religions and superstitions of the 
 East and of the West. This idea prevailed through- 
 out North America, from Mexico to the shores of the 
 Arctic Sea. As held by some Algonquin tribes it 
 represented Manibozoo, the Great Hare, as moving on 
 the waters, and making the earth out of a grain of 
 sand from the bottom of the sea, and man out of the 
 dead bodies of animals which had preceded him. The 
 Great Hare is thus the creator, and also embraces some 
 attributes of the Divine Spirit as introduced in the 
 Scriptures. We can only conjecture the origin of this 
 use of the hare as an emblem of God. It may have 
 arisen from the harmless, simple, noiseless, and spectre- 
 like habits of the creature, or from its expressive face 
 and eyes, or from its habit of erecting itself on its 
 feet, and its antics at certain seasons, or, as some 
 think, from its whiteness in winter. But whatever its 
 origin, it goes back into remote antiquity, and is of 
 very wide distribution. One effect of it is the aversion 
 to eat the flesh of the animal, which still lingers as a 
 sort of superstition in some parts of Europe, and which 
 I have noticed even in European settlers in America. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 261 
 
 The Lapps, Greenlanders, and Hottentots, are said to 
 refuse to eat hares, and so do the Samal Arabs, while 
 even the Chinese are said to object to it.* The 
 ancient Britons had the same superstition, and their 
 conquerors, the Saxons, held the hare as sacred to the 
 goddess Freya. The bones of the hare are not found 
 in the Danish shell-heaps or the Swiss lake-habita- 
 tions, whence it is inferred that the ancient peoples 
 who have left these remains did not eat the hare. 
 They do, however, occur in the debris in the cave of 
 Mentone and in the Belgian caves ; showing that the 
 hare was not everywhere regarded with the same 
 veneration among the earliest races of Europe, or per- 
 haps that, as in America, where the Hare Indians and 
 many other tribes feed much on this animal, while 
 still regarding it with a certain traditional veneration, 
 the regard for it as a religious emblem did not hinder 
 its use as food. A recent writer, who mentions many 
 of these facts, seems to think that they have some con- 
 nection with the rejection of the hare as food by the 
 Jews, which he wrongly states was owing to " a false 
 impression about its chewing its cud/' whereas this 
 would have been a reason for regarding it as clean, the 
 reason of rejecting it being that it had paws instead 
 of hoofs. But the Jewish Scriptures have no trace of 
 the superstitious regard for the animal, and the Algon- 
 quin and Iroquois traditions give us the most probable 
 explanation of the religious veneration of the hare in 
 .regarding it as the emblem of the Divine Spirit. 
 * Lubbock, " Pre- historic Times." 
 
262 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 One part of the Iroquois tradition above referred 
 to relates to a deluge by which the descendants of 
 Atahensic were all destroyed, and the earth was re- 
 plenished with inhabitants by the conversion of beasts 
 into men. The traditions of the Mexicans on this sub- 
 ject are well known, and they are but a type of those 
 prevailing throughout all the American tribes, and 
 pointing to a division of the human period into two 
 portions by a great diluvial catastrophe. One Mexican 
 tradition conects this, as did the Egyptians, with the 
 disappearance of the great continent Atlantis, which 
 in antediluvian times connected America with Europe, 
 and whose name has perhaps as good a claim to be 
 derived from the Mexican Atl (water), as from the 
 somewhat conjectural root adopted by Greek linguists. 
 Another Mexican tradition, preserved by Humboldt, 
 relates that Tezpi, or Noah, embarked in a great acalli, 
 or house, with his wife, children, and animals, and 
 stores of grain. Tezcatlipoca, the second person of 
 the Mexican Trinity, equivalent to Atahocan of the 
 Iroquois, caused the deluge to abate. Tezpi sends 
 out a vulture and other birds, and finally a humming- 
 bird,* which returned to him with green leaves, and 
 then Tezpi joyfully disembarks on the mountain of 
 Colhuacan. This story bears very nearly the same 
 resemblance to the Noachic account of the Deluge 
 with that which we find in the Chaldean tablets trans- 
 lated by Mr. Smith, and with much the same amount 
 
 * This bird, like the dove among us, was also the emblem of 
 the third person of the Mexican Trinity. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 263 
 
 of local colouring, but witli less of complication with 
 a developed system of idolatry, and, therefore, with a 
 more truly primitive aspect. We may well suppose 
 that similar traditions with similar local variations, 
 were repeated round the camp-fires of those hardy 
 wanderers who first penetrated into Europe after the 
 Post-glacial submergence, and served to explain the 
 bones of the gigantic men and still more gigantic 
 beasts that lay in the caves they inhabited. 
 
 In some sort of connection with the belief in a 
 deluge was the belief of many American tribes that the 
 souls of drowned persons could not attain to paradise 
 until their bodies were recovered and buried with 
 certain sacrificial rites, consisting of the burning of 
 parts of the viscera before interment. This may also 
 be connected with the belief in malignant spirits of 
 the water — the kelpies of our own ancestors; and 
 with the superstition in China and elsewhere, that it 
 is unlucky to rescue a drowning person. 
 
 It may be said that the preservation of such a tra- 
 dition as that of the Deluge is impossible, since it is 
 held by some historical critics that an oral tradition 
 cannot survive with any degree of accuracy even for 
 a century. But the geologist knows that a footprint 
 in the sand, which in some circumstances must perish 
 in an hour, may in others survive for untold ages. So 
 with traditions. Among a rude people, with few ideas, 
 when fixed in a form of words, traditions may be 
 handed down indefinitely. If once reduced to picto- 
 graphs, like those of the Mexicans, or even recorded 
 
264 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 on quipus or wampum-belts, they become still more 
 unchangeable. But even an oral tradition among 
 such people as the Americans is more enduring than 
 a temple or a pyramid. 
 
 The American in still another point conformed to 
 the most primitive and also most modern religious 
 tendencies of his eastern brethren. He believed in 
 an infinity of inferior spirits, good and evil, haunting 
 particular places, attached as guardian angels or genii 
 to certain persons, families, and tribes, of various 
 powers and properties, and of which any object, ani- 
 mate or inanimate, might be the emblem or material 
 representative. Throughout the whole of the vast 
 Algonquin family, these spirits were designated by 
 the word " Manitou," which reminds us of the ancient 
 Pelasgic or Etruscan u Manes " of the Romans, and 
 the " Menim," fates or destinies, of the Chaldaeans and 
 primitive Arabians. Under other names they were 
 worshipped by the western and northern tribes, and the 
 belief in them seems to have been universal through- 
 out America. Evil manitous were to be deprecated 
 by offerings, and good manitous were special tutelary 
 spirits to whom was committed the care of human 
 interests. Every man or woman might possess such 
 a spirit guardian, who was revealed in the course of a 
 protracted fast, undertaken for the purpose at the time 
 of entering into manhood or womanhood. The guard- 
 ian genius usually revealed himself in the guise of 
 some material object, and this became at once the 
 en jlem of the manitou, and the totem or armorial 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 
 
 265 
 
 bearing of the person. It was pictured on his shield 
 and other weapons ; it was tattooed on his body ; it 
 became his designation; to it he made vows in cir- 
 cumstances of doubt and difficulty, and offered sac- 
 rifices of such things as he valued. (Fig. 37.) It 
 is scarcely necessary to add that the idea of certain 
 animals and plants being sacred to or emblematic of 
 particular gods is not confined to America. It exists 
 and has existed alike among the most rude and refined 
 of the nations of the Old World. 
 
 <^^j(?^r> 
 
 Fij. 37. — Totems op Chiees op the Penobscot Indians, appended to a treaty 
 made with the English at Casco Bay, 1727. {From the Archives of Nova Scotia.) 
 
 This subordinate worship of the manitous necessarily 
 formed a large part of the practical religion of the in- 
 dividual, and obscured the perception of the Supreme 
 God. Its resemblance to the beliefs in seraphim, 
 genii,, and guardian spirits, saints and angels, must 
 occur to every one, and need not be followed in detail. 
 Nor need we doubt that the same faith existed among 
 the primitive men whose bones are found in the caves 
 of Europe. The fishes, reindeer, and mammoths 
 
2G6 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 carved on their bone implements were not merely 
 works of arts, undertaken to amuse idle hours. As 
 interpreted by American analogies, they were the 
 sacred totems of primeval hunters and warriors, and 
 some of the rows of dots and scratches, which havo 
 been called u tallies/' may be the records of offer- 
 ings made to these guardian spirits, or of successes 
 achieved under their influence. Some of the strangely 
 formed bone sceptres of these ancient caves may have 
 had the further significance of being the batons or 
 rattles of medicine men or prophets, who were sup- 
 posed to be specially inspired by manitous, and hence 
 to be themselves veritable " Manties," or men identi- 
 fied with the manitous, and uttering their commands. 
 (Pig. 38.) 
 
 Like the American nations, the pre-historic peoples 
 of Europe had also pictographs representing import- 
 ant events. In the first part of the "Reliquiae 
 Aquitanicce " such a representation, on a piece of 
 deer's antler, has been figured. It is from the Dor- 
 dogne caves, and the learned editors avow themselves 
 unable to attach any meaning to it. An American 
 Indian would, however, readily decipher it, and his 
 reading, if I am not much mistaken, would be this : 
 It represents a man walking with a burden or weapon 
 upon his shoulder. Behind him is the sea (indicated 
 by marks representing the waves), and in it swims a 
 large eel. Meeting the man on the other side are two 
 horses (indicated by their heads). The intention is to 
 show the annual migration of the owner of the object 
 
THE PEIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 267 
 
 from the sea, where he subsisted on fish, to the inland 
 regions, where he hunted wild horses. The number 
 of bars representing the waves has perhaps the ad- 
 ditional meaning of indicating how many times he had 
 performed this migration ; and on the opposite side of 
 the piece of bone are two heads of the aurochs, which 
 
 Fij. 38.— Totems of Families of the Reindeee Age in Fkakc.l 
 (From Christie and Lartet.) 
 
 was perhaps his totem, or distinctive mark. Such a 
 pictograph might, however, admit of a more precise 
 interpretation. The aggressive attitude of the eel, 
 with open mouth near the heel of the man, and the 
 helpless and tame aspect of the horses, with the hasty 
 
268 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 movement of the man bending under his burden, may- 
 indicate an escape from an inundation rather than an 
 ordinary migration. That even this may not be a 
 strained interpretation may be seen from the Chippewa 
 pictograph reduced from Schoolcraft (Fig. 40), which 
 indicates the wishes of certain tribes with reference 
 to certain territorial claims, and is also curious as an 
 illustration of the use of totems. Fig. 39 is an outline 
 of the French pictograph, which the editor of the 
 Reliquiae will excuse me for copying in consideration 
 of the explanation above given. 
 
 In connection with the worship of manitous is the 
 veneration of sacred places, of remarkable groves and 
 trees, of strangely formed rocks, and of waterfalls, 
 each of which is supposed to have its resident spirit, 
 to whom offerings are made by the passing traveller. 
 Rocks, more especially, have impressed the minds of 
 primitive men in this way ; and hence we have vast 
 numbers of traditional sacred stones and sculptured 
 stones, carved with the totems of their resident 
 manitous, or with those of visitors desirous of pro- 
 pitiating them. Meteoric stones are known to have 
 been held sacred by some tribes of Americans, pro- 
 bably because of their having been known to fall 
 from heaven, just as similar facts are believed to 
 have given origin to some of the most celebrated 
 worships of Asiatic antiquity ; as for example, to that 
 of Diana at Ephesus. A more inexplicable supersti- 
 tion is the veneration paid to green stones, such as 
 malachite, turquoise, and jade. Stones of this hue 
 
d 
 
 t) 
 
 \ 
 
 \\ 
 
 L 
 
 r 
 
 
 - s 
 
270 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 seem to have been highly valued by all old races, 
 both of the Old World and the New. The more 
 civilized inhabitants of Central America and Mexico 
 venerated blue or green stones, and mined for turquoise, 
 as did the Egyptians, in their celebrated turquoise 
 mines of the Sinai peninsula. 
 
 A remarkable example of a natural temple is that 
 
 Fij. 40. — American Pictogbaph from Schoolcpaft, taken from a petition 
 presented to the President of the United States, and showing that the chiefs 
 represented by the totems of the crane, the marten, the bear, and the cat-fish, 
 are of one mind and one heart with reference to the possession of certain lakes 
 indicated in the rude map below them. 
 
 of the Roches Percees, on the plains of Western 
 Manitoba, a province which derives its name from 
 the manitou supposed to haunt a wave-beaten rock 
 in one of its lakes.* These rocks are the fantastically 
 
 * See Frontispiece. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OV GOD. 271 
 
 worn and eroded outcrop of certain sandstones of 
 the Lignite Tertiary series, rising alone in the midst 
 of a boundless prairie country, and striking the ima- 
 gination of the traveller by a resemblance to ruined 
 buildings. One of them forms a natural archway, 
 resembling a fragment of an Egyptian temple, and is 
 a veritable cathedral to all the wandering tribes of the 
 West. Standing awe-stricken before this strange piece 
 of nature's architecture, the Indian makes some simple 
 offering, invokes the guardian spirit of the shrine, and 
 perhaps engraves on the sandstone the mark of his 
 own totem. The figures below (Fig. 41) show some 
 of the marks thus made; and their resemblance in 
 style to those on pre-historic implements of Europe 
 must strike every one. Some of them are of course 
 quite modern, but no one knows how far back in past 
 ages these rocks have been venerated by the red man, 
 who places on them his totem, or that of his tribe, 
 with the same feeling with which an Englishman 
 regards a monument in Westminster Abbey. The 
 Indian, however, with an older and truer faith than 
 that of many who despise or malign his simple wor- 
 ship, knows that the Most High " dwelleth not in 
 temples made with hands," nor even in shrines of 
 nature's workmanship, and regards these as merely 
 tho dwellings of the subordinate agents, who must 
 obey the commands of the Great Spirit. 
 
 We can see in such a natural temple as the Eoches 
 Percees the original of the megalithic monuments which 
 strike the imagination of the European antiquary, 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 273 
 
 and also of the cave-like temples of ancient Egypt, of 
 the massive teocallis of Mexico and Central America 
 and even of our own huge cathedral piles. All are 
 but the attempts of more civilized man to rival or 
 surpass the grottoes and sculptured rocks which were 
 revered by his remote ancestors as making more 
 apparent to their untaught fancies the reality of the 
 spiritual world with which fallen man seeks communion 
 by so many quaint and strange devices, ever seeking 
 to know God, yet ever confounding the creature with 
 the Creator. 
 
 The fasts for manitous are connected with some of 
 the most poetical tales of the American Indians — tales 
 which rival in felicity of conception those of the ancient 
 Greeks, however rude in expression. One of these, 
 belonging to the Chippewas, and given in detail by 
 Schoolcraft, may be summarised as follows : — A young 
 man had reached the age proper for the manitou fast. 
 His mother built him a lodge in a retired place, and he 
 took up his abode therein and began his fast. At first 
 his mind occupied itself with the shrubs and flowers 
 around his shelter; and thinking of the goodness of 
 the Great Spirit in giving so many varied gifts to man, 
 he prayed that he might dream of something likely to 
 be of use to his people. On the third day, while lying 
 weak and faint in his bed, he saw a young stranger 
 approach, dressed in green robes and with a green 
 plume. He announced himself as a messenger from 
 the Great Spirit, sent to grant his request, and in- 
 vited the youth to a wrestling match. Weak though 
 
274 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 he was, he endeavoured to obey, and after long trial 
 his visitor said, " It is enough," and vanished. He 
 returned a second and a third day, and the wrestling 
 match was renewed, but the young man seemed to 
 grow stronger with each contest, notwithstanding his 
 abstinence. At length, on the seventh day of the fast, 
 the youth, with a supernatural access of strength, 
 overcame his visitor, threw him on the ground, and, 
 obeying his directions, stripped him of his vest and 
 plumes, and buried him in the earth. He visited the 
 place again and again, carefully removing every weed, 
 and at length he saw green blades spring up, and as 
 the season advanced, strong stems shot forth, bear- 
 ing ears of grain, and then in triumph the youth led 
 his father to the spot, and showed him the ripened 
 crop of maize. " It is monda-min ! " — the spirit's grain 
 — exclaimed the father ; and thus the Indians first 
 became acquainted with the culture of bread-corn. It 
 is curious to note in this story the expectation of a 
 heavenly revelation in the fast, the wrestling with the 
 angel and prevailing, and the devout belief of the 
 special provision of food for man — all features of a 
 very primitive faith ; while there is a touch of allegory 
 in the green vesture and plume of the heavenly 
 stranger stripped off, and his body buried, as em- 
 blematic of the seed-corn denuded of its green husk 
 and feathery tassel and sown in the ground. Many 
 other Indian tales, often very poetical and touching, 
 are connected with the fasts for manitous. Still more 
 protracted fasts were undergone by those who aspired 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 275 
 
 to be medicine-men, in order that they might fully 
 enter into communion with the manitous which were 
 supposed to animate them; and there seems little 
 doubt that these men, though often impostors, were 
 sometimes possessed with a real religious frenzy. 
 
 A darker feature of the belief in manitous was 
 the dread of those imagined to be evil-disposed, 
 and which often filled the poor savage with extreme 
 terror, and embittered his life with the apprehension 
 of the ills that might be inflicted on him by those 
 mysterious powers. In some cases, more especially, 
 these superstitious terrors were excessive, and took 
 possession of whole tribes, impelling to actions of 
 folly and cruelty equal to those of our own ancestors 
 in darker days, when they became afflicted with a 
 witch-panic or with dread of the " evil eye." 
 
 I have already stated that the carvings on ivory 
 and bone found in the caves of the Dordogne, in 
 France, might be regarded as the totems of their 
 possessors, the emblems of their guardian manitous. 
 This has a bearing on the significance which we are 
 to attach to the carving supposed to represent the 
 mammoth, found in one of these caves, and which 
 has so often been figured and described as an evi- 
 dence that man existed before the disappearance of 
 this animal. That some great warrior or chief of 
 the Palaeolithic age had the mammoth for his armorial 
 bearing and for the emblem of his guardian genius 
 is no doubt significant of a time when the creature 
 was known, at least by tradition. Anything beyond 
 
276 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 that it does not certainly prove, any more than the 
 figure of St. George and the dragon on an English 
 coin would show that the saint and the dragon sur- 
 vived to the times of the Georges. Such a totem 
 might, like the manatee carved on the pipes of the 
 Ohio mound-builders, refer to an animal of a distant 
 country, from which the owner or his ancestors had 
 migrated, or with which they had intercourse. It 
 might also be handed down as an heirloom for a 
 vast number of generations, and might pass from 
 tribe to tribe. Its actual last possessors might thus 
 never have seen the mammoth, though they must 
 have known it by tradition. Some of the Algonquin 
 tribes had a tradition of the mammoth or mastodon 
 as a great elk, with an arm projecting from its 
 shoulder, and the Micmacs represent the bones of 
 the mastodon as belonging to gigantic beavers which 
 their great hero, Glooscap, destroyed. The mammoth 
 was in any case the symbol of some pre-historic man 
 or tribe of France : and in the cave of Bruniquel we 
 find, along with beautiful fish-harpoons, figures carved 
 on implements, and representing the horse, ibex, snake, 
 reindeer, and salmon ; so that if we knew the language 
 of these people, we could decipher their names on their 
 implements. An American Indian could in any case 
 read them in his own tongue as pictographs, and 
 might also conjecture the facts indicated by some of 
 the significant marks and dots attached to them. 
 
 Lyell well remarks that these carvings teach us that 
 the ancient tribes who hunted in the Dordogne, per- 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 277 
 
 haps before the historical deluge, " did not belong to 
 a less developed stage of humanity than some hunter 
 tribes of the present day." He might have added 
 that in their arts and superstitions, as well as in 
 their physical characters, they approached very near 
 to the somewhat noble type of semi-barbarous man 
 still extant in America. 
 
 In summing up this subject, it may be well to refer 
 to the probability that the race of men known by the 
 general name Turanian is the oldest now extant. This 
 race, occupying the northern parts of Asia, and iden- 
 tical in physical characters on the one hand with the 
 American tribes, and on the other with the oldest races 
 whose skulls are found in the European caves, seems 
 also to have been that which preceded the Aryan races in 
 India and in the south of Europe, and the Semitic races 
 in western Asia. On the one hand, its religious ideas 
 are identical with those still surviving in America and 
 northern Asia, as well as to some extent in China, and 
 with the oldest religions shadowed forth to us in the 
 ancient records and traditions of Palestine, Aryan 
 India, and Greece, and crystallised for us in the child- 
 like narratives of the book of Genesis .* From these 
 primitive ideas were developed on the one hand the 
 Hebrew prophecy which culminates in the glorious 
 truths of Christianity, and on the other all the wonder- 
 ful myths of the Aryan polytheism. 
 
 * And also represented in the Chaldean legends of the 
 Creation and Deluge, recently translated by the late Mr. 
 George Smith. 
 
278 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 If these general statements be conceded — and I 
 think a vast mass of fact lying beyond the range of 
 our present inquiry might be adduced to prove them, 
 — then the following general truths may be accepted 
 as to the primitive religious connections of the New 
 World and the Old. (1) All the religions of America, 
 and all the primitive faiths of the Old World, alike 
 embrace the elements of a Supreme Creator, subor- 
 dinate spirits of good and evil, a fallen human race, a 
 first mother, who is the mother of a Saviour, and a 
 division of human history into two periods by a dilu- 
 vial catastrophe. (2) There is no trace of the origin of 
 these ideas in any other source than historical fact and 
 primitive monotheism. It is impossible to trace them 
 back to mere worship of the elements and to fetich- 
 ism. They are remnants of a higher and purer faith. 
 (3) The American races must have diverged from the 
 general mass of humanity at a period so early that the 
 peculiar features of the Hebrew and Aryan religions 
 had not yet developed themselves out of the primitive 
 patriarchal faith, so that the origin of the American 
 religions lies in the antediluvian and early post-diluvian 
 time. (4) This accounts for the fact that some have 
 seen in these American religions Egyptian, Indian, 
 Hebrew, or Aryan influences, because the primitive 
 ideas of all these exist in America, though undevel- 
 oped, or developed after a peculiar manner. (5) Both 
 in language and religion such special affinities as exist 
 connect the Algonquin tribes with the Aryan races, 
 or rather, with the so-called Pelasgic elements which 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 279 
 
 formed the front of the Aryan wave, and were perhaps 
 as much Turanian as Aryan. In like manner, the 
 same indications connect the Toltecans, Peruvians, 
 and Alleghans with the south of Asia and Polynesia ; 
 and the Esquimaux, the Chippewyans, and the West 
 Coast tribes with the Mongolian race of northern 
 Asia. Still, all these elements must have been nearer 
 to each other than they have been in historic times, 
 when the early migrations to America took place. 
 Lastly, all these elements of primitive faith point back 
 to a golden age of simplicity and piety, corrupted and 
 decaying under the influence of rudeness and barbar- 
 ism on the one hand, or of a sensual and ungodly 
 civilization on the other. 
 
 We thus learn how the aboriginal American, and 
 probably, also, the primeval European, solved the great 
 question of the origin of the earth and man, and of 
 his own relation to the Supreme Being. With such 
 dim light of nature as he had, he could at least con- 
 ceive of higher spiritual beings and of a Creator, and 
 could feel that God was nigh to him. He had, it is 
 true, mixed up these primitive tenets with many cor- 
 ruptions and imaginings, but the substratum of his 
 faith was identical with that of the patriarchal age, as 
 revealed to us in Scripture, and whose truth is vouched 
 for, not only by the connection with it of the subse- 
 quent superstructure of revelation, but by the natural 
 and invincible persuasion of the existence of God, 
 which is ineradicable from the human mind in all 
 ages and places. 
 
280 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 It is further instructive to observe that, except in 
 the more civilized nations, he had not corrupted his 
 faith with the apparatus of complex rituals and idols 
 made with hands. These things in the New World, 
 and no doubt also in the Old, were growths of im- 
 moral and hypocritical civilization. Again, the Ameri- 
 can religion was not materialistic or of the nature of 
 fetichism. Even the rudest tribes were not, like some 
 modern scientists, and perhaps some of the lower 
 Papuan races, " Monists," who cannot conceive any- 
 primary existence except material forces — brute and 
 inorganic — of which man is at once the product and 
 the sport and victim. To arrive at this position 
 requires either the utmost extreme of brutal degrada- 
 tion or of one-sided mental culture. Primitive man 
 was evidently neither in one position nor the other. 
 Neither was he properly pantheistic. He knew that 
 man cannot be God, however much he might believe 
 that there is a likeness between God and man ; and 
 though he might imagine a multitude of spirits con- 
 nected with particular objects and places, yet they 
 were all either ministering spirits of the Great Spirit, 
 or manifestations of that Spirit himself in the things 
 that his power had evolved from old chaos and night ; 
 and all essentially distinct from the objects which 
 were their abodes, or their emblems, or the objects of 
 their care. I by no means desire unduly to exalt pre- 
 historic religions, but I wish distinctly to affirm that 
 they, and what we call the heathenism or animism of 
 untaught tribes, were nearer to God and truth than are 
 
THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OP GOD. 281 
 
 either the ritualisms and idolatries or the material- 
 istic scepticisms of more civilized times, when men, 
 " professing themselves to be wise, become fools.'" 
 
 These primitive beliefs thus serve to confirm our 
 faith in the inspired and historical records of human- 
 ity, in opposition to the crude theories which have 
 been put forth in the misused name of science. In a 
 practical point of view, the fact that all religions con- 
 tain traces of primitive truth akin to that which was 
 the original creed of the race, should encourage mis- 
 sionary effort even amongst the most degraded peoples, 
 should warn us against despising either the simple 
 theology of Genesis or the equally simple beliefs of 
 untutored men, guided only by the light of nature ; 
 and should deter us from giving way to these aesthetic 
 and merely outward corruptions of spiritual truth, 
 which are equally absurd in their most antique and 
 most modern forms, and are less excusable in the 
 latter. " The past times of this ignorance God has 
 overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to 
 repent." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PRIMITIVE IDEAS OF KELIGlUN : THE INSTINCT OF 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 As we prefaced the discussion of the Idea of God with 
 an extract from Cartier, giving the creed of the an- 
 cient Stadaconians, we may in like manner introduce 
 that of the doctrine of a future state with an extract 
 from Carver, who visited the tribes of the great plains 
 at the head of the Missouri in 1766 to 1768. He thus 
 states the creed of one of the tribes of Dakotas or 
 Sioux, a people then altogether unacquainted with any 
 foreign religion. " They acknowledge one Supreme 
 Being or giver of life, who presides over all things. 
 The Chippewas call this being Manitou or Kitchi 
 Manitai ; the Nundowessies Wakon or Tongo-wakon,* 
 that is, the Great Spirit ; and they look upon him as 
 the source of good, from whom no evil can proceed. 
 They also believe in a bad spirit, to whom they ascribe 
 great power, and suppose that through his means all 
 the evils which befall mankind are inflicted. They 
 hold also that there are good spirits of a lesser degree, 
 who have their particular departments, in which they 
 are constantly contributing to the happiness of mortals. 
 
 * Wakon or Augha is the same with the Canadian Oki or 
 Agni ; and the prefix Tongo may be compared with Mongolian 
 Tong and Tang, and Chinese Tien, the name of the Sky-God. 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 2S3 
 
 To all of these they pay some kind of adoration. 
 They doubt not but they shall exist in some future 
 state ; they however fancy that their employments 
 there will be similar to those they are engaged in here, 
 without the labour and difficulty attached to them in 
 this period of their existence." 
 
 I give this extract more especially because it is the 
 fashion at present with a certain school of archaeolo- 
 gists to eliminate from the American religions the 
 ideas of a Supreme Being, of good and evil, and 
 even of immortality. Cartier and Carver, and a host 
 of other unexceptionable evidences, could be quoted 
 against this stupid sacrifice of facts to a prevalent 
 but transient theory. 
 
 Among rude peoples the belief in immortality ex- 
 hibits itself chiefly in their treatment of the bodies 
 of the dead, and in the rites connected with burial, 
 and it is information of this kind alone that we can 
 have regarding pre-historic men ; thus funeral rites 
 must occupy a prominent place in this chapter. We 
 must expect to find many of them crude and childish 
 in the extreme ; but we need not wonder at this when 
 we think for a moment of the mixture of forms, hea- 
 then, mediaeval, and scriptural, and the strange com- 
 pound of grief, hope, and pageantry which attend 
 burial among ourselves, with all our greater know- 
 ledge and more rational belief of immortality. 
 
 The Americans universally held the posthumous life 
 and separate existence of the soul. When questioned 
 as to the nature and properties of the disembodied 
 
284 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 spirit, they were, like ourselves, unable to give any- 
 definite answer, and compared it to a shade or ghost 
 of the body, to a breath, air, or mist, or to the appear- 
 ance of a bird — all, however, ancient and familiar 
 representations among the nations of the Old World. 
 They also most naturally believed that the tastes and 
 desires of the dead were the same with those which 
 had actuated them in life. Hence it was proper to 
 bring offerings of food to the grave, and to bury with 
 the corpse what the person had valued during life, or 
 -some model or miniature representation of it. In the 
 case of eminent persons, costly gifts might be given 
 by friends or dependents, or even by tribes and 
 nations, for this purpose. They also believed that for 
 a time after death the soul hovered over or remained 
 with the body, before taking its final departure for the 
 world of spirits, and it was supposed by some that 
 the funeral feast held in honour of the dead was that 
 which gave it its passport for the long journey. 
 
 The soul having thus departed was believed to make 
 its way to the happy land, and the path thither was 
 provided with accessories similar to those with which 
 ancient mythologies have rendered us familiar. Some 
 believed in the simple pathway of the stars, to which 
 I have already referred.* Others believed in a long 
 and dangerous journey, or in a river of death, whose 
 Charon used a stone canoe, or which was crossed by a 
 narrow and slippery bridge. There was a Cerberus, 
 also, to be contended with, and the souls of the 
 wicked might either perish altogether in the attempt 
 * P. 253. 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 285 
 
 to surmount these difficulties, or might be punished 
 for their sins before entering the Elysian fields. 
 
 The happy land was usually in the far west, because 
 thither the orbs of heaven went for their rest, and 
 because the sunset sky daily opened up the glories 
 of heaven's portal, to delight the eyes of men and to 
 beckon them to immortality. Among the Americans, 
 as among the Greeks, there were stories of adventu- 
 rous men who had voluntarily descended into Hades 
 to rescue the souls of their friends. Charlevoix found 
 one of these stories, which he compares to that of 
 Orpheus and Eurydice, and Schoolcraft has preserved 
 two of them, which, as products of imagination, are 
 not unworthy of a place beside classical stories of 
 this type, themselves probably older than the times 
 of Greek civilization. 
 
 The belief in future happiness beyond the grave 
 was not a shadowy imagination, but a firm and practi- 
 cal conviction. The early Jesuit missionaries record 
 with wonder the stoicism and stern joy with which 
 the savage met death, and his certain assurance of a 
 blessed hereafter. If the dying man was the head of 
 a family, he chanted in advance his funeral song or 
 oration, giving parting advice to his children and 
 sorrowing friends, as in that wonderful death-song 
 of Jacob preserved to us in Genesis. It may be well 
 to remark here that the gifts of oratory and song were 
 not rare among the Americans, nor are they rare 
 among other rude tribes. Though without a written 
 language, they had already entered on the path ot 
 
286 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 literary composition, and such orations and songs as 
 have been preserved to ns are sometimes by no means 
 despicable efforts. The dying speech having been 
 finished, presents were given to the sick man by 
 members of his family, and the relatives took their 
 last farewell, wishing him a happy journey, and con- 
 soling him with the hope of the joys at its termination, 
 and with the assurance that his children would sustain 
 the reputation of his name. Among one northern 
 tribe, according to Charlevoix, it was believed that 
 when old persons survived until their dotage, they 
 would have to begin their new life in the other world 
 as mere infants. To avoid this, so strong was the 
 conviction of eternal life, old persons verging on 
 decrepitude were in the habit of beseeching their 
 relatives to strangle them, that they might enter the 
 future life in the full possession of their powers. * 
 
 The faith of the survivors in the immortality of 
 their deceased friends was exhibited in the care of the 
 body, and in the simple rites and offerings by which 
 they hoped to promote the welfare of the disembodied 
 spirit. First among these may be mentioned the 
 securing of companions and assistants to the departed 
 shade. The terrible expedient of immolating prison- 
 ers, slaves, and wives, on the tomb, so prevalent in 
 the Old World, was not unknown in the New. Amono* 
 the northern tribes, their only domestic animal, the 
 dog, was obliged to accompany his master into the 
 
 * The same belief and practice are recorded by Hunt as 
 existing among the Fijians. 
 

 THE INSTINCT OF IMMOETALITY. 287 
 
 land of death, just as among the ancienb Scythians 
 and some modern Americans, the warrior's horse was 
 slain to bear him on his long journey. The dogs, 
 killed immediately after death, usually formed a part 
 of the funeral feast, but this did not conflict with the 
 idea that the spirits of these sagacious animals might 
 guide the shade to its final abode. Cranz, a Green- 
 land missionary, relates that it is a practice with the 
 people of that forlorn region to place the head of a 
 dog in the tomb of a child, " in order that the soul 
 of the dog, which can always find its way home, may 
 show the helpless infant the way to the country of 
 souls/' Some of the arctic navigators who have 
 opened Esquimaux graves confirm the statement of 
 the missionary. Nilsson quotes this touching instance 
 of care for the soul of the deceased child in illustration 
 of the fact that skulls of dogs occur in ancient burial- 
 mounds of the Stone age in Sweden, which in many 
 other respects resemble the burial-places of the Green- 
 landers. A similar association of remains of the dog 
 with those of man has been found in a pre-historic 
 Irish tumulus,* and in Peru the skeleton of the same 
 faithful friend of man is sometimes found in the family 
 sepulchre. 
 
 It has been remarked with reference to some 
 European interments, that flint implements and wea- 
 pons appear to have been buried with the dead, even 
 after the close of the Stone age. This may be ex- 
 plained by the superstitious reverence which came to 
 * Knock Maraidhe, Dublin. 
 
288 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 be entertained for the ancient weapons. It was fit 
 that the Modern should appear in presence of his 
 ancestors with their ancient and time-honoured ap- 
 pliances. But American analogy affords another 
 explanation. The medicine-man provided himself 
 with all ancient and curious things, as old weapons, 
 curiously formed stones, or fossil shells. These para- 
 phernalia of his trade. might be placed with him in 
 his grave, and thus afford a strange association of 
 objects. Even the ordinary Indian might have a 
 medicine bag, in which were old arrows or flint flakes, 
 carried as talismans, which would also be buried with 
 him, even in cases where no other objects might be 
 so interred. To take a modern instance. When the 
 late Prince Imperial of France was slain by the Zulus, 
 his body was stripped, but a reliquary worn suspended 
 to his neck was left, because to have taken this would 
 have been a sacrilege according to the primitive belief 
 of the African. Had the body been buried where it 
 fell, this "medicine bag" and its contents would 
 have been the only objects to indicate its date or 
 nation. 
 
 To return to the funeral ceremonies. Among the 
 Canadian tribes, the corpse, immediately after death, 
 was placed in a sitting posture at the door of the hut, 
 its face painted, dressed in the best robe of the 
 deceased, and with his weapons beside it. Thus 
 seated in state, it was visited by friends. It was then 
 taken to the place of burial, and laid in a grave care- 
 fully lined with the richest furs, as if the last resting- 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
 289 
 
 place were to be a bed of peaceful sleep. The grave 
 was covered with a rough roof of split wood or bark ; 
 a post was set up on which were carved the emblems 
 of the dead, and some rude marks to indicate his 
 actions. (Fig. 42.) And on this, or on the grave, 
 
 Fig. 42.— Adjedatig, or Grave-post oe Wabojeegse, the " White Fisheb," a 
 Chippewa chief, who died in 1793 (from Schoolcraft). The reindeer at the top 
 is the totem of his family ; it is inverted to indicate death. The horizontal 
 marks denote th«3 number of his war parties and other military achievements. 
 The three perpendicular lines indicate three wounds received in battle. The 
 head of a moose commemorates a combat with one of these animals. The 
 other emblems are supposed to indicate his influence as a ruler, and the animal 
 below is perhaps his dog, represented as dying with his master. 
 
 were placed offerings to the spirit, as weapons or 
 useful utensils ; while for the time when the spirit 
 was supposed to haunt the grave, daily offerings of 
 food were supplied. In the case of infants, mothers 
 
 u 
 
290 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 have been seen to shed the milk from their breasts on 
 their little graves; and I have been informed that 
 among some tribes there is more mourning for the 
 death of a child than for an adult, on the ground of 
 its greater helplessness in the lone land of spirits. 
 The woodcut (Fig. 43) of Chippewa mourners is from a 
 photograph, and shows the roofed grave with objects 
 suspended on it as offerings, and an opening to in- 
 troduce supplies of food, and the grave-post whereon 
 to hang other offerings or emblems. After the funeral, 
 presents were given to the relatives of the dead by 
 their friends or by the tribe collectively, and a funeral 
 feast was held by the family. This was accompanied 
 by games, ending, says Charlevoix, who records these 
 rites, with songs and cries of victory. 
 
 In some cases the offerings to the dead took the 
 form, not of valuable articles, but of mere models of 
 these, like the tissue-paper garments burned by the 
 Chinese as sacrifices to their ancestors. This may be 
 regarded as the creeping in of hypocrisy or ritualism, 
 properly so called, into a practice once high and 
 noble. Different from this, however, was the practice 
 of defacing and rendering useless, either by mechani- 
 cal injury or by fire, the objects offered to the dead, 
 an act which implies the final renunciation of them 
 on the part of the living, and may have also been 
 understood as a species of death ushering them into 
 the other world for the benefit of the dead. All this 
 has its analogues in the Eastern continent, even in 
 historic times. 
 
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 el be a h, 1 " 
 ©«©§?» 
 
 •g'E?t2r3 •«» 
 
 -^ © a_ c3 
 
 «M > V^ o 
 
 iiiii 
 
 _ o te o 
 
292 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Last of all came the great octennial or decennial 
 feast of the dead, most important of all the national 
 ceremonies of the St. Lawrence tribes. Arrangements 
 were made as to the time and place, and a master 
 of the ceremonies was appointed, and friends were 
 invited from neighbouring villages. When all was 
 ready, they proceeded in procession to the cemetery, 
 disinterred and cleansed the bones, amidst the lamen- 
 tations of the women, wrapped them in new furs, and 
 then, with many ceremonies, feasts, dances, and games, 
 conveyed them to the great national pit or ossuary, 
 where they were finally interred with the richest 
 funeral gifts, and covered with the heaped-up soil. 
 
 " Here bring the last gifts, and with them 
 The last lament be said, 
 Let all that pleased and yet may please 
 Be buried with the dead." 
 
 The arrangements of burial differed among differ- 
 ent tribes. In ancient Micmac graves, in Prince 
 Edward Island, the bones have been found wrapped 
 in birch bark, and with a little parcel of arrow or 
 spear-heads interred with them. Some of the western 
 tribes leave the corpse and its property in its lodge, 
 which thus becomes its tomb. Some raise the bodies 
 of the dead aloft on stages, a custom which prevails 
 as far off as Papua, where the people have also long, 
 communistic houses, inhabited by many families, like 
 the Iroquois and Hurons. Some tribes buried their 
 dead in caverns; and the old Alleghans, and other 
 agricultural tribes of the west and south, erected great 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 293 
 
 mounds over the dead, some of which, as the Grave- 
 Creek Mound, in Virginia, seventy feet in height and 
 a thousand feet in circumference — are among the 
 greatest burial tumuli in the world. The elaborate 
 subterranean sepulchral chambers of the old Peruvians 
 are well known, and are, like the graves of the Green- 
 landers and the " gallery graves " of the ancient 
 Scandinavians, miniature houses furnished with the 
 utensils or weapons of the dead. 
 
 Such differences in manner of burial might depend 
 merely on difference of circumstances, and various 
 modes might prevail among the same race. It is 
 probable that the extinct Boeotics, or Red Indians 
 of Newfoundland, were not an Algonquin people, but 
 an eastern extension of the great Chippewyan or 
 Tinne race, intermediate between the Algonquins and 
 the Esquimaux, and entering America from the north- 
 west. These people were destroyed partly by Euro- 
 pean settlers, and partly by their hereditary enemies, 
 the Micmacs of Nova Scotia. In 1827 an expedition 
 was fitted out, under the auspices of the Newfound- 
 land Government, by the explorer, McCormick, with 
 the view of ascertaining if any remnant of them 
 existed. He penetrated to the Red Indian Lake, 
 their former head-quarters, but there found nothing 
 but the ruins of their huts and their graves. The 
 interments had been of various kinds ; some were in 
 carefully-built huts of bark, others on stages or poles, 
 others under heaps of stones. The body of an un- 
 fortunate young woman, taken prisoner by the whites. 
 
294 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 among whom she died, and after death was left to be 
 recovered by her tribe, was recognised by the remains 
 of European clothing which these poor savages had 
 scrupulously buried with her. If we ask the reason 
 of this variety, the climate affords a ready answer. In 
 Lower Canada at this day, the bodies of those who 
 die in winter are preserved in vaults until spring, when 
 they can be properly buried ; so among the Red 
 Indians, any one dying in winter could not be in- 
 terred in the frozen ground or buried under stones, 
 but must be placed in a bark cabin or on a stage. In 
 like manner it is quite conceivable that under different 
 circumstances the same tribe might bury their dead, 
 or dispose of them by cremation, as the Kutchin of 
 north and west America, a branch of the same stock 
 with the Bceotics, now do. 
 
 But however different in details, all these modes of 
 burial rested on the belief in immortality, and on the 
 idea that the care of the body and the provision of 
 suitable offerings had a connection with the soul's 
 welfare in a future life, and perhaps the meanest and 
 basest thing in modern literature is the attempt made 
 by some writers on this subject to explain away these 
 beliefs as held by pre-historic men. A further illus- 
 tration of these beliefs, and also probably of some 
 dim notion of a resurrection of the body, is afforded 
 by the desire of the American Indian to be in death 
 " gathered to his fathers/ 1 A touching instance of 
 this feeling is afforded by the story of the aged Micmac 
 Sachem, or Sagamo, Mambertou, a man of high cha- 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 295 
 
 racter and influence among his people, and evidently 
 of great personal qualities. He became an early- 
 convert of the missionaries, and when attacked with 
 his last illness was carried to Port Koyal for medical 
 assistance ; but finding this of no avail, and his end 
 approaching, he asked the Governor, Beincourt, to 
 promise that his body should be taken to his native 
 village and buried with those of his ancestors. The 
 promise was given, but no sooner was it known to the 
 Jesuit missionaries, than they were filled with horror ; 
 their noble convert could not be buried with infidels, 
 his bones must lie in consecrated ground. Beincourt 
 suggested that they might consecrate his grave in the 
 Micmac burial-place, but this was out of the question, 
 unless all the old infidels in the cemetery could first 
 be disinterred and removed. The quarrel threatened 
 to be serious, and the angry monks withdrew, and de- 
 clared that if Mambertou persisted in his unreasonable 
 wish, they would have nothing to do with his death or 
 burial, and would withhold the rites of the Church. 
 No modern Ultramontanes could display more faithful 
 ritualism or more genuine antagonism to all that is 
 holy and spiritual in religion and in man; and the 
 Jesuit narrative records with satisfaction that their 
 firmness triumphed; for the dying chief, unable to 
 struggle against their fanaticism, quietly gave way, 
 and his bones lie in the old French cemetery of 
 Port Eoyal. 
 
 America, we have seen, is rich in examples of the 
 belief in a future state. We may now turn for a little 
 
296 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 to pre-historic Europe, and note the parallelism. We 
 may here at once affirm that the oldest "Neolithic" 
 mounds and cave interments of Europe bespeak beliefs 
 similar in every respect to those of America. I have 
 already referred to this in the case of the "gallery 
 graves n of Scandinavia, and it is equally apparent in 
 the sepulchral tumuli. But how was it with those 
 oldest tribes of men supposed to have been contem- 
 porary with the now extinct Post-glacial mammals ? 
 Unfortunately, most of the remains of this period are 
 not of a character to give much information as to rites 
 of sepulture or religious beliefs. There are, however, 
 some which partially make up for this defect, and I 
 shall refer here to a few instances. 
 
 Among the caves on the banks of the River Lesse, 
 described by Dupont in his book on the Pre-historic 
 Ages, one of the most curious, the Trou de Frontal, in 
 Belgium, is a sepulchre of the so-called Reindeer Age, 
 which intervenes between the earliest Pala)olithic or 
 " Mammoth " Age, and that of Polished Stone. It is 
 rather an overhanging ledge or shelter than a cave, 
 except at its inner side, where there is a chamber 
 about two yards in length by one in breadth. This 
 inner chamber had been used as a sepulchre, in which 
 were found bones referable to sixteen persons of dif- 
 ferent ages. The mouth of the cave had been closed 
 with a slab of dolomite, and on the terrace in front, 
 and under the overhanging ledge, was a hearth of 
 stones which had been used for funeral feasts, and 
 around which were the bones of many animals, all 
 
THE INSTINCT OP IMMORTALITY. 297 
 
 recent, but some now locally extinct, as, for example, 
 the reindeer. With regard to the age of this sepul- 
 chre, it is later than the earliest human age of Europe, 
 when we know from other evidence that the country 
 was inhabited by a race of gigantic stature and physi- 
 cally similar to the best developed of the American 
 races. But it is older than the historic age, and be- 
 longs to a time when the earlier race had been replaced 
 by another of smaller stature, but still Mongolian or 
 Turanian in features, and corresponding to the Lapps in 
 Europe and the Esquimaux in America. These, again, 
 at some unknown period, were replaced by the historic 
 Celtic and Germanic races. Let us now consider the 
 manner in which these people buried their dead. 
 
 The mixed and disjointed condition of the bones 
 shows that either the burials took place at long inter- 
 vals of time, or that the place was a sort of ossuary, 
 into which bones taken up from a first burial were put, 
 in the manner we have already described. With the 
 dead were buried their ornaments and implements. 
 Among these were pierced pieces of fluor spar and 
 perforated shells, used no doubt as beads or wampum, 
 and chipped flint weapons. A plain earthen jar, not 
 unlike some of those found in ancient American burial- 
 places, but less ornamented, was found in fragments, 
 and had probably held provisions for the dead. The 
 survivors had attempted to perpetuate the memory or 
 achievements of their deceased friends ; for two slabs 
 of sandstone were found, one with unknown markings, 
 the other with the figure of an animal, probably the 
 
208 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 totem of the family or tribe to whom the vault be- 
 longed. Feasts for the dead must have been a recog- 
 nised institution, as evidenced by the hearth built for 
 them, and by the quantity of charcoal, ashes, and bones 
 upon and around it. Dupont enumerates more than 
 forty species of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fishes, 
 which had been used in these repasts, and which show 
 that these people were as omnivorous in their tastes 
 for animal food, and as skilful in gratifying them, as 
 are the American Indians. This cave, which in many 
 respects resembles that of Aurignac, so well described 
 by Lartet and Lyell, and other tombs of this age, tells 
 in a manner too plain to admit of contradiction, of the 
 same hopes with reference to the dead which we have 
 seen in the funeral rites of pre-historic America. 
 
 But there was in Europe a still earlier race. Were 
 they cognisant of this sublime hope ? We have, it is 
 true, few indications of their beliefs ; but what we have 
 show that, while physically a superior race to that 
 which succeeded them, they were equally, in their own 
 judgment, heirs of a future life.* I have already re- 
 ferred to the carvings in the cave of Bruniquel, in 
 France, probably belonging to this most ancient human 
 age, as evidence of their belief in God. Of the sepul- 
 chral caves of this period I may take that of Men tone, 
 already noticed, as evidence of their identity with the 
 Americans in the belief in immortality. 
 
 * It should be noted however, that the Bible gives reason to 
 believe that the chief sin of antediluvian times was a disregard 
 of God and a future life. 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 299 
 
 The first human skeleton found in this cave has 
 been beautifully illustrated in the photographs pub- 
 lished by Dr. Riviere. It was discovered under about 
 twenty feet of material, which is characterized as chiefly 
 ashes and cinders of fires, mixed with the bones of 
 recent and extinct mammalia, flint flakes, and shells. 
 The locality, as described by Dr. Eiviere, is not likely, 
 unless great changes of level have occurred, to have 
 been inhabited by a settled tribe, but is rather a 
 maritime pass between France and Italy, where large 
 bodies of men may have resided for a time in the 
 course of migrations, or of hunting and military ex- 
 peditions. The skeleton is that of a man of great 
 stature, who must have been a hunter or warrior, of 
 physical type decidedly Turanian, and akin to that of 
 the aborigines of North America; while his limb-bones 
 have the development of muscular processes charac- 
 teristic of men who walk much through rough forests, 
 and his arm-bones are those of a hunter rather than of 
 a man familiar with steady manual labour. This body 
 lay extended in an easy position, as if, says its dis- 
 coverer, he had died in his sleep. There is no evidence 
 of violent death, though he may have died from the 
 effects of a flesh or internal wound, not leaving traces 
 on the skeleton. He had evidently been buried by his 
 friends in a cave previously used as a habitation, and 
 afterwards occupied for a long time in the same way. 
 
 As interpreted by American usages, the interment 
 may be explained thus. A war-party returning from 
 an unsuccessful expedition into France or Italy, halted 
 
300 
 
 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 at the caves of Mentone; and here a wounded man, 
 whom they had been carrying with them, expired, and 
 was hastily buried in the cave, perhaps in the hope 
 that they might be able to return at some future time 
 and convey the bones to the tomb of his fathers. They 
 laid a few stones around the body of the dead, as a 
 substitute for the cromlech, or funeral cyst, and buried 
 him with an ornamented helmet of shell on his head, 
 shell armlets and anklets, and his robes of fur wrapped 
 around him. His arms had probably been left on the 
 field of battle, and there were no spoils to bury with 
 him. The only thing they possessed, or which the 
 neighbourhood afforded, to promote his welfare in the 
 land of spirits, was a little iron oxide, carried with them 
 to be ground into war paint. With this they, no doubt, 
 painted his face ; but they appear to have sprinkled it 
 over him, and to have placed a little additional supply 
 in a hollow in front of his head, that he might appear 
 in his proper character in the spirit land. All this was 
 precisely what American Indians would do in a similar 
 case ; and perhaps his companions, before they sorrow- 
 fully departed, sang his death-song, and kindled over 
 his grave the fire of a funeral feast, as well to honour 
 his memory as to prevent pursuing foes from disturbing 
 his remains. The next occupants of the cave probably 
 knew nothing of the burial, and the friends of the dead 
 did not return to reclaim his remains ; so he lay un- 
 disturbed till disinterred by Dr. Riviere, and removed 
 to the Parisian Museum. 
 
 If, as there is every reason to believe, this is an 
 
THE INSTINCT OP IMMORTALITY. 301 
 
 interment of the oldest Palaeolithic or " Mammoth M 
 Age, the antediluvian age of history, we learn from it 
 that the people of that age were of very high physical 
 organization, and very closely resembled the American 
 type ; and their manner of interment shows that they 
 shared with the Americans and with their successors 
 of the Reindeer Age a belief in a hereafter, along wiih 
 its accompanying regard for the proper interment of 
 the dead. 
 
 Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be 
 well to refer to the very small number of human re- 
 mains of the Palaeolithic Age found in Europe. Not 
 only have few burial-places been found, but those 
 discovered contain very few skeletons compared with 
 those found in American cemeteries and ossuaries. 
 This cannot be accounted for by supposing that the 
 dead were left unburied, since it is clear that in the case 
 of both the men of the Mammoth and Reindeer Ages 
 burial was practised, and this in the case of women 
 and children as well as men. It is, however, quite 
 possible that, like the Americans and Papuans, they 
 may have ordinarily placed their dead on wooden stages 
 or in shallow graves covered with wood and bark, and 
 that the cave interments may be exceptional. If not, 
 then it is evident either that these primaeval tribes, were 
 sparsely scattered over the country and very small, or 
 that the period of their occupancy was very limited. 
 
 It is also worthy of remark that the different kinds 
 of burial, as in the earth or on stages, in the sitting 
 posture or extended, in caves, in ossuaries, or under 
 
302 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 tumuli, and also cremation, have their representatives 
 on both sides of the Atlantic. What may be called 
 the house-tomb, representing the habitation of the 
 deceased person when in life, is world-wide in its ex- 
 tension. It is seen in the lodge of the western Indian 
 or the winter-house of the Esquimaux closed up and 
 converted into a sepulchre, in the gallery graves, 
 dolmens and chambered barrows of Europe, and in the 
 rock-cut tombs of Etruria, Egypt, and the East, and 
 the chamber-tombs of Peru. In all cases it points to 
 the idea of a house of the dead corresponding to that 
 of the living, and has no obscure connection with the 
 belief in a resurrection of the body. The tumulus, in 
 every style, from the little grave-mound of a country 
 churchyard, or of an ordinary Indian burial-place, to 
 the ossuaries of the Hurons, the huge mounds of the 
 Ohio, the barrows of Europe and Asia, and the pyra- 
 mids of Egypt, which are merely great stone tumuli, 
 is common to the most varied tribes, and in its grander 
 forms is a regal tomb, equally in America and the 
 Old World. The descriptions of such burials in Homer, 
 probably refer to customs of extreme antiquity even 
 in his days, and they are obviously identical with 
 those of the more civilized tribes of America. The 
 body laid on the pyre and buried with precious offer- 
 ings and with animal sacrifices, and the whole covered 
 with a lofty mound of heaped-up earth, not forgetting 
 the war-dance around the pyre and the funeral feast, 
 are all equally applicable to the Alleghans and other 
 tribes of America, tc whom the Homeric song of the 
 
TITE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 303 
 
 burial of Hector or Patroelus would be as intelligible 
 as the death-song of one of their own warriors. 
 
 What shall we say, then, of this instinct of immor- 
 tality, handed down through all the generations of 
 pre-historic and savage men, and prompting to costly 
 funeral rites ? Is it a mere fancy, a baseless super- 
 stition ? Is it not rather a god-given feature of a 
 spiritual nature yearning after a lost earthly immor- 
 tality, and clinging to the hope of a better being in a 
 future life? And is it not, after all, inseparable from 
 the belief in a God, whose children we are, and who 
 can transfer us from this lower sphere to better man- 
 sions in His own heavenly home? Is the " Monist" 
 or Materialist who looks with indifference on death as 
 the close of certain physical changes and nothing more, 
 or who shrinks from it as a hopeless annihilation, on 
 any higher mental or moral platform than the savage 
 who departs chanting his death-song and looking 
 forward to meeting with the shades of his fathers in 
 the happy hunting-grounds ? Is he not rather on a 
 level with those more degraded savage tribes, if there 
 are such, who have lost the pre-historic faith without 
 receiving anything better, and who regard the future 
 either as a mere blank or as an unknown and terrible 
 mystery ? How much happier than either are those 
 on whose last days shines the brighter hope of the 
 light and immortality revealed by the Gospel ! 
 
 In the present state of religious opinion among our- 
 selves, and in view of the strange and absurd logo- 
 machies which have raged as to the doctrine of a 
 
304 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 future life in the Old Testament, it may be necessary 
 to refer to the actual connection between the doctrines 
 of the Holy Scriptures and the instinct of immortality 
 referred to in the preceding pages. In Genesis man 
 appears at first as endowed with an immortality both 
 physical and spiritual. This tradition of primitive 
 immortality, and the instinctive longing for an im- 
 mortal life implied in it, the Christian should hold as 
 not a possession of the Hebrews only, but of the whole 
 human race ; and it should be, as it is, next to the 
 belief in God, the second great doctrine of universal 
 religion. The promise of a Redeemer to restore the 
 immortality lost by the fall, is the next doctrine of the 
 revealed religion, and, as we have seen, this also is 
 embodied in all the creeds of the nations, though in 
 strangely distorted forms. The translation of Enoch 
 in antediluvian times is another primitive testimony 
 of the Old Testament, which, if we regard it as an 
 historical fact, must have served to deepen the belief 
 in the future life both of body and soul. It is to be 
 observed that all these primitive testimonies go to 
 establish not only the immortality of the soul, but also 
 of the body ; that is, the doctrine of the resurrection. 
 It is clear, therefore, that these doctrines lie at the 
 base of the religion of the Old Testament, and that 
 without them it would be nothing. If they are not 
 often dwelt upon in the Hebrew Scriptures, this is 
 because they were not doubted or disbelieved even by 
 the heathen, and because there was more need to in- 
 sist on the immediate beliefs and duties of life. 
 
THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 305 
 
 At the same time, in the ancient Hebrew Church, 
 and still more among the heathen, much obscurity 
 hung over the immediate future of the human soul. 
 Death was ever a patent fact, and what the state of 
 the disembodied soul in " Sheol," and how or when it 
 would be reunited to a body, were not known to man. 
 Job might believe, notwithstanding the decay of his 
 body, that with his own eyes he would see God, but 
 this would be in the latter days. Martha might know 
 that her brother would rise again at the last day. This 
 was the common-sense faith of readers of the Old 
 Testament before the Christian era ; but it remained 
 for Jesus to raise the veil from the intermediate state, 
 and to bring "life and immortality to light. - " This 
 He does by His own teaching that the believer in Him 
 can " never die;" that is, that to him death is not 
 really death, but the entrance at once into a higher 
 and broader life in and with Christ, who is Himself 
 the " resurrection and the life;" by His declaration to 
 the thief on the cross, u To-day shalt thou be with Me 
 in Paradise;" and by His own personal resurrection 
 as the " first fruits of them that sleep." Thus to the 
 Christian, not only are the future life and the resurrec- 
 tion more sure and plain than they could be to the 
 Jew, but all the terrors of the intermediate state are 
 taken away — the soul unclothed by death is at once 
 " clothed upon," to be absent from the body is to be 
 "present with the Lord," to leave the earthly taber- 
 nacle is to enter a u mansion in the Father's house " 
 prepared by the risen Saviour. True it is that these 
 
 x 
 
306 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 doctrines are yet only partially received by many 
 calling themselves Christians; but surely happy are 
 they who believe, and whose lives are heightened and 
 ennobled by such belief. Yet it is well for them to 
 remember that, to some small extent, these beliefs 
 have been shared by the pious souls of all ages and 
 peoples, and that the existence of the belief in God 
 and immortality, even among the lowest races, is an 
 element of hope, as presenting some opening and 
 implying some capacity for higher truths. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 
 
 If any definite impression has been left on the mind 
 of the reader of the preceding chapters, it must have 
 been akin to that which fixed itself upon the wisest 
 of the Hebrews when he exclaimed, " The thing that 
 hath been is that which shall be, and that which 
 is done is that which shall be done, and there is 
 nothing new under the sun." This is in some re- 
 spects an unsatisfactory result, falling far short in its 
 sensational effect of the discovery of a new and extinct 
 species of man, or even of a very essential difference 
 in manners and habits of thought between the men 
 of hoar antiquity and those of to-day. Yet this con- 
 clusion, tame and prosaic though it may appear, opens 
 most important questions both as to the past and 
 future of our race, some of which we may profitably 
 discuss. 
 
 What is the ultimate meaning of that marvellous 
 resemblance which obtains between pre-historic and 
 modern men ? Does it point to a common origin 
 and historical affiliation of all races ? Is it the result 
 of some process of necessary evolution through which 
 every race must pass, as the individual man passes 
 through successive stages from infancy to maturity ? 
 
308 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Is it a consequence of a fixed instinct, like that of the 
 bee and beaver ? Is it merely the effect of the action 
 of similar powers and wants on similar resources ; or, 
 to put it in the other way, of similar surroundings on 
 tendencies and powers in the main similar ? 
 
 Yiews of one or other of these kinds have floated 
 before the minds of writers on the subject,, either 
 singly or in combination of two or more of them. 
 Nor are they inconsistent with one another. Primi- 
 tive instincts and tendencies implanted in man at the 
 first may have tended to develop themselves along 
 certain lines among all peoples, and the influence of 
 surrounding circumstances and means may have been 
 in the main similar, though with subordinate differ- 
 ences of detail. These have been the material or 
 terrestrial causes of the unity with diversity which 
 characterises our species, and to these we have only 
 to add such spiritual influences from without as may 
 have acted directly on man's soul either for good 
 or evil, and such new thoughts and purposes as may 
 have been struck out from the interaction of human 
 minds, or by the appearance of men of rare and ex- 
 ceptional powers. 
 
 Looking thus upon the current of human affairs, 
 two great truths are apparent. First, unicy of result 
 from the influence of all these complicated causes 
 upon human nature implies to the naturalist unity of 
 origin and genetic affiliation, just as surely as if the 
 perfect genealogical tree of the human race from its 
 origin were in our hands. Second, the earliest arts, 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 309 
 
 inventions, and beliefs of the race are those which 
 most determine its course in all time. In ever- 
 widening circles they may decay in power, or may be 
 crossed and affected by other ripples on the surface, 
 but they must proceed to its circumference in time 
 and space. With unity of origin and continuity of 
 descent, it is certain that modern men must be the 
 product of the original nature of man, with the effects 
 of all the causes acting on it from the first, and that 
 the earliest of these influences must be the most; potent 
 and the most widespread. 
 
 Any true science of man must therefore go back 
 to his origin, and trace out his primitive conditions 
 and their results, and our best means for doing this 
 are the remains of primitive men, and those less 
 modified races which still exist. It may depend on 
 our previous tendencies and the methods we pursue, 
 whether w r e find ourselves, with many modern inquirers, 
 brought back to the presence of a simian ancestor of 
 our race, destitute of nearly all that now characterizes 
 it, or to a perfect primeval man endowed by his Maker 
 with all those qualities which essentially distinguish 
 humanity. I propose in this concluding chapter to 
 show by American facts that the latter is the true 
 conclusion of archaeology, as it is of sacred history, 
 and in doing this I shall refer to some additional 
 points not previously mentioned, so as to give greater 
 interest to the discussion, and to notice shortly some 
 important facts relating to primitive man, which space 
 has not permitted us to consider in detail. 
 
310 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 It is a common popular statement, that the lan- 
 guages of the American continent are innumerable 
 and mutually unintelligible. In a very superficial 
 sense this is true ; but more profound investigation 
 shows that the languages of America are essentially 
 one. Their grammatical structure, while very com- 
 plex, is on the same general principles throughout. 
 But grammar is after all only the clothing of language. 
 Its essence consists in its root words, which bear a 
 definite relation to the mental habits and vocal organs 
 of the speaker, and very often equally definite relations 
 to the things spoken of. Now, multitudes of root 
 words are identical in the American languages over 
 vast areas, some of them with precisely the same 
 senses, and others with various shades of analogical 
 meaning. If we leave out of the account purely 
 imitative words, as those derived from the voices of 
 animals and from natural sounds, which necessarily 
 resemble each other everywhere, it will be found that 
 the most persistent words are those like "God/' 
 "house/' "man," which express objects or ideas of 
 constant recurrence in the speech of everyday life, 
 and which, in consequence, become most perfectly 
 stereotyped in the usage of rude peoples. Further, 
 a very slight acquaintance with these languages is 
 sufficient to show that they are connected with the 
 older languages of the Eastern continent by a great 
 variety of the more permanent root words, and with 
 some even in grammatical structure. So persistent 
 is this connection in time, that pages might be filled 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 311 
 
 with modern English, French, or German woids which 
 are allied to those of the Algonquin tribes, as well as 
 to the oldest tongues of Europe and the East. The 
 time is probably approaching when it will be admitted 
 that all languages are radically the same, and that 
 they all have their roots in those archaic forms of 
 speech to which we apply the term Turanian. Whence 
 this unity of language ? Can it have sprung from the 
 independent growth of thought and language in many 
 centres, or from the slow development of speech 
 through countless generations of semi-brutal and 
 semi-articulate men ? Does it not rather point to 
 the formation of language at no very distant date 
 chronologically, and among rational and thoughtful 
 beings, and also to a time when the earth was of 
 " one tongue and of one speech " ? 
 
 We have had frequent occasion to mention the 
 identity of implements and weapons in the Old World 
 and the New in pre-historic and modern times. This 
 may arise from the fact that in all countries the same 
 substances are in the main offered as the raw material 
 of human industry. Stone, clay, wood, bone, and 
 native metals have similar properties everywhere. 
 The sharp edges of flint chips, the toughness of green- 
 stone, the ductility of native gold and native copper, 
 commend themselves alike to the aboriginal artisan 
 in all countries. Rising a step beyond this, the 
 different specific gravities of different substances, 
 the leverage gained by handles, the use of elasticity 
 in urging projectiles, and other properties of bodies, 
 
312 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 might readily attract the attention of men everywhere. 
 Still further, the use and preparation of pigments and 
 dyes, of various kinds of medicinal herbs, of narcotics 
 and stimulants, of pyrite and flint and drills as means 
 of securing fire, are less obvious, but still not difficult 
 to be reached. The natural cave or leafy bower may 
 suggest a house or hut, and the means of constructing 
 it. The rudest savage may cross a river on a floating 
 log. Thought and invention lead him to hollow the 
 log into a canoe, or to construct a lighter and more 
 portable vessel of bark or hide, and in doing this he 
 has already mastered all the elements of the ship. 
 Clay may be moulded by a child into any form it 
 pleases; accident, observed and reasoned on, may 
 teach that it can be baked, and the art of the potter 
 arises. That such things have been done among all 
 races and in all times bespeaks not merely similar 
 resources, but the action on these of the same human 
 thought ; and also that this must have been active at 
 a time so early that similar arts have branched into 
 all races of men, yet so modern that the time is 
 historically recent when many aboriginal arts were 
 universally practised in their most primitive forms. 
 
 Indeed, when we consider the identity of the arts 
 of implement-making, fire-kindling, basket-making, 
 spinning and weaving, pottery, carving, and many 
 others; with special peculiarities, — as in the boomerang, 
 the ornamentation of vessels, the special patterns of 
 harpoons, — we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that 
 not only are all men of one origin, but that in early 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 313 
 
 antediluvian times there must have been a special 
 mental activity in the way of invention and discovery, 
 not surpassed in subsequent ages, and perhaps not 
 equalled until our modern days. With all this ac- 
 cumulated knowledge, man must have made his debut 
 in the early seats of post-diluvian population. 
 
 The tally as a means of recording numbers is found 
 on pre-historic human sites in Europe, though, as 
 already suggested, some supposed tallies may in reality 
 have been used in playing games. It is universal 
 among rude tribes, and occurs, to some extent, among 
 civilized nations. Man must have begun his existence 
 as an enumerator, and counting is a difficult matter, 
 especially where large numbers are concerned.* Fur- 
 ther, so soon as we begin to add and subtract, we 
 have launched ourselves on the boundless sea of 
 mathematics. So the tally, with its outgrowth of the 
 quipa, the wampum string, and the abacus or reckon- 
 ing frame, came into use to economize thought and 
 memory, and to preserve records of numbers. But 
 thought and memory must have already existed before 
 even the rudest tally could be of use. Catlin records, 
 in his notes on the American Indians, a curious illus- 
 tration of the failure of this primitive method, in the 
 case of two Indians from the western prairies, who, 
 being about to travel in the United States, undertook 
 to reckon up the lodges of the white man as they 
 
 • Custom makes us unfamiliar with the primary difficulty 
 of abstract numeration, which we perceive, however, in chil- 
 dren and in some low savage tribes, in whom disuse has im- 
 paired this faculty or prevented it from being developed. 
 
314 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 would have done those of the encampment of a neigh- 
 bouring tribe. They provided themselves with long 
 wands, and as they dropped down the Missouri, made 
 a notch for every house. The rods were soon filled, 
 and then they provided others ; but still the numbers 
 grew, and at length, when the steamer reached the 
 city of St. Louis, they threw their tallies into the river, 
 and gave up the hopeless attempt. The tally and its 
 analogues mark man as a reckoning animal with 
 mathematical possibilities, and while they take us 
 very near to the beginning of all things in this direc- 
 tion, they introduce us to a being so like ourselves, 
 that when we are required to reckon up any large 
 number, we are fain to have recourse to his primitive 
 expedient. Pre-historic and antediluvian genealogies 
 must have been kept on tallies akin in principle to 
 the knotted cords of the Peruvians; and it is not im- 
 possible that some of these may yet be recovered for 
 comparison with the numbers in Genesis which have 
 excited so much scepticism and controversy. We are 
 told that the Peruvians thus kept the reckoning of the 
 events of their lives, and their personal quipas were 
 buried with them ; and this even in the case of young 
 children, the events of whose lives might be repre- 
 sented by a very few knots. Careful -search should 
 be made in all repositories of the remains of pre- 
 historic men for records of this kind; and judging 
 from American analogies, it may be found that some 
 of the unintelligible marks on old stone monuments 
 are intended to denote dates and numbers. 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 315 
 
 One of the most remarkable of the links which bind 
 together all nations of men as of one blood, is the 
 method in which they reckon consanguinity and 
 descent. The truth is, that some of the rudest peoples 
 have more systematic methods of this kind than those 
 known to ourselves, and that these primitive products 
 of human thought and experience have been handed 
 down throusrh the channels of descent from the most 
 remote times. Morgan,* in his elaborate work on the 
 u Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human 
 Family/ 1 has shown that two distinct systems now 
 exist — the Descriptive, in which a few terms express- 
 ing primary relationships are combined so as to 
 express the more divergent and distant connections 
 till they disappear in nameless divergences ; and the 
 Classificatory, in which the divergent relationships 
 are brought back to the main line by classifying them 
 with the relationships most resembling them, as when 
 my brothers' sons, are called my sons instead of being, 
 as in the other mode, my nephews. 
 
 Between these two methods men have from a very 
 early age been divided. The Indo-European or Aryan 
 nations, the Semitic nations, and that portion of the 
 Turanian stock known as the Uralian, use the descrip- 
 tive mode. The whole of the peoples of Eastern Asia, 
 Polynesia, and America, use the classificatory mode ; 
 and as this is the mode of the most stationary and 
 unprogressive peoples, it is probable that it is the 
 primitive method, from which the more advanced 
 * " Smithsonian Contributions," vol. xvii. 
 
316 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 nations diverged into the descriptive system. In 
 illustration of this, I may state that while the reckon- 
 ing of consanguinity among the Greeks, Romans, and 
 Celts is the same with our own, that of the Tamil 
 races of India, the Chinese, and the Mongolians of 
 North Asia, is identical with that of the American 
 races. 
 
 Nothing can more distinctly mark a unity of origin 
 and descent than such facts as these ; but their sig- 
 nificance is far more profound than at first appears. 
 Morgan holds, as do also Lubbock and McLennan in 
 treating of this subject, that the classificatory mole 
 points back to a time when there was no institution 
 of marriage or family relationship. In this, however, 
 they go beyond the limits of fair deduction. The 
 reckoning of consanguinity in any form presupposes 
 the family relation, without which man would be in 
 this matter on a level with the lower animals, and it 
 can give no information as to any previous state in 
 which no family relation existed. Further, the help- 
 less condition and slow growth of the human infant, 
 physiologically imply that man is eminently a pairing 
 animal ; and thus even animal analogies preclude the 
 supposition that there ever was a time when marriage 
 did not exist. Where promiscuous intercourse, poly- 
 gamy, or polyandry occur, we have evidence of vicious 
 social inventions unsuited to the healthy continuance 
 of the race. 
 
 It is clear, however, that the classificatory system 
 points back to a time when there were no prohibited 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 317 
 
 degrees of relationship, and this accords with its high 
 antiquity ; for the origin of men from a single pair 
 implies in the earlier generations of mankind the 
 intermarriage of the nearest relatives. The Book of 
 Genesis, it is true, passes this over in silence, but we 
 can detect evidence in the marriages of Abraham and 
 the patriarchs, that even in their days the union of 
 near blood relations was considered proper ; and even 
 the Mosaic prohibitions were only written for the great 
 brotherhood of Israel, into which all Israelites were 
 supposed to marry. It is further undoubtedly implied 
 in the Old Testament history, that the classificatory 
 system of consanguinity was that of antediluvian times, 
 and perhaps continued in full force till the divergence 
 which is indicated in the story of the dispersion from 
 Babel. 
 
 As a special illustration of the primitive laws of con- 
 sanguinity in force among the Americans, we may take 
 those of the Iroquois as detailed by Morgan, and this 
 will introduce us to a new and curious parallelism with 
 the Old Testament. Among these people each nation 
 was divided into eight tribes, designated respectively 
 by the totems of the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, 
 Snipe, Heron, and Hawk. No member of any of 
 these tribes could marry within his or her tribe. The 
 husband or wife must in every case be from a tribe of 
 different name. Further, the tribal descent was in the 
 female line, the husband joining the tribe of his wife, 
 and the children being reckoned as of her tribe. All 
 the women of a tribe or family were thus nearly re- 
 
818 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 lated, while the men might be derived from different 
 tribes. It was consequently easy for large numbers of 
 families to live together in w long houses/' or in com- 
 munistic edifices, and to have all things in common, 
 for the women, on whom the domestic arrange- 
 ments devolved, were all relations, and had been 
 brought up together from infancy. The union of the 
 women in this way also gave them great power and 
 influence. These arrangements were widely spread, 
 probably almost universal, in primitive America, and 
 constitute the key to the social institutions of the 
 people as well as to their reckoning of consanguinity. 
 It will be found in detail in Morgan's book already 
 referred to; and Lahontan enters into a curious defence 
 of it in an imaginary dialogue with a Huron chief, who 
 contrasts most unfavourably the selfishness and avarice 
 which arose from the European arrangements, with 
 the morality of his own people. Had the Huron chief 
 been instructed in the Old Testament, he might have 
 strengthened his argument by a reference to the 
 saying there attributed to the first man : "Therefore 
 shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 
 cleave unto his wife/' which implies that the husband 
 goes with the wife rather than the wife with the 
 husband. If I am not mistaken, this also appears 
 in the negotiation of Eleazar for a wife for Isaac, and 
 in the claim of Laban that Jacob should remain in 
 his tribe as having married his daughters. It is pro- 
 bable that this primitive relation of the sexes was 
 before our Lord's mind when He quoted this passage 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 319 
 
 in opposition to the Jewish practice of divorce, with 
 the comment, " From the beginning it was not so." 
 This is not the only instance in which we have seen 
 archaic customs recorded in the Book of Genesis crop- 
 ping up in our investigations of pre-historic men, and 
 vindicating the statement that from the beginning 
 ma was the same thinking and organizing being that 
 he still is. Perhaps some social reformers of our 
 own day might be more successful if, instead of look- 
 ing back to dreary ages of barbarism, out of which 
 we are supposed to have emerged, they could refer to 
 a " beginning w in which, if simpler, men were wiser 
 than they are now. If they will not go back as far 
 as Adam and paradise, it might even be profitable to 
 study the classificatory relationships of the old Turan- 
 ians and the tribal communism of the American 
 Indians, as the only possible kinds of community of 
 goods in the present imperfect condition of human 
 nature, and as having been successful even in the 
 great communistic tribes of the Pueblo Indians and 
 ancient Toltecans and Mexicans, to which I referred in 
 a previous chapter. 
 
 In his recently published " Etruscan Researches," 
 Isaac Taylor has arrived by other routes at many of 
 the conclusions sketched in this chapter. He regards 
 with much reason the ancient Etruscans as a Turanian 
 people, either aborigines of Italy or migrants into it 
 in pre-historic times, or partly of both origins. He 
 shows that among them descent was in the female 
 line, as among the Americans and Old World Tura- 
 
320 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 mans, and that it is probable that " exogamy/' or the 
 marriage of women with husbands of other tribes 
 prevailed among them. Following other writers 
 above referred to, however, he falls into * the error of 
 tracing these customs to a supposed primitive period 
 of promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. He further 
 shows that the Etruscans, as tomb-builders, as be- 
 lievers in the immortality of the soul, and in manitous 
 or spirits, and in having medicine-men, or shamans, 
 rather than priests, were essentially Turanian and 
 American. Much that he says of the tombs of the 
 Etruscans is perfectly applicable to those of the Peru- 
 vians and of the Alleghans, and the relations which 
 he traces between the funeral rites and sepulchres of 
 these more civilized nations and the ruder Ugrian 
 tribes of Europe and Asia are precisely parallel to the 
 similar relations of the more cultivated and ruder 
 nations in America. The words in which he sums up 
 his conclusions on these points deserve quotation here, 
 as most significant with reference to our present pur- 
 pose. " The vast and numerous monuments which 
 constitute the tombs of this (the Turanian) race can 
 always be recognised ; they exhibit a most remarkable 
 and most significant unity of design and purpose. 
 These tombs are all developments of one hereditary 
 type ; they are all the expressions of one hereditary 
 belief, and they all serve the purposes of one great 
 hereditary cultus. The type on which they are 
 modelled is the house. The belief which they express 
 is the fundamental truth which has been the great 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 321 
 
 contribution of the Turanian race to the religious 
 thought of the world — the belief in the deathlessness 
 of souls. The cultus which they serve is the worship 
 of the spirits of ancestors, which is the Turanian 
 religion. The creed of the Turanians was Animism. 
 They believed that everything animate or inanimate 
 had its soul or spirit ; that the spirits of the dead 
 could still make use of the spirits of the weapons, orna- 
 ments, and utensils they had used in life, and could be 
 served by the spirits of their slaves, their horses, and 
 their dogs, and needed for their support the spirits of 
 those articles of food on which they had been used to 
 feed." Hence, he goes on to say, we find in their 
 tombs the warrior with his weapons, the woman with 
 her domestic utensils, the child with the faithful dog 
 to guide it to the better land, and the tomb in all 
 respects the counterpart of the house, only more 
 durable and costly. Nor can we fail to see in the 
 Animism of the Turanians and Americans the rem- 
 nants of a rooted belief in a spiritual intelligence 
 above man. In the Hebrew Scriptures the Spirit of 
 God moving upon the face of the waters is the initial 
 step in evolving order out of chaos, light out of 
 darkness, life out of the inanimate. Hence the 
 Hebrew not only recognised the Divine Spirit as a 
 light of his own soul and the origin of the inspira- 
 tion of prophets, but as shining in the sun, glowing 
 in the flowers, singing in the birds, rustling in the 
 wind. To him all nature, the whole cosmos, was the 
 product of the one Spirit. So it should be to us also 
 
822 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 in the Christian dispensation ; and in so holding, 
 though we rise above the primeval Animism, we justify 
 it as at least a low and childlike way of recognising 
 the one God, just as the funeral gifts buried with the 
 dead constitute a simple testimony to the belief in the 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 We have passed from the tribal communism and 
 the descent in the female line to the doctrine of 
 immortality, but not unintentionally. Just as we 
 find these things united in that old primitive race, 
 whose fragments exist everywhere over the world, so 
 do we find them in our oldest written history. The 
 God-given woman, the man leaving father and mother 
 and cleaving to his wife, the lost immortality by the 
 woman's means, and its destined recovery by her 
 seed, are no less familiar doctrines to every Sunday- 
 school child among us than they are ingredients in 
 the creeds of all primitive peoples, from the days of 
 the pre-historic cave-dwellers until now. Are they 
 not landmarks of some importance in connection with 
 all inquiries as to the origin and unity of our species ? 
 
 Pre-historic and other ancient men, both in the Old 
 and New World, must have had poetical tendencies, 
 leading them to attribute their own views and feelings 
 to natural objects. We read this even in their carved 
 implements and ornaments ; and the same mythical 
 and poetical representation of nature which we see in 
 the most ancient poetry is still extant among the 
 ruder races. Multitudes of poetical tales and legends 
 have been written down from the lips of old Indian 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 323 
 
 men and women. As a specimen, I may mention an 
 unpublished myth collected by Mr. Band among the 
 Micmacs. It is a story of the adventures of the 
 " Rushing Wind and Rolling Wave/' personified as 
 young men who set out on their travels, and who pass 
 through many adventures, all more or less related to 
 their proper characters. They combine to overthrow 
 the cabins of a village that they may enjoy the con- 
 fusion of the inmates. They go on a hunting expedi- 
 tion, and drive before them multitudes of birds and 
 fish, and they throw down trees to kill the deer and 
 other wild animals of the forest. Finally, after roving 
 around the world and working much mischief and 
 some good on land and sea, they are married to two 
 lovely girls, named respectively the Calm and the 
 Sea- foam, and by these their rude energies are sub- 
 dued, so that always the storm and the calm alternate 
 with each other, and waves rage only for a time, and 
 then subside in stillness and creamy foam. Such 
 plays of fancy are obviously the rudiments of true 
 poetic myths, and would require only the knowledge 
 of letters to be developed into poetry like that which 
 comes down to us from ancient India and Greece. 
 
 As a specimen of a lighter style, I may give from 
 Schoolcraft the Song of the Frog in Spring, when it 
 awakes from its winter torpor and complains in its shrill 
 and monotonous evening songs of the long oppres- 
 sion of the frost and snow. Every one who has listened 
 to the batrachian chorus which in a spring evening 
 in America issues from every swamp and pond, can 
 
324 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 appreciate the natural fact to which it relates. The ver- 
 bal parallelism in this little piece is as characteristic 
 of American song as of that of the early East. 
 
 Song of the Okogis. 
 
 See how the white spirit presses us, 
 Presses us, — presses us, heavy and long, 
 Presses us down to the frost-bitten earth. 
 Alas ! ye are heavy, ye spirits so white ; 
 Alas ! ye are cold — ye are cold — ye are cold. 
 Ah! cease, shining spirits that fall from the skies, 
 Ah ! cease so to crush us and keep us in dread ; 
 Ah ! when will you vanish and spring-time return ? 
 
 The names of the constellations come down to us 
 from the most remote antiquity, modified by Greek 
 myths, but not of Greek origin ; and they testify both 
 to that tendency to transfer our own thoughts to the 
 universe around us to which I have already referred, 
 and to the application of the totemic system of 
 emblems to the heavenly bodies. It is, therefore, not 
 wonderful that the Americans should, like the men 
 of the East in the days of Job, have names and sym- 
 bols for those most important in their relations to 
 man, but it is a more striking and significant fact that 
 these apparently arbitrary names should be the same 
 with those of the Old World. It is still more curious 
 that they should in some cases serve to supplement 
 and illustrate the application of these names. The 
 Great Bear, from its prominence in the northern sky 
 and its connection with the pole-star — " the star that 
 does not move " — of the Americans, is as likely as 
 any other to have had its name handed down from age 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 325 
 
 to age. Accordingly, it is named the Bear among the 
 Algonquin tribes. The Greek fable explains the name 
 by the story of Callisto, one of the attendants of 
 Artemis, who is the equivalent of Atahensic, the first 
 mother. Through the jealousy of Juno, Callisto is 
 changed into a she-bear, and Zeus, fearful that the 
 hunters would destroy her, transferred her to the 
 heavens as the magnificent constellation still named 
 the Great Bear. Whatever the origin of the story, it 
 has a very archaic aspect. The Greek Bear, however, 
 comes down to us without the hunters, and conse- 
 quently, in our maps of the stars, it is furnished with 
 a preternaturally long tail, which has apparently led 
 to other names being given to it. The Micmacs, 
 however, who call it the bear (Motrin), name the stars 
 of the tail the three hunters, and these have as their 
 totemic names, Pules (the pigeon), Ghigogech (the tit- 
 mouse), and GhijpcJbaivitch (the robin) ; all of which, 
 by the way, are onomatopcetic, and recall similar 
 names in more familiar tongues. A small star near 
 one of the hunters is the Kettle which he carries, and 
 Berenice's Hair is the Bear's Den. We can scarcely 
 doubt that this myth and its astronomical application 
 belong to a time when the root-stocks of the Hellenic 
 or Pelasgic populations were still one with those of 
 the Algonquins, that the importance of the Great Bear 
 as a mark in the sky has caused its name to be per- 
 petuated, and that among the Americans the tradition 
 survives in a more complete and less corrupt form 
 than among ourselves. 
 
326 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 It seems a general fact that primitive men have 
 traditions of giants and dwarfs of the olden time. 
 Our own ancestors believed in Iotuns, huge and ter- 
 rible, and in elves and fairies ; and we still have in 
 our sacred writings the Nephilim of antediluvian times, 
 and in our literature the Titans of classical mythology. 
 So the old Micmacs of Nova Scotia and their relatives 
 of the Algonquin race had Kukwes, or gigantes — men 
 in form but immense in stature, gifted with magical 
 power, cannibals, and associated in their minds with 
 the power of the frost and ice — veritable Iotuns or 
 Titans, and with stories connected with them in every 
 way comparable with those in our own folk-lore. They 
 had also little people, or fairies, with the same attri- 
 butes with those of our nursery tales ; and Kitpoos, or 
 Gepuchican, was their Puck, or Gobelin, of whom the 
 most strange and romantic stories are told. He is 
 a giant-killer, and represents the victory of intellect 
 and cunning over brute force without intelligence, as 
 embodied in the giants, I have before me many 
 genuine Indian tales relating to these beings, but it 
 would be tedious to reproduce them here. The main 
 questions are as to the origin of such stories and the 
 reason of their general diffusion. The only satisfactory 
 explanation is, that they are based in some way on 
 historical facts. Nilsson has conclusively shown that 
 the giants and skrelings of the northern sagas repre- 
 sent respectively the Scandinavian and Finnish races, 
 as contesting in early times the possession of Scan- 
 dinavia, though the names may refer to still older facts 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 327 
 
 than these. It is no longer possible to smile at the 
 antediluvian giants of Genesis, since we now know 
 from actual remains that the earliest race disinterred 
 from caves in the Old World was of gigantic physical 
 power, and that this was succeeded by a feebler race, 
 who must, locally at least, have been contemporary 
 with, the other. Here we have undoubtedly the primi- 
 tive historical truth that includes all these traditions, 
 which, though coloured by the fancies of different 
 races of men, are essentially the same all over the 
 world. 
 
 The traditions of our race point back to golden 
 days of simplicity and innocence. They tell of retro- 
 gression rather than of improvement, and attribute 
 the advance in the arts and the elevation of the race 
 to great heroes of the times of old. Is there a basis 
 of archaeological and historical truth for this ? 
 
 The first answer to the question is an obvious one. 
 Man must have originated in a mild climate, and must 
 primarily have been a gatherer of the fruits of the 
 earth. Even though the oldest remains of men ever 
 found should be those of rude hunters living in cold 
 climates, it will still remain an irrefragable physio- 
 logical deduction from the structure of the human 
 frame, that this could not have been the earliest con- 
 dition of man. This accords with the American facts, 
 which show that, leaving out the irruptions of rude 
 races from Northern Asia, the primitive peoples existed 
 in the fertile plains of the south, and lived on the 
 produce of the soil. Let it be observed, also, that this 
 
328 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 is in the main the condition of the Australasian and 
 Polynesian peoples, and of the primitive men of South- 
 eastern Asia, the most isolated and least modified of 
 men next to the Americans. It follows that the first 
 industry must have been agriculture, or more probably 
 horticulture; for, as in America and Polynesia, the 
 tillage of the soil by man probably began ages before 
 he had any domestic animals to aid him. Without 
 realizing this, and picturing to ourselves the condition 
 of the primitive populations, tilling the ground with 
 rude implements and human toil alone, and with little 
 agricultural skill, we cannot fully sympathize with that 
 wail of the patriarch Lamech, which comes to us over 
 the ages, when he named his son Noah — rest — saying : 
 "This same shall comfort us concerning our work 
 and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the 
 Lord hath cursed." Even in his time the earth was 
 yielding her riches in too niggard a manner for the 
 increasing multitudes of men, and the violence born 
 of selfishness was making life still more hard and 
 dangerous. He could look back to an Edenic age, 
 when the land was not cursed ; he could look forward 
 to a reformer and improver to come, and his lamenta- 
 tion and his hope recorded in these archaic stories of 
 Genesis have their parallel in the difficulties and hopes 
 of every generation of men. 
 
 The invention of fire and the use of clothing, both 
 of the most remote antiquity in the history of our 
 race, enabled men to subsist in the less genial cli- 
 mates ; and tradition concurs with sacred history 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 320 
 
 in affirming that lawlessness and violence, arising 
 perhaps in the first instance from struggles for fertile 
 portions of land, broke up the original unity of man- 
 kind and produced migrations and the separation of 
 rude and more polished races, which have ever since 
 continued. On the one hand, these movements and 
 contests have been fertile sources of degradation and 
 retrogression. On the other, they have stimulated the 
 energies of men, and have tended to bring to the 
 surface the more vigorous races. 
 
 Here arises an inquiry of the highest importance. 
 How has it happened that the majority of men have 
 continued for ages in a stationary condition ? How, 
 on the other hand, has the higher culture, and 
 especially that which we call Aryan and Semitic, 
 grown out of the archaic dead level of the old Turanian 
 stock, whether agricultural or merely in the hunter 
 and fisher condition ? On the one hand, we have a 
 picture of stagnation and fixity ; on the other, of 
 marvellous advance. 
 
 It cannot be denied that pre-historic men were, in 
 bodily vigour, in volume of brain, in skill of manipu- 
 lation, on a level with their modern successors ; and 
 even in their ruder tribes they must have had their 
 senses and perceptive powers sharpened to a high 
 degree of perfection by the constant struggle for food, 
 or against enemies and wild animals ; while their 
 implements and ornaments show patient industry and 
 much taste and skill. Thus gifted, we would naturally 
 suppose that primitive man would speedily rise to a 
 
300 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 higher state. Yet the opposite of this is so notoriously 
 the case, that it has been a matter of keen controversy 
 whether the inferior races can raise themselves to 
 any higher condition, or tend to do so in even a very 
 slight degree. The Bashkirs of the Ural are said to 
 be at this day in precisely the condition in which their 
 ancestors were found by Herodotus, 2,300 years ago. 
 The negro and Arab tribes are as nearly as possible in 
 the same state in which they were in the times of the 
 Pharaohs. There is no reason to believe that the Aus- 
 tralians, Polynesians, or Americans, if undiscovered by 
 Europeans, would have been in a more civilized con- 
 dition a thousand years hence than they were when first 
 made known to the rest of the world. Why is this ? 
 
 One reason is, that it is so much more easy to 
 imitate than to invent. Only the more rare and ex- 
 ceptional minds can strike out new paths. Another 
 is, that the rude man has few wants, and these few 
 can be supplied by the means he already has. A 
 third is, that after he has developed to their full extent 
 a certain number of industries, he can get no further 
 without some large and difficult step, as, for example, 
 the reduction and working of metals, or the intro- 
 duction of materials from distant parts of the world. 
 Again, such large steps may be made by accident, as 
 we say, or, in other words, the active mind may meet 
 only at rare intervals with those combinations of 
 causes which lead to invention or discovery. Native 
 gold and copper found in river gravels were, no doubt, 
 the first metals known. Gold is the earliest men- 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 331 
 
 tioned in Genesis. Meteoric iron, a literally heaven- 
 descended gift, first made man acquainted with that 
 metal ; but the step from the native iron to the richer 
 ores resembling it somewhat in aspect, was so long 
 and difficult, that it is likely a vast lapse of time inter- 
 vened before it was made. Some old metallurgist 
 working in a region like Cornwall, where the ores of 
 copper and tin occur together, mixed them and pro- 
 duced bronze, just as the Chinese are said to have 
 originated nickel silver by smelting mixed ores con- 
 taining copper, zinc, and nickel. It follows, from 
 these considerations, that after the invention of a few 
 arts, indefinite periods of stagnation might ensue, and 
 the same arts and customs might be stereotyped for 
 many generations. It follows also that these arts 
 and customs might be propagated among numerous 
 nations and tribes without material modification ; 
 everywhere, as we have seen, bearing evidence at once 
 of the unity of man and of his comparatively short 
 residence on the earth. 
 
 If we ask how an impetus is to be given to human- 
 ity, so that change and movement shall occur, history 
 gives us two answers only, and these closely allied to 
 each other. One of these we obtain in a very definite 
 form in sacred history, which we are sometimes apt to 
 forget represents primitive man, while innocent and 
 happy, as destitute of even the rudiments of material 
 civilization. Its story is, that certain gifted men, in 
 a very primitive age, made the great discoveries on 
 which material progress has ever since been based. 
 
332 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 Tubal-cain, the first metallurgist, Jubal, the first 
 musician, and Jabal, who first exchanged the cavern 
 or the wooden hut for the skin tent of the nomad, and 
 tamed the larger beasts of burden, these were heroes 
 of old, men to be deified by succeeding ages. Under 
 various names, and with various attributes, these and 
 other great inventors are to be found in all the myth- 
 ologies of the Old World, and to this America adds 
 its testimony. Every American nation has its great 
 demi-god or hero, to whom it ascribes the origin of the 
 arts of life. Manco Capac of Peru, and Qetzalcoatl 
 of Mexico, are familiar to all readers of American 
 history, and Hiawatha, of the Iroquois, is but the same 
 personage known under different names among all 
 the American tribes. Among the Micmacs of Nova 
 Scotia he is Glooscap, a benevolent giant and wonder- 
 worker, who dwelt apart, but was always near and 
 accessible to those who sought his aid. He taught 
 them the arts they knew, had marvellous influence 
 over all living things, used the wild animals as mes- 
 sengers, and rode over the sea on whales. Great 
 rocks and hills represent his kettles and his wigwams, 
 and the bones which geologists call those of the mas- 
 todon, belong to the gigantic beaver which he hunted. 
 He has been driven from the earth in disgust by the 
 wholesale destruction of wild animals, and the mar- 
 ring of the face of nature by the settlements of the 
 whites, but one day he will return to his people and 
 redeem them from their sins and evils, and restore 
 them to welfare and happiness. 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 333 
 
 The second answer is that which we receive from 
 the later ages. It relates the advent of more civilized 
 strangers, who taught the rude nations what they 
 themselves knew. Perhaps this is implied in the 
 story of the Peruvian Manco Capac, child of the sun. 
 The savage aborigines of Greece were visited by 
 Phoenician traders, and soon themselves learned to 
 voyage to the East and bring home its stores of know- 
 ledge. Our own Celtic aborigines were indebted first 
 to the Phoenician traders visiting the tin islands, next 
 to the intercourse with Gaul, and then to the Romans, 
 for their early lessons in civilization. The missionary 
 of new things may come as an invading soldier, or in 
 the guise of a trader, of a shipwrecked mariner, or 
 of a self-denying and laborious teacher; but he must 
 come in order that humanity may awake from the 
 stagnation of semi-barbarism. These two answers are 
 mutually related. The primary stimulus must arise 
 from a God-given genius, or a heavenly baptism of the 
 life-giving Spirit, and when this is given it may pro- 
 pagate itself from nation to nation by human agency ; 
 but thus far the stagnant water of humanity has far 
 exceeded its living and fertilizing streams. 
 
 More especially we see these principles in the 
 divergence of the two great Aryan or Japetic and 
 Semitic branches from the old Turanian stock. The 
 motto of the .Japetic race has been enlargement and 
 dispersion, with the eager quest of things new and 
 strange. The Semitic motto has been to retain the 
 old landmarks and cultivate the old ground up to its 
 
334 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 highest point of productiveness. The first impulse in 
 these directions must have been given by great minds 
 in pre-historic times — probably by minds which, if 
 contemporary, were violently antagonistic to each 
 other, and. may have rent asunder the old. primitive 
 patriarchal communism by their struggles. Out of 
 this Babel God has worked His own plans, giving to 
 the Semitic culture the higher revelations of His 
 spiritual nature, and. to the Japetic culture the higher 
 control of physical forces and. the greater power of 
 expansion and of propagandism ; while among the 
 Turanians, the old primitive instincts and habits of 
 pre-historic men have crystallized themselves into 
 fossils, or have been weathered away and disintegrated 
 into barbarism. " God shall enlarge Japhet, and he 
 shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan" (the 
 representative here of unprogressive humanity) u shall 
 be his servant." 
 
 We are now prepared to give, by the help of our 
 American analogies, a common-sense answer to the 
 much-agitated question of the primitive barbarism of 
 man and the origin of civilization. Sacred history 
 and the materialistic archasology of the day concur in 
 the belief that man at first was destitute of the arts. 
 But from this point they diverge. The former teaches 
 that man without arts was pure and holy, and in 
 unison with his Maker, and that, falling from this 
 condition, one part of mankind simply sunk into bar- 
 barism, the other grasped at arts and civilization, 
 introduced by great inventors, as a substitute for or iv 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 335 
 
 connection with a higher spiritual life. These several 
 portions have been acting and re-acting on each 
 other ever since, and also have been acted on by the 
 remnants of primitive religion and by new influences 
 emanating from God. The latter, knowing no God 
 and no spiritual nature in man, supposes him at first a 
 mere animal in whom the life of intellect and of higher 
 tastes and feelings has been struck out by physical 
 causes acting on his organism. There can, I think, 
 be no hesitation in affirming that our old Biblical 
 doctrine is the more complete and scientific of the 
 two, and also that which is most in accord with the 
 evidence of history and archaeology; while even the 
 " Animism" of pre-historic peoples may claim kinship 
 with some of the higher doctrines of spiritual religion, 
 and so also may the " Shamanism M of the ancient 
 Turanians and Americans, and of which we find traces 
 even in Palaaocosmic men. 
 
 Among the American tribes, except perhaps some 
 of the more civilized and advanced communities, no 
 distinct system of priesthood had been developed. 
 In this they resembled the men of those patriarchal 
 times in which the kingly and priestly functions were 
 conjoined, and were exercised by persons of great age 
 or of high and recognised gifts. The "ancients" 
 were the authorities in all religious and ceremonial 
 matters. The professed medicine-men, or jugglers, or 
 prophets, rested their claims on a totally different 
 basis from that of priestly caste or appointment. By 
 long fasts and urgent invocations, they had acquired 
 
336 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 such intercouse with a beneficent genius or demon, 
 that through his means they could give information 
 as to what was passing at a distance or would happen 
 in the future, discover the sources and cure of diseases, 
 advise in all difficulties, interpret dreams, and secure 
 the Divine favour for all enterprises. They were in 
 the habit of steaming themselves in a vapour bath and 
 working themselves up into a frenzy before deliver- 
 ing their predictions, which were sometimes given in 
 song. So correct, occasionally, were their anticipa- 
 tions, that the French missionaries believed that they 
 were actually inspired by the Evil One. They had, 
 however, no political status or authority, and practi- 
 cally their chief function was that of physicians and 
 diviners. The better to aid in these functions, they 
 were not only collectors of herbs and simples, but of 
 any object of a strange, abnormal, or curious character 
 that came into the possession of the tribe, so that 
 the cabin of the " medicine- man M might be a sort of 
 museum of things rare and curious, or believed to 
 have some mystic powers. It is very probable that 
 the Silurian fossils and grotesquely shaped or sculp- 
 tured stones found on aboriginal Canadian sites have 
 been part of the apparatus or collections of these 
 jugglers ; and there is reason to suspect that a similar 
 explanation may be given of some anomalous objects 
 found in pre-historic repositories in Europe, as well as 
 of some of the fossils found in such places. To this 
 origin should probably be referred some at least of 
 the carved bones and antlers called by the French 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 337 
 
 antiquaries, "Batons of command." Such objects 
 might have been the horns which conjurors wore on 
 the head or attached to their rods or staffs, or which 
 formed part of the rattles or drums which were used in 
 ceremonies. All these functions constitute what has 
 been termed " shamanism ■* among the Mongol tribes \ 
 and it has been recently shown by Taylor that the 
 same system prevailed in Etruria, and was the origin 
 of the Roman augury. It was in full force among 
 the Canaanites and other ancient peoples mentioned in 
 the Pentateuch ; and Balaam, as presented to us there, 
 is evidently only a superior sort of medicine-man. 
 
 Here, again, we have an ancient and universal 
 instinct of humanity ; and, however corrupted, we 
 may recognise under it a great and Divine truth — that 
 of the possibility of revelation of the will of God to 
 man — an instinct capable of the noblest elevation and 
 also of being the subject of the vilest corruptions and 
 impostures. It marks out man as a being from the 
 first not content to be the sport of mere inanimate 
 forces, and so rising to the conception of a divinity. 
 It shows him also as feeling in danger, sickness, 
 bereavement, and approaching death, the need of aid 
 from above, the presence of a God who could succour 
 him, the yearning that God would abide with him and 
 bless him. Let me add, that as an original and God- 
 given gift, this universal religious instinct, and its sur- 
 vival among even the most depraved peoples, explains 
 the universal adaptation of the Christian religion to 
 the wants of man. Paul perceived that the Athenians 
 
 z 
 
338 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 were " very religious " because they had an altar to 
 the unknown God; and so in every human heart 
 there is an altar to God as known or unknown, as 
 a father and a friend, or as an equitable ruler. So 
 the missionary can nod everywhere some response to 
 the proclamation of Christ, the substitute of sinful 
 man, the Revealer of the will of God, and to the doc- 
 trine of the Divine Spirit, the Comforter, dwelling in 
 and renovating the human soul. Let us not despise 
 this precious testimony to God written by Himself in 
 the heart of man, and let us endeavour to cultivate it 
 to its highest point of Christian spirituality, and to 
 rescue it from the scathing hand of superstition and 
 the frosty breath of materialism. 
 
 My object, as stated in the first chapter of this 
 work, has been to bring the testimony of facts relating 
 to the existing or recently extinct tribes of America, 
 to aid in correction and counteraction of the crude 
 views prevalent among European archaeologists as to 
 the origin and antiquity of the pre-historic men of the 
 caves, gravels, and peats of the Eastern continent. 
 The treatment of the subject has necessarily been 
 meagre and imperfect; but it will have served its 
 purpose if it has been suggestive of lines of thought 
 in harmony with higher views as to the origin and 
 destinies of men than those which spring from monistic 
 and materialistic hypotheses of the spontaneous evo- 
 lution of consciousness, reason, and morality from 
 merely animal instincts. Perhaps they may also serve 
 to widen our sympathies with the men of all times 
 
UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 339 
 
 and of all grades of practice and belief, and to show- 
 more clearly the underlying unity which subsists in 
 all the higher hopes and aspirations of humanity. 
 
 These considerations must constitute my justifica- 
 tion for entering into the subjects discussed in this and 
 the two preceding chapters. To examiue the relics of 
 fossil men, without regard to the evidence which they 
 afford of the higher aims and sentiments of human 
 nature, would surely be as unscientific and unprofit- 
 able as it would be to study the structures of fossil 
 shells and corals without considering their probable 
 conditions of existence and habits of life. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The subjects treated of in this work are so much discussed 
 and so rapidly changing in their scientific aspects, that while 
 the sheets were passing through the press many new points 
 have presented themselves. A few only of special interest, 
 more particularly with reference to American facts, will be 
 here noticed. 
 
 Address of Dr. Tylor. 
 Some of the latest aspects of the subject are presented in 
 Dr. Tylors able address before the Department of Anthropo- 
 logy of the British Association (August, 1879). He is struck, 
 in looking back, with the fact that many of the most important 
 causes of change in language, physical features and other 
 properties of man, must have done their chief work " in times 
 before history began." But history, as he understands it, 
 extends back only to the rise of the old Oriental monarchies, 
 say 2000 to 2500 B.C. He takes no note of antediluvian 
 history, though this is vouched for not only by the record of 
 Genesis, but now by the lately disinterred records of other 
 Eastern nations, as well as by almost universal tradition. 
 This antediluvian age, covering at least twenty centuries, 
 must on every account have been more fertile of change than 
 any following period of the same duration, and judging from 
 the state of the arts at the dawn of post-diluvian history, must 
 have been more fertile of invention and discovery than the 
 whole time that has since elapsed. The neglect of these facts, 
 as well as inattention to the geological evidence of abrupt 
 changes of the earth's surface, before and since the introduc- 
 tion of man, greatly influences much of the reasoning of 
 anthropologists. Tylor also directs attention to the fact, that 
 the swarthy Turanian races are the founders of civilization; 
 
APPENDIX. 3U 
 
 that while in most countries an age of stone preceded an age 
 of metal, this is by no means universal ; and that doctrines as 
 to nature-myths supposed to have given origin to religious 
 beliefs, have been pushed to a ridiculous extreme. 
 
 Measurements op Skulls. 
 
 From an interesting paper read before the French Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science, in 1878, I take the 
 following average measurements of skulls, given in cubic 
 centimetres : — 
 
 Pre-historic. 
 L' Homme Mort .... 1*606 
 Solute 1*560 
 
 Cro-magnon 1*650 
 
 Grenelle 1'530 
 
 Historic. 
 
 French (city of Paris) . . 1*558 
 
 German 1"521 
 
 Croats 1*499 
 
 Russians ]"471 
 
 Tchuchtchs 1*468 
 
 This high development of the brain in palaeocosmic men 
 justifies the remark of Tylor, that they may have fallen off 
 from a M higher ancestral state." 
 
 PRE- GLACIAL AND POST-GLACIAL MEN. 
 
 In a paper read before the Victoria Institute, Professor 
 Hughes disposes of the alleged cases of Pre-glacial men in 
 Europe; though, on grounds similar to those held by Sir C. 
 Lyell, he is still disposed to assign a high antiquity to even 
 Post-glacial man. He seems not to have been aware that 
 the supposed " wattle " found in the interglacial brown coal 
 of Diirnten, in Switzerland, has been shown by Steenstrup to 
 be probably the work of beavers ; nor does he notice the odd 
 theory of Gaudry, that the supposed Miocene flint implements 
 found in France may have been made by the extinct apes of 
 the genus Dryopithecus. In the proceedings of the same 
 society Mr. Southall has ably summed up the arguments 
 bearing against the great antiquity of even Post-glacial men. 
 The whole question of the glacial age in connection with 
 man, is involved in grave difficulties at present, owing to the 
 extreme doctrines as to continental glaciation now prevalent, 
 and against which the writer, as well as other geologists, 
 
342 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 have long contended. A short paper, by Feilden, in the Pro- 
 ceedings of the Koyal Dublin Society, reduces the solution 
 of these questions, and also the theory of interglacial periods, 
 into a nutshell, by directing attention to the comparatively 
 temperate climate of Grinnel Land in N. latitude 81° 40' to 
 83° 6' with the glaciation of Greenland "in the same parallel 
 of latitude, and on the opposite shore of a channel only twenty 
 miles across." In a paper in the Quarterly Journal of the 
 Geological Society, November, 1879, Professor Boyd Dawkins 
 details some interesting new explorations in Creswell caves. 
 Two deposits by water seem to have taken place in the caves 
 explored before the appearance of man, and two others subse- 
 quently. First, a bed of white calcareous sand without fossils. 
 Second, beds of red clay and ferruginous sand containing bones 
 of extinct Pleistocene mammalia, but no remains of man. 
 Third, a bed of red sand with bones of the mammoth, woolly 
 rhinoceros, horse and reindeer, and rude quartzite imple- 
 ments, with a hatchet of ironstone and " pot-boilers." Fourth, 
 breccia and upper cave-earth, with human bones and better 
 formed implements of flint and carved bone objects. The 
 animal remains were a mixture of recent and extinct species ; 
 but the bed had been much disturbed. The two beds, num- 
 bers 3 and 4, must have been formed under different circum- 
 stances, and probably at some distance of time apart. Both 
 are Post-glacial, but there seems every reason to believe that 
 the one represents the Palaaocosmic, and the other the earlier 
 Neocosmic age. There is no reason to suppose that the imple- 
 ments in either represent the best work of their time ; but if 
 the pot-boilers of the oldest deposit are genuine they must 
 represent savages of somewhat advanced type, and with 
 vessels for cooking, 
 
 Skertchley, in a recent paper, calculates the age of the allu- 
 vial deposits of the '"Wash," and the bordering peats, and, 
 measuring by the deposits of the Roman period, assigns to 
 peats holding " Neolithic " implements an age of 7000 years. 
 But there is no real distinction between Neolithic and Palseo- 
 lithic, and there is no reason to believe that the deposit of 
 either silt or peat has been as rapid since Roman times as 
 
APPENDIX. 343 
 
 before. On the contrary, it is in every way likely that it was 
 much more rapid previously. 
 
 Jade Implements. 
 There has been some discussion respecting the alleged jade 
 found in Swiss lake habitations. It seems that there is a 
 probability that it is not the Oriental jade, but the Saussurite 
 which is found in Switzerland itself. In fact, the so-called 
 jades are not all of one composition, and are found in various 
 countries. A recent writer informs us that while jade imple- 
 ments occur in America, the rock itself is not known ; but 
 Dr. G. M. Dawson informs me that it occurs in British 
 Columbia, and therefore not unlikely in various parts of the 
 metamorphic districts of the Pacific border. Perhaps the 
 most interesting fact respecting it is that it has been utilised 
 in so many parts of the world, from New Zealand to Tartary 
 and that like other green stones, it has been an object of 
 superstitious veneration. 
 
 Making of Flint Arrows. 
 Mr. Redding, of San Francisco, has contributed to the 
 American Naturalist an interesting paper on the manner of 
 making flint implements in Alaska. It seems that obsidian 
 is used, that a flake is struck off with a stone hammer, and 
 chips are then pressed off the edges with a pointed bone, till 
 it is worked into shape. The notch is made by similar pres- 
 sure with a more finely pointed bone. An arrow-head of 
 perfect workmanship can be made in forty minutes. It is 
 evident that this method has been nearly universal, as almost 
 all well-made implements of so-called chipped flint bear 
 evidence of being worked by pressure on the edges. Chipping, 
 properly so-called, would suffice only for ruder implements, 
 or for the first blocking out. The art of making flint imple- 
 ments by pressure must have originated at a very early period, 
 and in the cradle of the human race. 
 
 Palaeolithic Implements in America. 
 In the Reports of the Peabody Museum of American 
 Archaeology, Abbott has published two papers on the imple- 
 
341 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 merits found in the gravels of New Jersey. These may be 
 older than any other human remains known in Eastern 
 America, but they are obviously Post-glacial, and not dissimilar 
 in their mode of occurrence, from those of the European river 
 gravels discussed in the body of this work. They require 
 additional examination, from a geological point of view, before 
 their precise relation to the modern period can be determined. 
 In the same Eeports, Schumacher describes the manufacture 
 of stone pots and mortars by the ancient Indians of California, 
 and shows that they used in this manufacture tools of purely 
 Palaeolithic type, though the pots were beautifully formed out 
 of material detached with great labour from the solid rock. 
 Mr. Putnam gives an interesting account of a similar manu- 
 facture in New England. One manufactory of soapstone pots 
 seems to have existed at Christiania, Lancaster Co., Pennsyl- 
 vania, while numerous fragments of pots and rude stone 
 implements have been found. Another ancient quarry has 
 been found near Providence, R.I. At this place a bed or 
 vein of steatite had been so extensively quarried that in re- 
 opening it over three hundred cartloads of debris of the manu- 
 factory, mixed with rude stone implements and fragments 
 of pots, had to be removed. The chisels were of hard 
 stone rudely chipped, from 5 to 8^ inches in length, rounded 
 roughly at one end, and pointed at the other. The method 
 used in working out the round or oval masses of steatite 
 to be cut into pots, was precisely that employed in California 
 on the opposite side of the continent. Another ancient 
 quarry of this kind has recently been discovered in Virginia. 
 Had any of these quarries been situated on the bank of a 
 river subject to floods, and especially those ice-floods which in 
 early spring sometimes devastate the valleys of our American 
 rivers, gravel beds full of palaeolithic implements must have 
 resulted. 
 
 " Pliocene " Man in California. — The Calaveras Skull. 
 
 The mention of stone pots and mortars leads to a considera- 
 tion of the circumstances under which these have been found 
 at great depths in the auriferous gravels of California. Since 
 
APPENDIX. 345 
 
 the remarks on these in the text were written, I have seen a 
 memoir by Professor Whitney, in which he re-states the evi- 
 dence which he believes exists for the occurrence of man in 
 California in Pliocene times. After carefully weighing it, I 
 must say that it appears to me altogether inconclusive, for the 
 following among other reasons : — 
 
 1. None of the specimens, either of bones or implements, 
 appear to have been seen in situ by any competent scientific 
 observer, and most of them are open to the gravest doubts as 
 to the undisturbed character of the material. Even the 
 Calaveras skull was found in a shaft now full of water, and 
 the facts respecting it were collected some time after its 
 discovery. 
 
 2. The age of the deposits is not certainly known ; but from 
 the remains of plants and animals found in them they would 
 seem to date from the period of the Pliocene Tertiary, when 
 the fauna and flora of the American land were quite different 
 from the present, before the glacial period, and before the 
 main valleys of the Pacific slope were cut out. It is very 
 unlikely that man can be the sole survivor of the fauna of this 
 distant period. 
 
 3. This improbability is increased by the fact that the skull 
 discovered, while American in form, is of large size and of better 
 development than those of the modern rude tribes of Califor- 
 nia, and that the implements found are similar to those of the 
 semi-civilized agriculturists and miners formerly inhabiting 
 some parts of the West. Further, it is well known that many 
 shafts and mines have been excavated in these gravels both 
 before and after the European conquest. 
 
 4. The manner in which Whitney accounts for the occurrence 
 of the Calaveras skull is so fanciful and improbable, that it 
 throws doubt on the whole of his conclusions. To show this, I 
 shall quote, at some length, his own words, premising that this 
 skull is believed to have been taken from a shaft, at Bald 
 Mountain, sunk through beds of gravel and lava, amounting 
 in thickness to 130 feet : — 
 
 "The skull was unquestionably dug up somewhere, and had 
 unquestionably been subjected to quite a series of peculiar con- 
 
346 FOSSIL MEN. 
 
 dltions.* In the first place it had been broken, and broken in 
 such a manner as to indicate great violence, as the fractures go 
 through the thickest and heaviest parts of the skull ; again, the 
 evidence of violent and protracted motion, as seen in the manner 
 in which the various bones were wedged into the hollow and in- 
 ternal parts of the skull, as for instance, the bones of the foot 
 under the malar bone. The appearance of the skull was some- 
 thing such as would be expected to result from its having been 
 swept, with many other bones, from the place where it was ori- 
 ginally deposited, down the shallow but violent current of a 
 stream, where it would be exposed to violent blows from the 
 boulders lying in its bed. During this passage, it was smashed, 
 and fragments of the bones occurring with it were thrust into 
 all the cavities where they could lodge. f It then came to rest 
 somewhere, in a position where water charged with lime salts 
 had access to it, and on a bed of auriferous gravel. While it 
 lay there, the mass in which it rested was cemented to it by the 
 calcareous matter deposited round the skull, and thus the base 
 of hard mineral tufas and pebbles which was attached to it 
 when placed in the writer's hands was formed. At this time, 
 too, the snail crept in under the malar bone, and there died. J 
 Subsequently to this the whole was enveloped in a deposit of 
 gravel, which did not afterwards become thoroughly consoli- 
 dated, and which therefore was easily removed by the gentle- 
 men who first cleaned up the specimen in question, they only 
 removing the looser gravel which surrounded it." 
 
 To any one acquainted with the usual modes of occurrence 
 of fossil bones, the conditions above stated may well seem 
 " peculiar." That the skull and other bones of the skeleton, 
 and even a bead used for ornament, or perhaps put into the 
 mouth as an obolus to pay the Stygian ferryman, in whom 
 some American Indians as well as the Greeks believed, should 
 keep together while rolled down the bed of the torrent, and be 
 
 * The italics are ours. 
 
 f From another statement, it would seem that a shell bead was also 
 attached to the roof of the mouth, and pieces of charcoal introduced into 
 the skull during its rough transit down the stream ! ! 
 
 % A modern snail, Helix Mormonum, still living in the country. 
 
APPENDIX. 3 17 
 
 deposited in one place along with pieces of charcoal and a snail 
 shell, seems quite incredible* If the supposition had been 
 that the whole body, with its dress and ornaments, was drifted 
 down, or that it was a fossil from some older deposit already 
 sealed up in a hard nodule, the theory would be more cohe- 
 rent, though still not quite in accordance with the facts. As 
 it is, supposing the shell to have been found as alleged, the 
 whole appearances are those of an interment, or of loss of life 
 in some old shaft or tunnel, and this is rendered the more 
 likely by the fact insisted on by Whitney, that the surrounding 
 beds belong to a time when the " animal and vegetable crea- 
 tions differed entirely from what they are now": that is, 
 always excepting the modern Indian and modern snail. 
 
 5. The so-called "fossilised" condition of the skull proves 
 nothing. That it contains, as shown by analysis, 62 per cent, 
 of calcium carbonate, implies merely that the pores and can- 
 cellated structure of the bone have been infiltrated with that 
 substance after decay of the animal matter, and this under 
 favourable conditions would not require a long time. 
 
 The above reasons are, I think, quite sufficient to warrant 
 any geologist in declining to accept the human remains of the 
 California gravels as other than those of American Indians 
 of the modern period. 
 
 Men of the Gravels and Caverns. 
 
 It will be observed that I do not regard the distinction 
 recently insisted on by Dawkins between the men of the river 
 gravels and those of the caverns as valid in a general sense. 
 Tribes dwelling on river banks or coasts during summer, 
 would naturally resort to caverns in winter, if such shelters 
 were accessible. Cave-dwellers would resort to river banks 
 and shores to chip flints, which they might more carefully 
 work up at home. Rude invaders might occupy river valleys 
 
 * It would seem that the name of the locality, Calaveras, means a place 
 of skulls, and that loose skulls and bones are found in the Calaveras River. 
 It would be interesting to know the age and source of these, and their con- 
 nection, if any, with the Calaveras skull. 
 
348 APPENDIX. 
 
 and more cultivated people might be driven to the hills. 
 Both kinds of deposits belong to one great period, and this 
 the oldest human age known to us ; and there are some reasons 
 to believe that portions of the cave deposits date as far back 
 as LyelPs Second Continental period, while some of the gravel 
 beds must have been deposited in the following times of 
 subsidence. Thus the difference in the contents of these 
 deposits must often be merely local rather than due to lapse of 
 time, and their contemporaneity or order of succession must 
 be worked out for each separate region independently. 
 
 Classification op the Pleistocene and Modern. 
 
 In the appendix to the last edition of the " Story of the 
 Earth," I have given the following classification of these 
 Periods, which I believe to be more accurate than that on 
 p. 233 supra : — 
 
 I. Pleistocene, including — 
 
 (a) Early Pleistocene, or First Continental period. Land 
 very extensive, moderate climate. 
 
 (b) Later Pleistocene, or glacial, including Dawkins' " Mid 
 Pleistocene." In this there was a great prevalence of cold 
 and glacial conditions, and a great submergence of the northern 
 land. 
 
 II. Modern, or Period of Man and Modern Mammals, 
 including — 
 
 (a) Post-glacial, or Second Continental period, in which 
 the land was again very extensive, and Paleocosmic man was 
 contemporary with some great mammals, as the mammoth, 
 now extinct, and the area of land in the Northern Hemisphere 
 was greater than at present. This represents the Late 
 Pleistocene of Dawkins. It was terminated by a great and 
 very general subsidence accompanied by the disappearance of 
 Paleocosmic man and some large mammalia, and which may 
 be identical with the historical deluge. 
 
 (b) Recent, when the continents attained their present levels, 
 existing races of men colonized Europe, and living species 
 of mammals. This includes both Prehistoric and Historic 
 periods. 
 
APPENDIX. 349 
 
 The Men of the "Neolithic" and Bronze Ages. 
 
 In his work " Early Man in Britain," Dawkins has admirably 
 illustrated the marked distinction between the old paleocosmic 
 men of the gravels and caves and the smaller race, with 
 somewhat differently formed skulls, which succeeded them, 
 after the great subsidence which terminated the Second Con- 
 tinental period and inaugurated the Modern epoch. The 
 latter race he identifies with the Basques and ancient Iberians, 
 a non-Aryan or Turanian people who once possessed nearly 
 the whole of Europe, and included the rude Ugrians and Laps 
 of the north, the civilized Etruscans of the south, and the 
 Iberians of the west, with allied tribes occupying the British 
 Islands. This race, scattered and overthrown before the 
 dawn of authentic history in Europe by the Celts and other 
 intrusive peoples, was unquestionably that which succeeded 
 the now extinct paleocosmic race and constituted the men of 
 the so-called "Neolithic period," which thus connects itself 
 with the modern history of Europe, from which it is not 
 separated by any physical catastrophe like that which divides 
 the older men of the mammoth age and the widely spread 
 continents of the post-glacial period from our modern days. 
 This identification oO the Neolithic men with the Iberians, 
 which the writer has also insisted on, Dawkins deserves credit 
 for fully elucidating, and he might have carried it farther to 
 the identification of these same Iberians with the Berbers, 
 the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the Caribbean and 
 other tribes of eastern and central America. On these hither- 
 to dark subjects light is now rapidly breaking, and we may 
 hope that much of the present obscurity will soon be cleared 
 away. 
 
 Another curious point illustrated by Dawkins, with the aid 
 of the recent re-discovery of the tin-mines of Tuscany, is the 
 connection of the Etruscans with the introduction of the 
 bronze age into central Europe. This, when viewed in relation 
 to the probable ethnic affinities of the Etruscans with the 
 " Neolithic " and Iberian races, remarkably welds together the 
 stone and bronze ages in Europe, and explains their inter- 
 
350 APPENDIX. 
 
 mixture and "overlap" in the earlier lake habitations of 
 Switzerland and elsewhere. 
 
 The Deluge in its Kelation to Geology. 
 
 A very important speculation arising from the facts recently 
 developed as to prehistoric men is the possible equivalency 
 with the historical deluge of the great subsidence which 
 closed the residence of paleocosmic men in Europe, as well 
 as that of several of the large mammalia. Lenormant and 
 others have shown that the wide and ancient acceptance of 
 the tradition of the deluge among all the great branches of 
 the human family necessitates the belief that, independently 
 of the biblical history, this great event must be accepted as 
 an historical fact which very deeply impressed itself upon the 
 minds of all the early nations. Now, if the deluge is to be 
 accepted as historical, and if a similar break interrupts the 
 geological history of man, separating extinct races from those 
 which still survive, why may we not correlate the two. The 
 misuse of the deluge in the early histoiy of geology, in 
 employing it to account for changes that took place long 
 before the advent of man, certainly should not cause us to 
 neglect its legitimate uses, when these arise in the progress 
 of investigation. It is evident that if this correlation be 
 accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as 
 to the antiquity of man. In that case, the modern gravels 
 spread over plateaus and in river valleys, far above the reach 
 of the present floods, may be accounted for, not by the 
 ordinary action of the existing streams, but by the abnormal 
 action of currents of water diluvial in their character. Further, 
 since the historical deluge cannot have been of very long 
 duration, the physical changes separating the deposits con- 
 taining the remains of paleocosmic men from those of later 
 date would in like manner be accounted for, not by slow 
 processes of subsidence, elevation, and erosion, but by causes 
 of more abrupt and cataclysmic character. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ages of stone, etc., 5. 
 Agricultural Implements, 121. 
 Agriculture, Primitive, 154. 
 Algonquin Kace, 50. 
 Alleghan Race, 50. 
 American Races, Distribution 
 
 of, 48. 
 American Races, Origin of, 48. 
 Animals, Extinct, contemporary 
 
 with man, 220. 
 Animism, 321. 
 
 Antediluvian Agriculture, 120. 
 Antiquity of Man in America, 
 
 205. 
 Antiquity of Man in Europe, 
 
 212. 
 Arithmetic, Primitive, 314. 
 Arrow-heads, 122. 
 Arts, Origin of, 307. 
 Astronomy, Primitive, 324. 
 Atahensic, 258. 
 Axes, Stone, etc., 117, 131. 
 
 Barbarism, Primitive, 324. 
 Beads, 139. 
 Belgrand, M., 128. 
 Beluga of St. Lawrence, 25. 
 Bone Implements, 134. 
 Brain, Characters of, 181. 
 
 Broca, Prof., 193. 
 Bronze Age, 6. 
 Building Materials, 81. 
 Burial, Rites of, 286. 
 
 Calaveras Skull, 206, 184, and 
 Appendix, 344. 
 
 Canada, Prehistoric, 25. 
 
 Cannibalism, 100. 
 
 Cartier, his Voyages, 18. 
 
 Carver, 115, 282. 
 
 Catlin, 57. 
 
 Cavern Deposits, 222. 
 
 Ceramic Art, 86. 
 
 Chippewyan Race, 49. 
 
 Chisels, 131. 
 
 Christie and Lartet's "Reli- 
 quiae," 3. 
 
 Chnngke, Game of, 113. 
 
 Cities of the Stone Age, 70. 
 
 Commerce, Primitive, 163. 
 
 Communism, Tribal, 318. 
 
 Communistic Homes, 83. 
 
 Consanguinity, 315. 
 
 Copper, Native, 61. 
 
 Cresswell Caves, 218. 
 
 Cro-Magnon, Men of, 188. 
 
 Dawkins, Prof., 161, 218. 
 
 351 
 
352 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Dawson, Dr. G. M., 176. 
 Dead, Burial of the, 283. 
 Deluge, Tradition of, 263. 
 Distribution of Races in Ame 
 
 rica, 48. 
 Dried Meat, Preparation of, 172. 
 Drilling Stone, 147. 
 Dupont, 160, 216, 296. 
 
 Edenic Age, 327. 
 Eries or Neutrals, 62. 
 Esquimaux, 48. 
 Etruscans, 315. 
 
 Extinct Mammals Contem- 
 porary with Man, 220. 
 
 Fasts for Manitous, 273. 
 Female Divinities, 258. 
 Fences for Hunting, 170. 
 Fish-Clubs, 119. 
 Fish-Spears, 136. 
 
 Gambling Sticks, 144. 
 Gaspe Indians, 22. 
 Geographical Knowledge, 160. 
 Giants and Dwarfs, 326. 
 Glacial Age, Date of, 242. 
 Glooscap, 259. 
 God, Idea of, 250. 
 Gouges, 132. 
 Great Spirit, 253, 282. 
 Grimes Graves, 173. 
 
 Hammers, 112, 171. 
 Hare, Tne Great, 260. 
 Hiawatha, 259. 
 
 Hochelaga, Agriculture of, 154. 
 „ Cartier's Yisit, 28. 
 
 Hochelaga, Ethnic relations of, 
 46. 
 
 Fate of, 39. 
 „ Houses of, 83. 
 
 „• Remains of, 70. 
 Hoes, 124. 
 
 Flome, Mr. Milne, 231. 
 Huxley, Prof., 178, 193. 
 
 Immortality, Instinct of, 282. 
 „ in Old Testament, 
 
 309. 
 Implements of Bone, 134. 
 
 „ of Stone, etc., 110. 
 
 Jones on Southern Indians, 113. 
 
 Lake-Dwellers, 103. 
 Language, Unity of, 310. 
 Lost Arts, 146. 
 
 Lyell, "Antiquity of Man," 
 3, 233. 
 
 Magical Weapons, 174. 
 Mammoth as a totem, 275. 
 Manibozoo, 260. 
 Manitous, 264. 
 Mentone, Man of, 298. 
 Messiah, Idea of, 259. 
 Micmacs, 20. 
 
 Arts of, 168. 
 Moquis or Village Indians, 57. 
 Morlot on Swiss Lakes, 3. 
 Mother of Men, 257. 
 
 Native Copper, 6Gl 
 Needles, 136. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 358 
 
 Neocosmic Men, 218. 
 Origin of Arts, 307. 
 
 Palaeocos-micMen, 108, 193,218. 
 
 " Palaeolithic " Age, 11. 
 
 „ Implements, Na- 
 
 ture of, 214. 
 
 Peat, Growth of, 245. 
 
 Pemmican, Making of, 172. 
 
 Pfahlbauten, 103. 
 
 Physical Changes, 228. 
 
 Physical Characters of Primi- 
 tive Men, 177. 
 
 Pictographs, 268. 
 
 Picture Writing, 268. 
 
 Pipes, Tobacco, 92. 
 
 Poetry, 322. 
 
 Pogamaugan, 116. 
 
 Pottery, 86. 
 
 Progress, Causes of, 329. 
 
 Prunieres, M., 109. 
 
 Quarries of Flint, 126, 173. 
 Quipus, 144. 
 
 Races, Successive, in Ametk:i 
 
 and Europe, 186. 
 Rau, Prof. 147. 
 Red Indians, Arts of, 169. 
 
 „ of Newfoundland, 
 
 19. 
 Relationships, 315. 
 Religions of American Tribes. 
 
 252. 
 Religions, Classification of, 
 
 250. 
 Religions, Origin of, 278. 
 
 Riviere, Dr., 299. 
 Roches Percees, 270. 
 Schoolcraft, 256, 268. 
 Sculpture, Primitive, 153. 
 Skulls, Forms of, 178. 
 „ as Vessels, 145. 
 Slung Stones, 115. 
 
 166. 
 Soloutre, Village of, 107. 
 Southall, 240. 
 Spades of Stone, 124. 
 Spears, 136. 
 Squier and Davis, 149. 
 Stadacona, 26. 
 
 Stalagmite, Deposits of, 222, 
 Stations of Prehistoric People, 
 
 166. 
 Stone Age, 6. 
 
 „ Implements of, 110. 
 
 „♦ Weapons of, 111. 
 
 245. ' 
 Sugar making, 132. 
 Swallow, Prof., 55. 
 Sweden, Recent deposits of, 
 
 239. 
 
 Table of Physical Changes, 233. 
 
 Tallies, 14i. 
 
 Tinne* Race, 49. 
 
 Tobacco Pipes, 92. 
 
 Toltecan Race, 50. 
 
 Torell on Scaudinavia, 231y. 
 
 Totems, 268. 
 
 Trou de Frontal, 88. 
 
 Turanian or Tartar Race, 203. 
 
 Tylor, Dr., 175, 6. 
 
 Unity of Man, 307. 
 
 A A 
 
354 
 
 Village Indians, 57. 
 
 Wampum, 139 
 
 Weapons of Stone Age, llx. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Whitley on Stone Implements, 
 
 216. 
 Wilson, " Prehistoric Man," 
 
 3, 8, 45, 64 
 
 Butler &. Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London, 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 I. 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE IN BIBLE LANDS. 
 
 With Illustrations. Croivn Svo, Js. 6d. [Preparing. 
 
 Contents. — The-Fire-Belt of Southern Europe. — Men who lived before 
 
 History. — Antediluvian Arts and Culture. — Palestine as an Early 
 
 Home of Man. — The Valley of the Nile. — The Present and the 
 
 Future, etc. 
 
 This work is intended as a supplement to the Author's previous volumes, entitled, 
 
 "The Story of the Earth," "The Origin of the World," and " Fossil Men," and more 
 
 especially to bring out the new information obtained in his recent travels in the East, 
 
 and his matured conclusions respecting certain debated points not treated of, or only 
 
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 IV. 
 
 FOSSIL MEN, AND THEIR MODERN 
 
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 Historic men in Europe by those of the American Races. 
 
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 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
A STUDY OF ORIGINS; or, the Problems 
 
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 STUDIES IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 By Prof. A. M. Fairbairn, D.D. 
 
 Fourth Edition. 8vo, cloth, price gs. 
 
 " It scarcely needs be said that these studies are full of spiritual penetration, profound 
 philosophy of moral life, and literary beauty. Devout in feeling, and evangelical in 
 theological view, they are yet characterized by great freedom and independence of 
 thought. We do not know where to look, save perhaps in Pressense's 'Jesus Christ,' for 
 alike combination of reverent belief and broad independent thinking. "—British Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
 A PRACTICAL COMMENTARY ON THE 
 GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 
 
 By James Morison, D.D. 
 Fifth Edition. In one Volume, 8vo, cloth, 12s. 562 pp./ / 
 
 " We are happy to call attention to this painstaking and exhaustive work.- No student 
 can well do without it. It is a marvellous display of learning and labour." — Rev. C. H. 
 Spukgeon, in ''Sword and Trowel." 
 
 "This great work is a long way beyond and above our criticism. The unanimous 
 verdict of the best judges, of men differing most widely in their theological opinions, 
 has declared it to be one of the ablest expositions of Holy Scripture produced in any age 
 or nation."— Rev. J. Agar Beet. 
 
 HISTORY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND. 
 
 From the opening of the Long Parliament to the end of the 
 
 Eighteenth Century. 
 
 By John Stoughton, D.D. 
 
 Third and Carefully Revised Cheap Edition. In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo, 
 price £2 $s. Handsomely bound in cloth. 
 
 I.— THE CHURCH OF THE CIVIL WARS. 
 
 II.— THE CHURCH OF THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 III.— THE CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION. 
 IV.— THE CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION. 
 
 V.— THE CHURCH OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 VI.— THE CHURCH IN THE GEORGIAN ERA. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE RISE OF THE 
 HUGUENOTS. 
 
 By Henry M. Baird, Professor in the University of New York. 
 
 In two Vohimes. Crown 8vo, cloth, \$s. With Maps. 
 
 " Professor Baird has produced a work which for carefulness of investigation and com- 
 pleteness and accuracy of statement, is far in advance of all predecessors. We thank 
 Professor Baird for a book of great historical and moral value, of untiring patience, 
 scrupulous fairness, noble sympathies, and the deepest religious interest." — British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
JUL Z9 1974 
 
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 Unlrersity of California 
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