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[Illustration: FIG. 1.--The Lenape Stone--(actual size)--Aboriginal
picture representing Indians fighting the Hairy Mammoth--discovered in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1872 and 1881.]




     THE LENAPE STONE
           OR
 THE INDIAN AND THE MAMMOTH

            BY
        H. C. MERCER

     NEW YORK & LONDON
    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  The Knickerbocker Press
           1885


       COPYRIGHT BY
       H. C. MERCER
           1885

          Press of
     G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
          New York




PREFACE.

In claiming an impartial examination of so extraordinary a carving as
the "Lenape Stone" at the hands of archaeologists, the writer has had
several difficulties to contend with.

_First_, The fact that the carving is quite unique, it being the first
aboriginal _carving_ of the mammoth thus far claimed to have been
discovered in North America.

_Second_, That no "scientific observer" was present at the discovery.

_Third_, That since its discovery the Stone has been several times
cleaned, and that thereby many geological tests of its authenticity
have been rendered impossible.

_Fourth_, That within the last few years, and particularly in
Philadelphia, serious frauds have been perpetrated upon lovers of
Indian relics.

These considerations may well have been sufficient to prejudice the
mind of a stranger against the alleged wonderful Indian relic, yet they
should in no case suffice to prevent, on the part of the archaeologists,
a thorough and impartial examination of all the evidence pertaining to
its discovery.

In presenting this and other evidence, the writer has wished only
to be impartial, and to be led by the facts as they have presented
themselves, and for the examination of which his opportunities have
been peculiarly favorable.

In his knowledge of the neighborhood and its people (his home), an
acquaintance with all the persons concerned, and very frequent visits
to the Hansell Farm, nothing has yet occurred to shake his faith in the
unimpeachable evidence of an honest discovery. Yet should any fresh
light be brought to bear upon the subject, however at variance with
this opinion, it will be welcomed.

The appearance in America of a carving of the hairy mammoth,
presumably the work of our aborigines, if not a surprise to students
of archaeology, would certainly be no less interesting than the French
discoveries of some twenty years ago; while the ready connection of the
work with the Indian of comparatively recent times, the appearance of
human figures in the carving, and of many symbols which seem related to
highly important branches of archaeological study, would awaken a more
general and enthusiastic interest in the Stone, than has been felt for
any other prehistoric representation of the great elephant.

A disbelief in its authenticity would leave us with an interest, not
inconsiderable, in the unknown person who, after months of careful
study and preparation, could have conceived and executed so remarkable
a fraud.




ERRATA.

Page 81, line 2, for Delaware _read_ Susquehannok.

Page 81, line 4, for Delaware _read_ Susquehannok.




THE LENAPE STONE.

In the spring of 1872, eight years after the discovery of the famous
mammoth carving in the cave of La Madeleine, Perigord, France, Barnard
Hansell, a young farmer, while ploughing on his father's farm, four
miles and a half east of Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, saw,
to use his own words, a "queer stone" lying on the surface of the
ground, and close to the edge of the new furrow. The plough had just
missed turning it under. He stopped and picked it up; it was the larger
piece of the fractured "gorget stone," in fig. 1, (frontispiece). By
wetting his thumb and rubbing it he could see strange lines and a
carving representing an animal like an elephant, but without troubling
his boyish head much about it, he carried it several days in his
pocket, and finally locked it up in his chest, where, along with his
other relics, arrow-heads, spear-points, axes, and broken banner
stones, thrown in from time to time as he found them on the farm,
it remained until the spring of 1881, when he sold it to Mr. Henry
Paxon, son of a well-known resident of the neighborhood, then a youth
of nineteen, and with a fancy for collecting Indian antiquities, in
whose possession it still remains.[A] At the moment of the purchase no
particular attention had been paid to the carvings, and the new owner
was not certain that he had noticed the mammoth while at Hansell's
house, or until a few hours later, when he had brought home his
trophies and shown them to his father, who distinctly remembers calling
his son's attention to the rude outline of an elephant upon the stone.

But without doubt the singular part of the story is the unexpected
finding of the smaller piece of the fractured stone a few months later.
After many ineffectual searches for it in the intervening years, it was
picked up by Hansell while corn-husking with his brother in the same
field and at the same spot where nine years before the first piece had
been found. This luckily discovered fragment Hansell presented to Mr.
Paxon. Several persons of the neighborhood had seen the stone at Mr.
Paxon's house both before and after the discovery of the second piece,
but it was not until both parts had been some months in his possession
that any unusual interest was attached to it even by him.

Some time in July, 1882, Captain J. S. Bailey, of the Bucks County
Historical Society, to whom the writer in preparing the present article
must acknowledge his great indebtedness, and who first called serious
attention to the archaeological value of the stone, made it the subject
of a paper read before the Society, but since that time, although
displayed at a county exhibition and twice shown at meetings of the
Society above mentioned, this remarkable relic has remained unheard of.

This is the simple story of most great archaeological discoveries;
no "man of science" was at hand to analyze the condition of the
surrounding soil, or satisfy himself that a fraud had not been
committed, and a hundred questions now arise as to the finder of the
stone, and its present owner, its long unrecognized importance, the
whereabouts of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, etc., etc. The "modern
scientist" will by no means be satisfied with such evidence as would
be held sufficient in a court of law, and every fraud that has been
perpetrated upon the lover of Indian relics adds to the necessity of
carefully examining each detail of the discovery--nothing must be
believed except upon the strongest evidence.

For a full discussion of this evidence the reader is referred to the
appendix.

Several circumstances seem to concur in adding to the novelty of
the discovery. In the first place the carving has been made upon
one of the so-called "gorget stones," than which no class of Indian
relics have been more puzzling to archaeologists. Our museums are
well-supplied with these mysterious perforated tablets of slate,
generally resembling in size and shape the stone represented in fig.
1, and which are found in all parts of the United States. Ornaments,
talismans, breastplates, or buttons, as we may choose to call them,
they seem to have been the peculiar property of the North American
Indian, without a counterpart, as far as the writer can learn, in
the stone implements of other uncivilized races. They seem often to
have been buried with the dead warrior and when discovered in Indian
graves are generally close to the breast of the skeleton.[B] Gorgets
are frequently scratched and scribbled upon, and ornamental zig-zags
and cross-lines, like the faint scratches plainly to be seen on the
Lenape stone crossing the carvings in all directions, are not uncommon
on these stones, pipes, banner stones, and other Indian implements;
but picture-writings proper, such as are commonly found painted upon
buffalo robes, scratched upon birch bark, or carved upon the face of
cliffs or large boulders, are exceedingly rare on small stones, and the
tablet in question is the only known instance, the writer believes, of
a pictured gorget. The carving, when compared with the larger and more
conventional Muzzinabiks or rock-writings and birch-bark records of the
Indians, seems to lack much of the symbolic obscurity common to these
productions of the prophets and medicine men. It doubtless belongs
to the less hieratic class of writings, known among the Algonkins as
"Kekeewin," which dealt with things generally understood by the tribe.

It is unquestionably a picture of a combat between savages and the
hairy mammoth--an encounter such as our imagination has not yet
connected with the ancient forests of America, and drawn as well as an
Indian who had seen the great monster could have drawn it. Most of the
figures seem represented according to the common conventional method
of the modern Indians, yet there is certainly a seeming picturesque
relation between them of which we can find no example in the few
ancient Indian pictographs which have been preserved to us. We can
almost fancy a foreground, a distance, and a faint chiaro-oscuro.

The combat we might imagine takes place on the confines of a forest,
and if we may judge from an upward inclination of the foreground on
the right, at the base of a hillside. The monster, angry, and with
erect tail, approaches the forest, in which, through the pine trunks,
are seen the wigwams of an Indian village. In the sky overhead, and as
if presiding over the event, are ranged the powers of heaven: forked
lightning flashes through the tree-tops, and from between a planet
and the crescent moon, beyond which we seem to see a constellation
(represented by a series of crossed lines) and two stars, the sun's
face looks down upon the scene. Four human forms confront the monster,
the first holds in his right hand a bow from which the arrow just
discharged is sticking in the side of the enraged beast, and in his
left, if it is not planted in the ground, a long lance; a second
warrior with head-dress of feathers stands farther to the right; and
still farther, and near what may perhaps be called a rock, a third sits
upon the ground apparently smoking a pipe. A fourth figure is easily
distinguishable trampled under the fore feet of the mammoth.

The strong effect upon the fancy of the rude carving, as we gaze
upon it, would be hard indeed to resist. Its stern naivete and
characteristic lack of aesthetic purpose bring upon the mind a haunting
sense of the reality of the event it represents, and our sympathies
seem genuinely awakened for the four human beings who have dared to
confront the monster with their rude weapons of stone, yet whose
destiny, like that of their huge antagonist, is overshadowed by the
near presence of a supernatural power, seen in the great phenomena of
nature which the artist has connected with the scene. Well might the
appearance of the hairy mammoth have excited in the superstitious mind
of the Indian hunter fancies more wild than those contained in the
carving. Hardly more thrilling could have been the coming of the white
men in ships, or the sound of their cannon, than the sight of one of
these ungainly monsters in the shadows of a primeval forest, or the
crash of his irresistible advance through the underbrush.

                * * * "dat euntibus ingens
  Silva locum et magno cedunt virgulta fragore."

Beckendorff, a Russian engineer, who, in 1846, saw a carcass entire,
"a black, horrible, giant-like mass," floating on one of the rivers
of Siberia, declared that its appearance to that of a modern Indian
elephant was as "that of a coarse ugly dray-horse to an Arab steed." He
also noticed a ridge of stiff hair like a mane about a foot in length
and extending above the shoulders and along the back.

Its size, like that of the modern elephant, must have varied
considerably. The famous St. Petersburg skeleton measures but nine
feet in height, while that in the Royal Museum of Natural History in
Brussels reaches eleven feet, and the animal in the carving, judging
from the relative size of the figures, would have been still larger
than Beckendorff's carcass, which he declares measured thirteen feet
in height. Geology tells us much of the aspect, epoch, habits, and
range of the mammoth; that it had appeared later than the mastodon, and
somewhere in the age known as the Pliocene; that there were several
species--three at least--two of which were inhabitants of America; that
in North America it ranged from Behring Strait to the Gulf of Mexico,
and in Europe from the extremity of Eastern Siberia as far south as
Rome and the Pyrenees; that it fed upon the branches of the fir,
birch, poplar, willow, etc., and was probably migratory in its habits,
wandering toward grazing grounds in the north in summer, and southward
in winter.

The long shaggy hair with which it was clothed, distinguishing it in
appearance from the modern elephant and its smaller contemporary, the
mastodon, was composed of three distinct suits: the longest, rough,
black bristles, about eighteen inches in length; the next, a coat of
finer close-set hair, fawn-colored, from nine to ten inches long; and
the last, a soft, reddish wool, about five inches long, filling up
the interstices between the other hair, and enabling the animal to
withstand an arctic cold.

The enormous tusks measured along the curve from eleven to fifteen
feet, and curved quite abruptly outward and backward.

The massive grinder, sometimes weighing seventeen pounds, was a
conspicuous characteristic; the whole of its surface was not brought
into use at once, but successively, new grinding-points being formed
from behind as the outer and older points wore away.

Several etymologies have been given for the name "mammoth"; among
others, the word "behemoth" in the Book of Job, and the Arabic word
"mehemot," signifying an elephant of very large size. One of the most
interesting is the Tartar word "mamma," meaning the earth, suggested
by Pallas, a Russian scientist, who first gave a description of the
animal. "The Tungooses and Yakoots," he says, "believed that this
animal worked its way in the earth like a mole. The mammoths had
retired, they say, into great caverns from which they never emerge, but
wander to and fro in the galleries; and as they pass into one the roof
of the gallery rises, and the roof of the one just vacated sinks. The
moment this animal sees the light it dies, and the reason why so many
carcasses have been exposed to view is because of their having been
deceived by the irregular conformation of the earth's surface, thus
unintentionally venturing beyond the confines of darkness."[C]

Mastodon and mammoth bones have been discovered in Europe from the
earliest times, and a history of the remarkable theories to which they
had given rise before the time of Cuvier is very interesting. By the
learned of by-gone times the fossils have been mistaken for the bones
of Ajax, the "body of Orestes," unicorns, the teeth of St. Christopher,
and the remains of Hannibal's elephants. The middle ages have given us
a whole library on the subject of a race of giants, whose remains were
clearly recognized in the huge bones.

In America, in colonial times, Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, was
"perfectly of opinion" that the mastodon tooth discovered near Albany
in 1705 "will agree only to a human body, for whom the flood only could
prepare a funeral; and without doubt he waded as long as he could keep
his head above the clouds, but must at length be confounded with all
other creatures."

At what period the monster became extinct in Europe is a question to
which geology gives no answer from the point of view of human history.
The evidence rests upon the variously computed age of the beds in which
the fossil bones occur. In France, for instance, it is known that the
mammoth, whose bones are found in the strata underlying, and therefore
older than, the Somme Valley peat, became extinct before the peat
stratum, thirty feet thick, which contains no bones, had formed. It had
grown, says M. Boucher de Perthes, at the rate of three inches in a
hundred years; and if, as geologists say, the mammoth bones of Niagara
Falls were deposited in their bed before six miles of the present river
gorge were worn by the cataract out of the solid rock, they may be,
according to Lyell, 31,000, or Desors, 380,000 years old.

In Siberia, whence most of our information comes, many carcasses of
these huge animals have been found preserved entire in the frozen
mud. When and how did they perish? Possibly, says the geologist, all
at once, overwhelmed by some sudden cataclysm, which, burying the
carcasses in the mud, was immediately followed by an intense cold that
has lasted ever since; possibly, again, great freshets in the northern
rivers, overtaking the migrating herds, swept their carcasses from
warmer regions to the shores of the Polar Sea.

In Europe, the fact that the mammoth survived into the human period
was proved some years ago by the discovery of human stone implements
associated with mammoth bones in the river gravels of the Somme Valley,
France, and in the Virgin Cave at Brixham, South Devon, England; but
more interesting still, was the discovery of prehistoric carvings of
the great elephant, sketches from nature made by the "cave-men," and
found in their subterranean dwellings along the river Dordogne in
France, illustrations of which will be given in the following pages.

In America, we have traces of a race of savages as old or older than
the now famous river-drift and cave-men of Europe. Since the "Calaveras
Man" lived, a valley, say geologists, has been metamorphosed, by
the slow processes of nature, into a mountain; and the "San Joachim
plummet," the "Trenton gravel-flints," and stone implements from the
gold-bearing gravels of California, all speak of a race of human beings
who must have lived in the time of the hairy mammoth.

But who were these people? Were they Indians? or had the Indian or his
ancestor the mound-builder not yet appeared? and how many thousands
or tens of thousands of years ago did they exist? These are questions
which archaeology has not yet answered.

Here, however, with the carving before us we need not go back so
far, nor beyond the Indian as we know him--the fierce, roving,
bauble-loving, picture-making hunter of to-day. A study of the
wonderful outlines on the stone will lead us through a period of his
history extending over many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years
before the coming of Columbus; and here we may try to read, from the
few vestiges of this time that chance has preserved to us, fragments
of his picturesque mythology, strange legends of his origin and
wanderings over a forest-covered continent, and the thrilling story of
the mound-builders, and of long wars when the forest soil for centuries
was a "dark and bloody ground."[D]

That the mammoth had survived into the time of the Indian can hardly
be doubted. Early travellers had frequently seen its bones at the
"Big-Bone Licks" in Kentucky, whither the huge animals had come, like
the deer and buffalo of modern times, to lick the salt. The great bones
often seemed hardly older than those of the modern animals with which
they were mingled, and, judging from their position along the modern
buffalo-trails through the forest, it seems that the latter animals had
followed the ancient tracks of the mammoth to and from the licks.

Not a few of these early travellers thought it worth their while to
question the Indians about the huge bones and note down their answers.
Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," devotes several pages to the
subject. He even believes the mammoth to be still in existence in his
time in some remote part of the American continent. He tells the story
of a Mr. Stanley, who, "taken prisoner by the Indians near the mouth of
the Tanissee," relates that "after being transferred through several
tribes from one to another, he was at length carried over the mountains
west of the Missouri to a river which runs westwardly; that these
bones abounded there, and that the natives described to him the animal
to which they belonged as still existing in the northern parts of their
country, from which description he judged it to be an elephant."

Further, in support of his theory, he gives an Indian tradition of a
great monster known as the Big Buffalo, and obtained, he says, from a
Delaware chief by one of the governors of Virginia during the American
Revolution. Nothing has seemed more interesting in a study of the
carvings on the Lenape Stone than the remarkable similarity between
this tradition of the Lenni Lenape or Delawares and the carvings on
this relic, discovered in the middle of their ancient territory. The
chief, as the account runs, being asked as to the bones at the Big-Bone
Licks in Kentucky, says that it was a tradition handed down from his
fathers that "in ancient times a herd of these tremendous animals came
to the Big-Bone Licks and began a universal destruction of the bear,
deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals which had been created for the
use of the Indians. That the Great Man above, looking down and seeing
this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the
earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on a rock on which his
seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his
bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered except the big bull,
who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they
fell; but missing one at length, it wounded him in the side, whereon,
springing around, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabache, the
Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is still living at
this day."

Making due allowance for translation, and a reasonable amount of
garbling, the points of similarity between the carving and the
tradition--the great man above (the sun) looking down, the lightning,
and the big bull presenting his forehead to the shafts, and at length
wounded in the side--are very striking; and if we compare the curious
circle enclosing a dot, on the inclined foreground to the right,
with the "neighboring mountain," and the footprint on the rock of
the tradition, the correspondence seems again too unusual for mere
coincidence. On the other hand, the tradition says nothing of warriors
or wigwams, or of planets, moon, and stars, yet these differences may
naturally be accounted for if we suppose the stone older than the
tradition, and that in the latter the local and matter-of-fact elements
of time, place, and human agency would have been the first to fade away
as time went on. But this is not the only Indian tradition of a great
monster--presumably the mammoth--which has been preserved to us.

The element of divine wrath, common to monster myths among barbarous
peoples, again occurs in a Wyandot version of the same tradition,
taken down from a band of Iroquois and Wyandots by Colonel G. Croghan,
at the Salt Licks in Kentucky in 1748, and given in Winterbotham's
"History of the United States," vol. iii., page 139. The head chief,
says the writer, having been flattered with presents of tobacco, paint,
ammunition, etc., on being asked about the large bones, related the
ancient tradition of his people as follows: "That the red man, placed
on this island by the Great Spirit, had been exceedingly happy for
ages, but foolish young people forgetting his rules became ill-tempered
and wicked, in consequence of which the Great Spirit created the Great
Buffalo, the bones of which we now see before us. These made war upon
the human species alone, and destroyed all but a few, who repented and
promised the Great Spirit to live according to his laws if he would
restrain the devouring enemy; whereupon he sent lightning and thunder,
and destroyed the whole race in this spot, two excepted, a male and
female, whom he shut up in yonder mountain, ready to let loose again
should occasion require."

David Cusic, the Tuscarora Indian, in his history of the Iroquois,
among other instances, speaks of the Big Quisquis,[E] a terrible
monster who invaded at an early time the Indian settlements by Lake
Ontario, and was at length driven back by the warriors from several
villages after a severe engagement; and of the Big Elk, another great
beast, who invaded the towns with fury and was at length killed in a
great fight; and Elias Johnson, the Tuscarora chief, in his "History of
the Six Nations," speaks of another monster that appeared at an early
period in the history of his people, "which they called Oyahguaharh,
supposed to be some great mammoth who was furious against men, and
destroyed the lives of many Indian hunters, but who was at length
killed after a long and severe contest."

Another instance of a terrible monster desolating the country of a
certain tribe "with thunder and fire" appears in a collection of
Wyandot traditions published by one William Walker, an Indian agent,
in 1823; and again the great beast appears in the song tradition of
the "Father of Oxen," from Canada, and in a monster tradition from
Louisiana, both spoken of by Fabri, a French officer, in a letter to
Buffon from America in 1748.

"The Reliquae Aquitanicae," published by Lartet and Christy, page 60,
quotes a letter from British America of Robert Brown to Professor
Rupert Jones, which speaks of a tradition common to several widely
separated tribes in the Northwest, of lacustrine habitations built by
their ancestors to protect themselves against an animal who ravaged the
country a long time ago.

Hardly less remarkable in its description of the animal than any of the
others is, perhaps, the Great Elk tradition as mentioned by Charlevoix
in his "History of New France."

"There is current among these barbarians," says the author, "a
pleasant-enough tradition of a Great Elk, beside whom all others seem
like ants. He has, they say, legs so high that eight feet of snow does
not embarrass him, his skin is proof against all sorts of weapons, and
he has a sort of arm which comes out of his shoulder and which he uses
as we do ours."

Whatever we may have previously thought of these legends, their
evidence now combined with that of the carving is irresistible. Nothing
but the mammoth itself, surviving into comparatively recent times and
encountered by the Indians, could suffice to account for the carving,
and we can no longer suppose that the size and unusual appearance of
the mammoth bones seen by the Indians in Kentucky could alone have
originated the traditions.

In the carving, we have the most interesting mammoth picture in
existence; not a mere drawing of the animal itself, but a picture
of primitive life, in which the mammoth takes a conspicuous part
in the actions and thoughts of man,--a carving made with a bone or
flint instrument upon a tablet of slate at least four hundred years
ago,--the hairy elephant, drawn in unmistakable outline, and attacked
by human beings,--a battle-scene which thrills our imagination, and
the importance of which the ancient draughtsman magnifies by the
introduction of the symbols of his religion, the sun, moon, and stars,
and the lightning alone powerful to overthrow the great enemy.

All is evidently the work of the Indian; so would he rudely carve
trees, the pine with its straight-spreading arms, like a modern
telegraph pole; his forest wigwam, a simple triangle; the sun, with
human face, and a halo; and the moon, a crescent; the stars were small
crosses, and diverging lines were the rays of light that traversed the
sky from the great luminaries. Men were triangles with their sides
produced, and three dots in the head for eyes, nose, and mouth;
here the minute forms standing their ground before the great beast,
are warriors, with feathers in their hair, and bows and lances in
their hands. The chief figure, the great buffalo, or the great elk of
Charlevoix, armed with a proboscis, as the Indians may well have named
the mammoth, is assailed, as in the Jefferson tradition, by lightning.

Between such a monster, however inoffensive in its habits, and
the Indian hunter, there could be no peace; his size and terrific
appearance were enough for the superstitious fancy of the red man, and
as he browses harmlessly near the village he is attacked; then his
rage transforms him into the fierce enemy and destroyer of mankind
remembered in the traditions. As naively represented in the carving, he
tramples men to a pulp under his feet with the ungovernable fury of a
modern elephant, and overturns whole villages of fragile wigwams, while
his anger perhaps vents itself in loud bellowings; arrows and spears
only annoy him; he must be destroyed by the lightnings of the Great
Spirit to whom the medicine men pray for help.

A remarkable story, alleged in support of the coexistence of the
Indian, and the mammoth's great contemporary the mastodon, regarded by
most scientists with distrust, though defended by some, was that of
Dr. Albert Koch, a collector of curiosities, who in 1839 disinterred
the skeleton of a mastodon in a clay bed near the Bourboise River,
Gasconade County, Missouri. Associated with the bones Koch claimed
to have discovered, in the presence of a number of witnesses, a layer
of wood-ashes, numerous fragments of rock, "some arrow-heads, a stone
spear-point, and several stone axes," evidencing he claimed, that the
huge animal had met its untimely end at the hands of savages, who,
armed with rude weapons of stone and boulders brought from the bed of
the neighboring river, had attacked it, while helplessly mired in the
soft clay, and finally effected its destruction by fire.

Koch also published with his statement and in connection with another
skeleton, that of the _Mastodon giganteus_ discovered by him in
Benton County, Missouri, a tradition of the Osage Indians, in whose
former territory the bones were found, and which he says led him to
the discovery. It states, says Koch, "that there was a time when
the Indians paddled their canoes over the now extensive prairies of
Missouri and encamped or hunted on the bluffs. That at a certain period
many large and monstrous animals came from the eastward along and up
the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, upon which the animals that had
previously occupied the country became very angry, and at last so
enraged and infuriated by reason of these intrusions, that the red man
durst not venture out to hunt any more, and was consequently reduced
to great distress. At this time a large number of these huge monsters
assembled here, when a terrible battle ensued, in which many on both
sides were killed, and the remnant resumed their march toward the
setting sun. Near the bluffs which are at present known by the name
of the Rocky Ridge one of the greatest of these battles was fought.
Immediately after the battle the Indians gathered together many of
the slaughtered animals and offered them up on the spot as a burnt
sacrifice to the Great Spirit. The remainder were buried by the Great
Spirit himself, in the Pomme de Terre River, which from this time took
the name of the Big-Bone River, as well as the Osage, of which the
Pomme de Terre is a branch. From this time the Indians brought their
yearly sacrifice to this place, and offered it up to the Great Spirit,
as a thank-offering for their great deliverance, and more latterly,
they have offered their sacrifice on the table rock above mentioned (a
curious rock near the spot of the discovery), which was held in great
veneration and considered holy ground."

There is considerable variety of opinion of late, and especially among
persons familiar with the Indians, as to the value of the information
furnished by their traditions; and certainly among Indians to-day the
separation of their pre-Columbian from their later traditions, and
their traditions proper from the extravagant relations so readily dealt
forth by them extempore, is no easy matter. Much stress is laid on the
absence of a tradition of De Soto; yet, as Schoolcraft remarks, the
Delawares and Mohicans had in his time one of Hudson, the Chippeways
of Cartier, and the Iroquois one of a wreck on a sea-coast, and the
extinction of an infant colony, probably Jamestown.

Interest in the American elephant has of late been considerably
increased by the appearance of several supposed representations of the
animal among the relics of our aborigines, drawings of which, and of
the so-called elephant trunks, and head-dresses from the architecture
of Mexico and Central America, are given in the following pages.

Not one of these outlines is unmistakable, and all lack the
characteristic tusks of the mammoth.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Elephant Pipe (Louisa Co., Iowa).]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Elephant Pipe (Louisa Co., Iowa).]

Figures 2 and 3, the now famous "elephant pipes," the authenticity
of which is doubted, however, in the last report of the Bureau
of Ethnology, came to light in Louisa County, Iowa. The former,
discovered in 1872 or 1873, was found, it is said, on the surface
by a farmer while planting corn; and the latter, more interesting
from the scratches upon it evidently intended to represent hair, was
taken from a mound near an old bed of the Mississippi by the Rev. Dr.
Blumer and others on March 2, 1880. The material of the two pipes,
which apparently have been much greased and smoked, is the same--a
light-colored sandstone.

The next of the elephant _documents_ is the so-called elephant mound
of Grant County, Wisconsin, (fig. 4). It was described by Mr. Jared
Warner, of Patch Grove, Wisconsin, on page 416 of the "Smithsonian
Report for 1872," when public attention was first generally called to
it. The effigy, 135 feet long, 60 feet broad, and but 5 feet high, is
situated on the east bank of the Mississippi, just below the mouth of
the Wisconsin, and, says Mr. Warner, has been known in the neighborhood
of Patch Grove for twenty-five years as the "elephant mound." Like
the elephant pipes, however, it lacks the characteristic tusks, and
sceptics claim that its original shape has been too much modified by
many years of cultivation to render judgments concerning it admissible.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Elephant Mound (Grant County, Wisconsin).]

But to return to the carving, a somewhat novel feature in it, and one
which has been objected to as casting a doubt upon its authenticity,
is the spear between the two upright human figures on the right. Large
flint spear-points, so-called, are found abundantly in the Eastern
States, and within the last hundred years instances of the use of
the spear by the Indians in hunting and fishing are common; no one
doubts, as we learn, for instance, in Tanner's narrative, that the
Indians speared salmon in the Eastern rivers, or, as Catlin shows,
used steel-pointed lances in their Western buffalo hunts. Yet the
early writers, in their descriptions of aboriginal implements, have
been supposed to make no mention of the spear, and there has been some
controversy among archaeologists as to whether it can be classed among
Indian prehistoric weapons of warfare or the chase.

Dr. Abbott, who, in his "Prehistoric Industry," has given a wood-cut
of the curious egg-shaped stone found at Lake Winnipissiogee, and upon
which there are several carvings of spears, quotes in the same work, by
way of the nearest approach to an allusion to the spear among the early
writers, a description from Josselyn of an elk-hunt among the early
Massachusetts Indians, in which the writer describes a lance made of a
staff a yard and a half long and pointed with fish-bone. But a passage
in Bernal Diaz del Castillo ("Historia verdadera de la Conquista de la
nueva Espana," Madrid, 1638), kindly pointed out to the writer by Dr.
Rau, seems to furnish conclusive evidence on the subject. Bernal Diaz,
among several instances in his works, speaks (chapter vi.) of an attack
upon the Spaniards in Florida by Indians "armed with immense-sized
bows, sharp arrows, and spears, among which some were shaped like
swords" ("y lanzas y unas a manera de espadas").

Furthermore there is fig. 5 (plate xiv. from De Bry's "Brevis
Narratio," published in Latin in Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1591),
representing Indians holding spears, for which likewise the writer is
indebted to Dr. Rau. It was drawn from life by one Jacques Le Moyne, a
French artist, in 1564. He had come to Florida with the French Admiral
Laudonniere, and having been left by the expedition for some months at
a fort upon the St. John's River, frequently made sketching expeditions
among the neighboring tribes. Many similar drawings by him of warriors
armed with spears are to be found among the numerous illustrations in
De Bry.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Picture of North American Indians carrying
spears, drawn from life by Jacques Le Moyne, in 1564.]

Passing over the mysterious animal on one of the Davenport tablets,
sometimes taken for a mammoth, and the pictograph on a boulder near
the Gila River seen by Colonel W. H. Emory in 1846 in a military
reconnaissance,[F] and which, he says, "may with some stretch of the
imagination be supposed to be a mastodon," we come to the supposed
traces of the elephant noticed by numerous writers in the mural
paintings and architecture of Mexico and Central America.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Elephant Trunk (Uxmal).]

Figures 6 and 7, reduced from Catherwood's "Atlas" to Stephens'
"Yucatan," are fair specimens of the remarkable architectural ornaments
from Central America known as elephant trunks, and which, placed
between two eyes and a mouth-like cavity, seem at first, as Waldeck and
other travellers have remarked, to bear a striking resemblance to the
trunk of a proboscidean.

Figure 6 is from the gateway of the great Teocallis at Uxmal, and 7
from that of the Casa de las Monjos at Uxmal; as in the case of all
the other "elephant trunks," however, they offer no suggestion of the
prominent tusks of the American elephant, and, as Dr. F. W. Putnam
maintains, should perhaps be looked upon as grotesque representations
of the human race, of which the so-called trunk forms the nose.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Elephant Trunk (Uxmal).]

Far more striking among the so-called traces of the elephant in North
America are the priests' head-dresses from Mexico and Yucatan.

Figure 8, a reduction from plate xiii. in Waldeck's "Recherches sur les
Ruines de Palenque," is taken from a stucco bas-relief in the palace of
Palenque. Waldeck considers it "evidently a representation of the head
of a proboscidean."

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Elephant Head-dress (Palenque).]

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Elephant Head-dress (Mexico).]

Figure 9, the no less fantastic Mexican head-dress, is from the Vues
des Cordilleras, plate xv. As to it, Humboldt says: "I would not have
had this hideous scene engraved, were it not for the remarkable and
apparently not accidental resemblance of the priest's head-dress to
the Hindoo Ganesa, or elephant-headed god of wisdom. It seems hardly
possible to suppose that a tapir's snout could have suggested the trunk
in the head-dress, and we are almost left to infer either that the
people of Atzlan had received some notice of the elephant from Asia,
or that their traditions reached back to the time of the American
elephant."

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Prehistoric carving of the Mammoth from the
cave of La Madeleine.]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Mammoth Carving from the Collection of M.
Lartet.]

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Mammoth Carving from the Collection of M.
Lartet.]

It is interesting to compare the Lenape Stone with the mammoth carvings
of the cave-men of Europe, of which we here give the series. None of
these outlines equal the Lenape drawing in realistic spirit except,
perhaps (fig. 10) the most remarkable of them all, the celebrated La
Madeleine carving. It is engraved upon mammoth ivory and was discovered
in 1864 in the cave of La Madeleine, Perigord, France, by M. Louis
Lartet. It was broken into five fragments, and like the carving on the
Lenape Stone, which it singularly resembles in general position, and in
the indecisive drawing of the back and tail, unmistakably represents
the mammoth. The mammoth scratching his side (fig. 11), and the very
indistinct head (fig. 12), carved on opposite sides of a bone plate,
are from the Edouard Lartet collection. M. Louis Lartet, brother of
the former, in his description of the drawings in the "Materiaux
pour l'histoire primitive de l'homme," vol. ix., p. 33, thinks that
"the primitive artist to whom these rude but sufficiently faithful
representations are due, and who changed his mind several times when
sketching, had, without doubt, the living model before his eyes, and
was disturbed in his work by the movements of the animal."

[Illustration: FIG. 13--Mammoth Dagger-hilt from the Rock Shelter of
Bruniquel.]

Figure 13, is the mammoth dagger-hilt carved in deer horn, in the
collection of M. Peccadeau de l'Isle. It was discovered in the rock
shelter of Bruniquel (Tarne et Garonne), France. Here, to avoid
breakage probably, the muzzle has been greatly exaggerated and the
shape of the trunk and position of the tusks have been considerably
departed from.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Head of Mammoth from the cave of Laugerie
Basse.]

The least interesting specimen perhaps in the French collection is
(fig. 14) the very indistinct elephant's head, minus the tusks,
discovered by the Marquis de Vibraye in the cave of Laugerie Basse,
Dordogne, France. Another so-called prehistoric representation of
the mammoth, though resembling that animal only in the trunk-like
prolongation of its muzzle, is (fig. 15) a more modern bronze specimen
from Siberia. The writer of the description in the "Materiaux," vol.
iv., p. 197, prefers to consider it a fantastic cat, tiger, or lion.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Bronze figure supposed to represent the
Mammoth. (Siberia.)]




PART II.

Let us picture to ourselves, as it occurred in ancient times, and when
his customs and traditions were as yet uncontaminated by civilization,
one of the great religious feasts of the Indian--a dance, in honor,
perhaps, of the sun, or pipe of peace, or of the green corn.

A wildly picturesque scene rises before us, as we read the descriptions
of writers who have witnessed these ceremonies in later days; such a
scene, as--in the language of Catlin: "not all the years allotted to
mortal man could in the least deface or obliterate from the memory."

The tribe is assembled in the Indian village, or upon a bare hill-top,
or perhaps in a lonely spot in the forest; a great bonfire burns in
their midst, around which many mysterious rites have been performed.
The rain perhaps was to be called down from heaven, sickness averted,
evil spirits to be exorcised and driven away, or the deer or moose to
be led in a state of charmed fatuity into the midst of the camp. With
wild noises and gestures the warriors have danced around the fire,
waving corn-stalks, or fiercely brandishing their weapons of war; the
odor of burning tobacco or roasting dog's flesh fills the air, and the
forest re-echoes with the cawings of the crow, the "gobble" of the
wild turkey, or the growl of the bear, exactly imitated by the dancers.
With a truthfulness born of their intense sympathy for nature, the
moving figures mimic the spring of the panther or wild-cat, the start
of the deer, and the sinuous motion of the snake.

At length a figure, half man half animal, approaches--the prophet or
medicine-man. Nothing can be more strange than his appearance; his
dress is hung with the skins of snakes, frogs, and bats, and adorned
with the beaks, tails, and toes of birds, and the hoofs of the deer and
antelope,--a diabolical embodiment of animal monstrosity.

All is now quiet, and from his medicine bag, made of the skin of the
raccoon, polecat, or bat, beautifully decorated, and lined with moss
and fine grass, he produces a scroll of birch bark, a tablet of wood,
or a stone, engraved with mystic characters. Holding the tablet in his
hands, as his eye falls upon the carved devices a low sound, rising
into a song or chant, now only interrupted by the crackling of the
fire, issues from under the hideous bear's-mask which hides his head.
Each picture suggests to his mind some event of the far past, carefully
treasured in the traditional lore of his tribe.[G] His song, rising and
falling in strange inflections, and preserving a sort of rhythm, now
tells of the creation of the world, a deluge, the origin of his people,
and their primitive struggles with the forces of nature; now images of
primeval giants and demi-gods rise before the minds of the assembled
tribe, his hearers, of Manabozho the great hare, of Tarentya-wagon
holder of the heavens, of Hiawatha, and Nanabush, and of "Stonish
Giants," and "Flying Heads"; now he tells of the passage of great
waters and mountains, of treeless plains, and forests, now of long
wars with human enemies, and of the final coming of the whites. The
squatting figures listen in motionless silence, as the song proceeds
through its many verses, each the theme of a particular event. At last
it ceases, and the pictured scroll or tablet, formula of its spell,
restored to its place in the medicine pouch, remains hidden from the
eyes of the tribe until its reappearance upon some similar occasion.

Such is the song-chronicle of the Indian's history; and such songs are
known to have been carefully preserved and sung by many if not all of
the Eastern tribes.

Such was the national song-legend of the Creeks and Choctaws, narrating
in considerable detail their traditional origin and early migration
from the West. It was read to the English by the Creek chief, Chekille,
at Savannah, in 1775, "and was written in red and black characters
on the skin of a young buffalo." This pictured skin, with an English
translation, was sent to London, and there, in a frame in the Georgia
office, at Westminister, was kept for many years as a curiosity; it was
finally lost, but the translation has been recently brought to light by
Dr. D. G. Brinton, of Philadelphia.

Such, too, was the national song of the Cherokees, sung by them at
their annual green-corn dance. Portions of it which tell of an early
migration from the headwaters of the Monongahela, and of the great
mound at Grave Creek which the Cherokees claim to have built, are given
by Haywood in his "History of Tennessee." They were related to the
author from memory by an old Indian trader who had heard the song. Mr.
Chamberlain, at present missionary among the Cherokees, states that
Guess or Sequoyah, a half-breed Cherokee, since dead, had invented
the Cherokee alphabet of eighty-two letters, for the express purpose
of perpetuating this chronicle of his nation, and had recorded it in
the new characters, but these interesting manuscripts, which after his
death were unfortunately mislaid, have thus far escaped discovery.

The Blackfeet, too, have a singular historical song sung on stated
occasions; and the Shawnees, now situated in the northeast corner of
the Indian territory, have a national legend, described in one of
the late Indian reports as a "weird song sung in a rising melancholy
strain"; it is sung at one of their great annual feasts, but as yet the
double-barrelled shotgun or the "handsomest blanket in Philadelphia,"
offered by Dr. Brinton for a translation, have not served to break the
reserve of the Indians familiar with the particular dialect in which it
is sung, and who say that its revelation would bring misfortune upon
the tribe.

The historical records of the Ojibways, says Ka-ge-ga-gah-bowh,
or George Copway, their native historian, were written in Indian
hieroglyphics upon "slate-rock, copper, lead, and the bark of birch
trees," and kept in three secret underground depositories near the
headwaters of Lake Superior, where, being disinterred and examined
every fifteen years by a committee of chiefs, the dimmed and decaying
pictographs were replaced by facsimiles.

It seems highly probable, in fact, that the solemn songs above, as well
as most of the important historical narratives of the Indian tribes,
have been repeatedly and variously recorded in eye-catching pictures
of men, animals, and natural objects, intended to refresh or jog the
memory of the singer or speaker, in his lengthy recitations to the
assembled tribe. And such a pictured song-chart, or reference-table we
may perhaps consider the carving on the reverse of the Lenape stone
(fig. 16), which, should it be, as we have supposed, a production
of the Lenni Lenape, would not unnaturally refer to the well-known
historical legend of that ancient people.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.]

This tradition of the Delawares, more interesting and suggestive
probably than any of these long-overlooked records of ancient North
America, has once at least, been recorded by Indians in pictographic
symbols; fortunately it has been preserved to us in full, and we can
compare it with the carving on the reverse of the Lenape stone (fig.
16), which we may suppose suggested to the mind of the Indian singer
versed in the art of picture-writing some at least of the events
remembered in his tradition.

Two versions of this wonderful Indian chronicle have been rescued from
oblivion. The first, far less complete than the other, was collected
from the Indians themselves by the Moravian missionary Heckewelder,
about 1800. It reads as follows: "The Lenni Lenape (according to
the traditions handed down to them by their ancestors) resided many
hundred years ago in a very distant country, in the western part of
the American continent. For some reason which I do not find accounted
for, they determined on migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set
out together in a body. After a very long journey, and many nights'
encampments by the way, they at length arrived at the Namaesi Sipu, or
River of Fish (from _namaes_, a fish, and _sipu_, a river)."

One of the first figures that catches our eye on looking at the
carvings is the unmistakable outline of a fish, (_a_), just beneath
the waving lines; (_b_) representing water at the left of the stone.
The tradition goes on to say that at this river the Delawares "fell in
with the Mengwe (Iroquois, or five nations), who had likewise emigrated
from a distant country, and had struck upon this river somewhat higher
up. Their object was the same with that of the Delawares; they were
proceeding on to the eastward until they should find a country that
pleased them. The spies which the Lenape had sent forward for the
purpose of reconnoitring, had long before their arrival discovered that
the country east of the Mississippi was inhabited by a very powerful
nation, who had many large towns built on the great rivers flowing
through their land. Those people (as I was told) called themselves
Talligeu or Talligewi. Colonel John Gibson, however, a gentleman
who has a thorough knowledge of the Indians, and speaks several of
their languages, is of opinion that they were not called Talligewi,
but Alligewi, and it would seem that he is right, from the traces of
their name, which still remain in the country, the Allegheny river and
mountains having indubitably been named after them. The Delawares still
call the former Alligewi Sipu, the River of the Alligewi."

"Many wonderful things are told of this famous people. They are said
to have been remarkably tall and stout, and there is a tradition that
there were giants among them, people of a much larger size than the
tallest of the Lenape. It is related that they had built to themselves
regular fortifications or intrenchments, from whence they would sally
out, but were generally repulsed.[H] * * * When the Lenape arrived on
the banks of the Mississippi, they sent a message to the Alligewi to
request permission to settle themselves in their neighborhood. This was
refused them, but they obtained leave to pass through the country and
seek a settlement farther to the eastward."

This agreement, that the Lenape should cross in peace, might have been
symbolized in the Muzzinabiks (rock writings) and historical song
records of any tribe, by the figure of the pipe (_c_) on the left of
the stone, just above the water, and opposite the fish.

"They accordingly began to cross the Namaesi Sipu," continues the
account, "when the Alligewi, seeing that their numbers were so very
great, and in fact they consisted of many thousands, made a furious
attack on those who had crossed, threatening them all with destruction
if they dared to persist in coming over to their side of the river.
Fired at the treachery of these people, and the great loss of men they
had sustained, and besides, not being prepared for a conflict, the
Lenape consulted on what was to be done--whether to retreat in the best
manner they could, or try their strength, and let the enemy see they
were not cowards, but men, and too highminded to suffer themselves
to be driven off before they had made a trial of their strength, and
were convinced that the enemy was too powerful for them. The Mengwe,
who had hitherto been satisfied with being spectators from a distance,
offered to join them on condition that, after conquering the country,
they should be entitled to share it with them. Their proposal was
accepted, and the resolution was taken by the two nations to conquer or
die. Having thus united their forces, the Lenape and Mengwe declared
war against the Alligewi, and great battles were fought, in which many
warriors fell on both sides."

This ancient alliance may have been symbolized to the mind of the
Delaware by the figures of the hawk (_e_), beneath which is seen (_f_)
perhaps a wampum belt, and of the turtle (_d_) in the central part
of the stone, and set in divisions formed by one intersecting and
four diverging lines. Devices of the "great Thunder-bird, whose eyes
were fire and glance lightning, and the motion of whose wings filled
the air with thunder," and of the "great turtle, upon whose back the
mother of the human race had been received from heaven," were common
in the mystic songs of the medas or priests, and their particular
significations in these incantations might have been almost endless
when we consider that to the initiated _Meda_ or _Josakeed_ (prophet)
the same sign calls up quite different ideas, as the theme of the
writer varies from war to love, or from the chase to medicine, or
prophecy. If, however, we refer the subject of the carving to history,
the hawk and turtle may well be viewed as the tokens or heraldic
badges of the chief actors in the story[I] (the Lenape and Mengwe).

As clan badges, both symbols were in common use among most of the
Indian tribes. The turtle clan, says Heckewelder, was the governing
family in any nation, and among the Delawares claimed an ascendency
over the wolf and turkey families on account of its superior antiquity
and relationship to "the great turtle, the Atlas of their mythology,
who bore the great island--the earth--upon its back."

The hawk totem, which of course the Delawares might have applied to
any people they chose, irrespective of its real emblem, occurred among
the Hurons, and in both the Seneca and Cayuga tribes of the Iroquois
confederacy; also among the Ojibways, Pottowatamies, Miamis, Abenakis,
Sacs, and Foxes, and in many other tribes.

The account goes on to say that "the enemy fortified their large
towns and erected fortifications, especially on large rivers and near
lakes, where they were successively attacked and sometimes stormed
by the allies. An engagement took place, in which hundreds fell, who
were afterwards buried in holes or laid together in heaps and covered
over with earth. No quarter was given, so that the Alligewi, at last,
finding that their destruction was inevitable if they persisted in
their obstinacy, abandoned the country to the conquerors and fled down
the Mississippi River, from whence they never returned. The war which
was carried on by this nation lasted many years, during which the
Lenape lost a great number of their warriors, while the Mengwe would
always hang back in the rear, leaving them to face the enemy."

In this description of a superior race of Indians, conquered after
a most desperate resistance, and whose memory still survives in the
great mountain chain to which they have given a name, we find a key
to the often-spoken-of mystery of the mound-builders and their sudden
disappearance.

The story of their long death-struggle and final overthrow by a horde
of savage invaders, as here given in the formal style of Heckewelder,
seems somewhat colored by his well-known partiality for the Delawares.
It is confirmed, as we shall see, by the evidence of other Indian
traditions and the study of their language, which seems to show
that this people,--the Alligewi or mound-builders--fleeing down the
Mississippi, were received and adopted by the Choctaws and Cherokees,
themselves in comparatively recent times a mound-building people, and
who thus have become in part their descendants.

A suggestion of these long and bloody wars, in which the Lenape did
most of the fighting, may be seen in the figure of the tomahawk (_g_)
just below the turtle,[J] and of the mound-builders themselves
perhaps, in the singular group of figures above the water on the left,
_i. e._, the outline of a mountain or mound on which a series of
numerical marks are faintly seen, a tablet inscribed with ten dots, two
diagonally intersecting lines, and five parallel marks or points.

"In the end," continues the account, "the conquerors divided the
country between themselves," as the wigwams (_h_ and _i_) above each
totem might denote. "The Mengwe made choice of the lands in the
vicinity of the great lakes" and on their tributary streams, again
suggested, perhaps, by the snow-shoe (_j_) "and the Lenape took
possession of the country to the south. For a long period of time--some
say many hundred years--the two nations resided peacefully in this
country and increased very fast. Some of their most enterprising
huntsmen and warriors crossed the great swamps, and falling on
streams running to the eastward, followed them down to the great Bay
River (Susquehannah), and thence into the bay itself, which we call
Chesapeak." As they pursued their travels, partly by land and partly
by water, in this primitive reconnaissance of the great wilderness now
our homes, journeying sometimes near and at other times on the "great
salt-water lake" (the sea), they finally discovered the river which we
call the Delaware.

"Thence exploring still eastward," continues the account, "they
discovered the Scheyichbi country, now named New Jersey, and at length
arrived at another great stream--that which we call the Hudson or
North River. Satisfied with what they had seen, they (or some of
them), after a long absence, returned to their nation and reported
the discoveries they had made. They described the country they had
discovered as abounding in game and various kinds of fruits, and the
rivers and bays with fish, tortoises, etc., together with abundance of
water-fowl, and no enemy to be dreaded. They considered the event as a
fortunate one for them, and concluding this to be the country destined
for them by the Great Spirit, they began to emigrate thither, as yet
but in small bodies, so as not to be straitened for want of provisions
by the way, some even laying by for a whole year. At last they settled
on the four great rivers (which we call Delaware, Hudson, Susquehanna,
and Potomac), making the Delaware, to which they gave the name of
'_Lenapewihittuck_,' (the river or stream of the Lenape), the centre of
their possessions."

Here the ancient portion of the chronicle and its parallelism with the
figures on the stone seems to end, the remainder being devoted to long
wars with the Mengwe, relations with the whites, and the more modern
events of the history of the tribe in the east.

The other figures upon the stone--the star (_k_), the calumet (_l_),
the deer (_m_), the curve crossed by three oblique lines (_n_),
probably a war canoe, and the fish-like figure (_o_) at the end of the
stone--are hardly suggested by the narrative, yet may refer to further
details of the passage of the Alleghenies, and the exploration and
settlement of the country to the east, along the great rivers and by
the sea-coast.

Far more interesting than Heckewelder's account, is a full version of
the great national song of the Lenape as they sung it in their own
language, with an English translation, and with all the pictographic
devices used to jog the memory of the singer. He may well have needed
them, as the whole song consists of two hundred and two verses.
It was first published in 1836 by the eccentric French-American
philosopher, Rafinesque, in an extravagant work by him entitled "The
American Nations," and is known as the Wallum Olum (literally, painted
sticks), or pictographic traditions of the Lenni Lenape. It contains
the Delaware account of the creation, a deluge, the early migrations
and entire history of the tribe, and one hundred and eighty-four
mnemonic symbols painted upon tablets of wood. "It was obtained" says
Rafinesque, "about 1822,--the symbols from a Dr. Ward of Indiana, who
had received them as a reward for a medical cure from the Delawares,
at Wahapani or White River, in 1820, and the verses from another
individual."

Mr. E. G. Squier, who considered the internal evidence furnished by the
songs sufficiently strong to settle their authenticity, submitted the
manuscript copy of the songs and pictographs in the hand of Rafinesque,
who it appears had never owned the original "painted sticks," to George
Copway, the Chippewa chief, who unhesitatingly, he says, pronounced it
authentic. This manuscript, together with the pictographs, of which
Rafinesque had published none, and Squier but forty, was considered
hopelessly lost until its fortunate discovery a few weeks ago by Dr.
Brinton, by whom it will shortly be published with a new translation.

Passing over its account of the creation and deluge, the narrative goes
on to describe the passage by the Lenape of a large body of water on
the ice (Behring's Straits, says Rafinesque), and their settlement at a
place called _Shinaki_, or the "Land of Firs."

After many generations of chiefs, continues the fourth song, during
which time they were continually engaged in wars with "_Snakes_"
(enemies), they wander from the fir land to the south and east, pass
over a hollow mountain _Oligonunk_ (Oregon, according to Rafinesque),
and at last "find food" at "_Shililaking_, the plains of the Buffalo
Land." Here they tarry and build towns and raise corn on the great
meadows of the _Wisawana_ (Yellow River). But after many wars with
"_Snakes_," "northern enemies," and "father snakes," of which we can
see a suggestion in the eel-like form (_p_) on the stone, they again
resume their migration towards the "sun-rising," and finally reach
the shores of the Messussipu,[K] or Great River, "which divides the
land." The accompanying pictograph for verse 49, descriptive of the
Great River, quite unlike the figure upon the stone, is here given
from the original drawing by Rafinesque, kindly furnished the writer
by Dr. Brinton (fig. 17). The narrative, of which we give the English
translation by Rafinesque, omitting the Delaware version, continues in
the original as follows:


49. The Great River (_Messussipu_) divided the land, and being tired,
they tarried there.

50. _Yagawanend_ (Hut-maker) was next _sakima_, and then the _Tallegwi_
were found possessing the east.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.]

51. Followed _Chitanitis_ (Strong-friend), who longed for the rich
east-land.

52. Some went to the east, but the _Tallegwi_ killed a portion.

53. Then all of one mind exclaimed: War, war!

54. The _Talamatan_ (not of themselves) and the _Nitilowan_ all go
united (to the war).

55. _Kinehepend_ (Sharp-looking) was their leader, and they went over
the river.

56. And they took all that was there, and despoiled and slew the
_Tallegwi_.

57. _Piniokhasuwi_ (Stirring-about) was next chief, and then the
Tallegwi were much too strong.

58. _Teuchekensit_ (Open-path) followed, and many towns were given up
to him.

59. _Paganchihilla_ was chief, and the _Tallegwi_ all went southward.

60. _Hattanwulaton_ (the Possessor) was _sakima_, and all the people
were pleased.

61. South of the lakes they settled their council-fire, and north of
the lakes were their friends the _Talamatan_ (Hurons?).

Nothing could be more interesting to the lover of American archaeology
than a study of this song--with the single exception perhaps of the
Lenape stone, the most remarkable Indian document in existence. The
latter part of the story here given, is even less suggestive than the
preceding portions, which we have been obliged to omit.

The generations of chiefs, which it recites in order, seem to include
thousands of years, and as we read its account of a creation and a
deluge, of the passage of a great water upon the ice, and an arrival
at a "Land of Firs," we almost pardon the extravagant speculations of
Rafinesque, to which it gave rise.

Both versions of the account tell the same story, yet there is one
striking difference between them. In the Heckewelder version the
allies of the Lenape are spoken of as "Mengwi" (Iroquois, _Mingoes_);
in the Wallum Olum as "Talamatan" (Hurons, called Delamattenos by the
Delawares); but the variance is reconciled when we consider that in
ancient times, as their language and traditions prove, the Hurons and
Iroquois were one closely allied nation, constituting one family or
linguistic stock.

We may doubt, however, whether the great river crossed in the
migration--"_Namaesi Sipu_" (Fish River) in Heckewelder, and
"_Messussipu_" in the Wallum Olum--referred to the Mississippi.

The Huron-Iroquois will tell us, when questioned, that at an early
period, and while the families were still united, his people, coming
originally from the northeast of Canada, migrated to the southward,
and had not come from the west across the Mississippi; he too has
traditions of crossing a river and attacking a race of mound-builders,
but the river of his account was crossed to the southward, and lay on
the north of the mound-builders' country. The Iroquois tradition is
given in a famous passage, supposed to refer to the mound-builders, in
the account of David Cusic, a native Iroquois, of the Tuscarora clan,
who wrote a history of his tribe. We give it here in the original,
uncorrected form, as published by Schoolcraft.

Referring to an early age of monsters, demi-gods, giants, and horned
serpents, when the Hurons and Iroquois were as yet but one people, and
they and other tribes, "the northern nations," possessed the banks
of the great lakes, "where there were plenty of beavers," but "where
the hunters were often opposed by the big _Snakes_," Cusic goes on to
say that "on one occasion the northern nations formed a confederacy,
and seated a great council-fire on the river St. Lawrence. Perhaps
about 2,200 years before the Columbus discovered the America, the
northern nations appointed a prince, and immediately repaired to the
south and visited the Great Emperor, who resided at the Golden City,
a capital of the vast Empire. After a time the Emperor built many
forts throughout his dominions, and almost penetrated the Lake Erie.
This produced an excitement; the people on the north felt that they
would soon be deprived of the country on the south side of the great
lakes. They determined to defend their country against any infringement
of foreign people; long, bloody wars ensued, which lasted about one
hundred years. The people of the north were too skilful in the use of
bows and arrows, and could endure hardships which proved fatal to a
foreign people; at last the northern nations gained the conquest, and
all the towns and forts were totally destroyed, and left them in the
heap of ruins."

It has been supposed that the upper St. Lawrence or Detroit River,
streams noticed by the Indians as abounding in fish, was the "Fish
River" of the Heckewelder tradition. Here, as we have seen according
to information collected from the Lenni Lenape, desperate battles had
taken place with the Allegwi, hundreds of whom were slain and buried
under mounds in that vicinity.[L]

Other considerations, too, induce us to suppose that the Lenape and
Huron-Iroquois invasion came from the northward and not from the west.
If we study the shape and position of the mounds themselves along the
southern shore of the great lakes, we find that they present often the
appearance of fortifications erected against the advance of an enemy
from the north, and suddenly abandoned after a long struggle. Also
the scattered implements and half-removed blocks of ore found in the
prehistoric copper mines on the south shore of Lake Superior, seemed to
indicate their hasty desertion by the miners upon the sudden inroad of
an enemy from that direction.

Again, the works of the mound-builders, though at some points
insignificant and hardly perceptible, extend considerably west of the
Mississippi, and probably would have been encountered by the advancing
Lenape before reaching that river, and had it been the stream meant it
would not have been spoken of as the boundary of the mound-builders'
empire.[M]

The Wallum Olum, however, with its hieroglyphics, does not end with
the brief extract given. Song five, consisting of fifty-eight verses,
recounts the details of the occupation by the conquerors of the Ohio
valley, and long wars with enemies denominated "_Father Snakes_,"
"_Stone Snakes_," and "_North Snakes_," whose pictograph in the
original manuscript is here given (fig. 18). They pass the Alleghenies,
and exploring the Chesapeake Bay and great rivers of "the large and
long east land," finally establish themselves on the Delaware, making
"_Maskekitong_," the rapids at Trenton, the centre of their dominions.
We have now reached the time of the coming of the whites, and the last
verses of the song speak in brief simplicity of a people who came from
somewhere, "and that which was white" (ships) "coming from the East
Sea."

[Illustration: FIG. 18.]

There is still another song--the sixth--continuing the chronicle and
recounting the melancholy story of the Lenape's contact with the
whites, and final westward journey to Ohio, where the records were
obtained. A narrative of sufferings and hard wrongs, whose recital by
the Indian had caused Heckewelder, as he said, "to feel ashamed that he
was a white man."

The symbols appended to the songs, and among which the forms of the
rectangle and circle frequently occur, end with the fifth song;
they appear very arbitrary, and it is certainly disappointing to
find that they bear no resemblance to the carvings upon the Lenape
stone, likewise, as we have supposed, productions of the Lenni Lenape
and dealing with the same subject. Yet we need not be surprised
when we consider the varied and often arbitrary methods of Indian
picture-writing.

In comparing the carvings on the reverse of the Lenape stone with the
Lenape and Huron-Iroquois traditions of their early migration and
struggle with the mound-builders, we have spoken only of probabilities.
Possibly these carvings may refer to the incantations of the prophets
and doctors, to songs for "medicine hunting," or charms against evil
spirits, and not to the history of the tribe, as recounted in the
Wallum Olum and the narratives of Heckewelder and Cusic. Possibly,
too, the modern Indians who have seen the carvings may have entirely
mistaken their subject, as similar signs are used in quite different
kinds of their picture-writing. Yet if we view the chief feature of
the Lenape stone--the mammoth picture--as an example of muzzinabik
or historical picture-writing, an attempt to explain the carvings on
the reverse of the stone as specimens of the same class of writings
does not seem extravagant. Viewed in the light of these legends, and
compared with the fragments of ancient Indian history which chance has
preserved to us, the carvings upon the Lenape stone vividly impress
upon our minds the reality of that dark period of our continent's past,
antecedent to the first coming of the white man, separated from us by
but a few centuries, yet where the boundary line between history and
geology becomes indistinct, when for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
years the Indian lived alone on the "great island," and while those
deep-rooted peculiarities of his character, which civilization has
failed to eradicate, were slowly growing out of his wilderness life.

The ancient presence of the Lenape is often remembered in the heart
of his former dominions. Along the shores of the beautiful river,
whose transatlantic name, applied also to his tribe, he resented, the
arrow-head and tomahawk, everywhere found upon sites of ancient camps
and fishing-grounds, tell of the long centuries of his possession. His
memory lingers in the name and poetry of our Indian summer; and in that
most delightful of autumnal seasons, when a warm wind blowing from the
abode of the Great Spirit stirs the fields of ripened maize, we may
see, where first the Indian's fancy must have seen it, a suggestion of
his head-dress of feathers in the graceful motion of the corn-stalks.
He is immortalized in richly melodious names of rivers, streams, and
mountains, and his memory is forever recalled in the yearly growth of
that noblest of American plants, the Indian corn.

In concluding here our view of the less distinct though not improbable
reference of the carvings on the reverse of the Lenape stone to the
ancient historical traditions of the Delawares, a brief review of the
subject of the foregoing pages may not be out of place.

We have seen that the stone was found at a spot situated in the ancient
territory of the Delawares, and where many articles of undoubted Indian
workmanship have been found,--among them two carved stones,[N]--that
similar aboriginal carvings of the hairy mammoth have been discovered
in Europe, and that a race of men, relics of whom have been found on
the Delaware river and in California, and who may or may not have been
the ancestors of the modern Indian, have existed in North America at
the time of the mammoth. Moreover, that as yet nothing is definitely
known as to the antiquity of the Indians' occupancy of our continent,
and that there is no geological evidence to prove that the mammoth
did not survive in America to a comparatively recent period. We have
seen further that the Indians in several of their traditions attribute
the mammoth bones seen by them on the Ohio to a great monster who was
destroyed by lightning, and that there is a similarity too strong to be
accidental between the Lenape tradition of the great Buffalo and the
carving on the stone; finally, we may see perhaps a reference in the
carvings on the reverse of the stone to the early Delaware traditions
of their migration to the eastward and wars with the mound-builders, as
detailed in Heckewelder's account, the "Wallum Olum," and David Cusic's
history.




APPENDIX.


STATEMENT OF BERNARD Z. HANSELL.

On the writer's second visit to Hansell, the latter was at his father's
farm. He stated that the photographs shown him were representations of
the stone, and said that he considered that he had been cheated. He
had had no idea of the stone's value, and declared that it was a "mean
trick," the purchase of all his relics--the stone included--for $2.50.
When it was explained to him that Mr. Paxon, the purchaser, had been as
ignorant as he in the matter at the time, he seemed satisfied.

On the third visit, February 10th, Hansell said:

   I am sure that I found the large piece first, in the spring of
   1872 (the year after my father bought the place--1871), and
   while "ploughing for oats" in the "corner" field, and near the
   corner where the by-road joins the Durham road--the roots of
   the last year's corn crop had shortly before been harrowed out.
   It was in April. When I saw it, it was lying on the top of the
   ground, a little to one side of the furrow. I stopped and picked
   it up; it seemed like "something different" from what I had ever
   found before. It was dirty--dirt stuck to the stone; by rubbing,
   I could see lines--"queer marks" over it. (When I afterward saw
   it at Mr. Paxon's, the latter had "cleaned it.")

   I am certain I saw an animal like an elephant on it before Mr.
   Paxon saw the stone. I carried it around a day or two in my
   pocket, and then put it in a box along with the other things;
   and whatever arrow-heads and other relics I found, I would put
   into the same box. The same day, I planted a corn-stalk into
   the ground to mark the place--a shower might wash out something
   else, I thought. I left the corn-stalk until the oats harvest,
   and then threw a stone there, but I soon came to know the place
   by heart. The box with the relics I kept locked up in my trunk,
   and I took care to keep it locked,--there were so many boys
   about. In the meantime, I was married. I showed the relics and
   stone to my wife, but she would not remember the elephant on the
   stone. I might have showed it to father, or might not, I am not
   sure. He would not remember. In the same field, I and others
   on the place found arrow-heads, coins (English and American
   pennies), and a part of a tomahawk or banner stone (sold to Mr.
   Paxon). I did not find any thing else in that field, but "gorget
   stones" without inscriptions, and round stone balls, with
   incisions on sides, were found near by.

   In the spring of 1881, Mr. Paxon asked me whether I had any
   Indian relics. I said that I had. I told him I would be at home
   on Sunday, and he came the next Sunday afternoon--about May or
   June, as nearly as I can recollect,--1881. I brought out the
   box of relics, and told him that I would sell him the perfect
   arrow-heads for ten cents, and the broken ones for five cents
   apiece. I had a broken tomahawk and a piece of another, and I
   laid them and the stone aside, and said I thought I would keep
   them. But he did not take much interest in the rest, and said he
   wanted all the relics. He did not look much at the arrow-heads,
   but he picked up the stone and turned it around, and wet his
   thumb and rubbed it. He did not say any thing about the stone.
   I did not much want to sell him the stone, for I never saw any
   thing like it before.

   But he said he would take all the relics or none for $2.50. So
   I let him have them. At the same time he asked me whether I had
   not the other piece; perhaps I had, he said, and did not know
   it. I told him that I had not.

   About a month after that time, he came by on foot and asked me
   whether I had found any thing more? I said that I had not. "If
   you do," he said, "keep it and give me the first chance."

   I always had the other piece in my mind, and when I went in the
   field I used to look for it. I would walk around the spot in a
   circle, for I thought some one might have picked it up and then
   thrown it away again.

   After we had cut the corn in the field, and as I went in to
   husk, I happened to pass near the place--I always remember the
   place,--I was thinking of the other piece, and was hardly in
   the field before I picked it up. I noticed the marks and the
   shape, and saw at once that it was the missing piece. It had
   notches around the edges. I put it in my pocket and laid it in
   the drawer. My wife never saw it. It was the little piece. I was
   married then and in my own house, and there was nobody about the
   house, so I did not lock it up.

   This was in the fall--after the exhibition at Doylestown
   (October), in 1881. When I went down to Mr. Paxon's father's,
   Squire Paxon's, to pay my tax, on the 9th of November, 1881, I
   took this piece along. Young Mr. Paxon was not at home, but I
   waited till he came back. I said I had something "pretty nice"
   for him, and showed him the missing piece. He thought when he
   saw it that I would make him pay pretty dear for it, but I told
   him that I would give it to him. I had not rubbed or cleaned it.
   He put the pieces together and said "that is the missing piece."
   He took me up to his room and gave me some minerals. I advised
   him to glue the pieces together with "hickory cement." I had
   some of this cement at home, and offered to give it to him.

   The next spring I saw the stone again, all washed and cleaned.
   It did not look altered--only clean and rubbed off. I saw it
   again this February (1884), when you and Mr. Paxon came to see
   me, and I saw no change in it.

   I never sold a relic before I sold those to Harry Paxon, and
   never knew any one from Philadelphia that took any interest in
   Indian relics. I used to give things away to relatives of mine,
   often boys--my cousins, when they came up from town. They had
   never seen any thing like an arrow-head before. I never gave a
   stone to any one but a relative. William Hansell, my brother, a
   little boy, saw me pick up the small piece of the Lenape Stone.
   I never heard of any one in this neighborhood interested in
   Indian relics before Mr. Paxon.

   The first things that I remember giving away were a couple of
   black arrow-heads that I gave to James Aikens, in 1871. He lives
   in Germantown. This was before I found the stone.

       [Signed]                    BERNARD Z. HANSELL.

           Sworn to before
   BENJAMIN S. RICH, J. P., Nov. 6, 1884.

The writer questioned Hansell's wife. She remembered his having shown
her the relics before they were sold to Mr. Paxon, but had paid no
attention to "these little stones he picks up," and did not remember
whether "this stone you are talking about" was among them or not. The
writer also questioned Hansell's father and mother. Neither had seen
the stone. The boy, William Hansell, brother of Bernard, said that he
had seen the little piece when Bernard picked it up, but had never seen
the large piece of the stone. The piece he had seen was covered with
dirt and mud, and had "half a hole" in it. Bernard had told him that he
was going to give it to Mr. Paxon.


STATEMENT OF MR. HENRY D. PAXON.

   I remember Hansell telling me of his Indian relics at my
   father's office. I went to see him on a Sunday, and he showed
   me, in the wood-shed, a tobacco-box half full of relics, among
   them the large piece of the Lenape Stone. At the time I never
   realized what it was. It was covered with dirt, as were all the
   relics. There must have been about two hundred arrow-heads,
   broken and perfect, besides a broken axe and fragments of a
   banner stone, and one or two large spears and so-called "gigs."
   The stone struck me as an extraordinary Indian relic. Buying
   the relics, I brought them home that Sunday afternoon, and at
   once showed them to my father. He saw the elephant. Whether I
   had noticed it before I cannot remember. Mr. John S. Ash saw
   this first piece--the large piece--before Capt. Bailey saw it. I
   showed it to any and everybody that came to my father's office,
   but can only be sure now of Mr. Ash. Capt. Bailey saw it and
   borrowed it while preparing his article. I had it at the Bucks
   County Bi-Centennial Exhibition, August 31, September 1 and 2,
   1882. I did not particularly value the stone until I read Capt.
   Bailey's article. I cleaned out the soil which clung to the
   stone with a toothbrush, and may also have used a stick--but I
   think not a nail.

  [Signed]                     HENRY D. PAXON.

      Sworn to before
  ELIAS EASTBURN, J. P., Nov. 8, 1884.


STATEMENT OF MR. ALBERT PAXON.

   Young Hansell and his father were at my house on business (I
   am Justice of the Peace). They had rented a house. I think it
   was on a Saturday in '80 or '81, in the summer. The next day
   my son went to Hansell's and brought back a large number of
   Indian relics. He had invested two or three dollars in them.
   In the lot was one of the pieces of the stone. I remember
   saying that it was a pity he had not the other half. The lines
   were not cleaned out. I recollect the elephant. He emptied
   the relics on the floor of the piazza. It was early summer,
   and warm weather--about May or June,--and I think on Sunday.
   I am certain of having seen the elephant the first day he got
   the stone. Bernard Hansell, I find in my book, paid his tax
   November 8, '81, but I am not positive in these dates to a
   day. There is not, and never has been, to my knowledge, any
   strange or suspicious person of an "archaeological turn" in this
   neighborhood, and there is no one here clever enough to have
   made the stone.

  [Signed]                    ALBERT S. PAXON.

       Affirmed before
  JAMES GILKYSON, J. P., Nov. 8, 1884.


STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN S. ASH, OF GREENVILLE,

NOVEMBER 8, 1884.

   At the time of my first seeing the Lenape Stone, I observed an
   elephant or mammoth carved upon the fragment. I cannot now fix
   the date of my first seeing this piece. Probably it was some
   three years since, though it may not be two and may be four. I
   think it was before the Bucks County Bi-Centennial Exhibition.

  [Signed]                        JOHN S. ASH.

      Affirmed before
  ELIAS EASTBURN, J. P., Nov. 8, 1884.


STATEMENT OF CAPT. J. S. BAILEY.

   I saw the stone first, I think, in November, in the fall of
   1881, and a few days after Mr. Paxon had obtained the second
   piece. He had said to me that he had a curious stone which he
   wished to show me. I remember his mentioning the figure of a
   turtle, a snake, and an elephant carved on the stone, although
   he did not first mention the elephant figure or show that he
   appreciated the mammoth. It was not till he had read my article
   in the county newspaper that he came to know the value of the
   carving. He was only eighteen or nineteen then, and I believe
   would have sold the stone for a comparatively trifling sum.
   As soon as I took the stone home, after Mr. Paxon had lent it
   to me, all my family saw it. Judge Paxon, his uncle, did not
   realize its archaeological importance, neither did Mr. Paxon,
   the owner's father. I showed it to Judge Paxon before I wrote
   the article. The first time Mr. Harry Paxon showed me the
   stone I remember his saying that "he could sell it for five
   dollars." He wanted me to glue or cement the pieces together,
   but I discountenanced the plan. I think he must have scraped
   out the original soil clinging to it with a nail or some sharp
   instrument, and I told him that he had cleaned the lines too
   much and that the stone had lost the look of age. The next
   time I saw it he had filled the lines with clay, and this I
   advised him to remove, as it did not resemble the soil of the
   original field. So the next time I saw it he had cleaned it
   again. I took the stone to the January or April meeting of the
   Bucks County Historical Society, 1882, and showed it to all the
   members present. I showed it to Gen. Davis, who advised me in
   connection with it to prepare an article on the Indian relics
   found in Bucks County, to be read before the July meeting at
   Penn's Manor. A few days after that I returned the stone to Mr.
   Paxon. Somewhere in June or July (1882) I borrowed it again, and
   kept it until two or three weeks after the meeting at Pennsbury.
   This meeting was on the third Tuesday in July, 1882. Mr. Paxon
   did not go to the meeting, but after reading my article in the
   paper he set a higher value on his relic and wished me to return
   it. I do not recollect seeing either part separately. The two
   pieces were together when I first saw it. I think Hansell told
   me that the large part had been found first. Very many people
   saw the stone at my lecture at Penn's Manor. I had a large
   diagram of the inscription, several feet long. Two hundred
   people must have seen it. There was an article in the Bucks
   County _Intelligencer_ about it, and it was at the Bi-Centennial
   and there seen by everybody.

    [Signed]                   JOHN S. BAILEY.

         Affirmed to before
  ELIAS EASTBURN, J. P., Nov. 8, 1884.

Letter from Dr. D. G. Brinton, Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology in
the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.

_To the Editor of the Bucks County "Intelligencer"_:

   The discussion in your paper about the so-called "Lenape Stone,"
   in which my name has incidentally been introduced, leads me to
   address you a few lines on some archaeological points, especially
   on the methods of distinguishing genuine from fabricated
   specimens. I shall only refer to the Lenape Stone by way of
   illustration. It was first shown to me by Professor Lewis, and
   after a careful inspection I pronounced it a modern piece of
   work, which opinion has been substantiated by later observers.
   My opinion was based, first, on the design, and secondly, on the
   execution. It may be laid down as a rule, holding good in all
   aboriginal designs of the Eastern United States, that no lines
   indicating either shading or rounding are found on figures of
   pure native origin. Every line was significant, and nothing was
   done for affect. Grouping was also unknown, and any such triple
   arrangement as the brute, the human, and the divine groups,
   standing in immediate relation to each other and forming parts
   of a picture, as appears on the Lenape Stone, was as far above
   aboriginal aesthetic conceptions as the Sistine Madonna would
   be above the execution of a sign-painter. Certain artistic
   details, as the lightnings shooting in various directions from
   a central point (as from the hand of Jove), were also unknown
   to the art notions of the red race. The treatment of the sun as
   a face, with rays shooting from it, I also consider foreign to
   the pictography of the Delaware Indians, nor have I yet seen any
   specimens proved to be of their manufacture that present it. It
   is found, indeed, in Chippeway pictography, but there only in
   late examples.

   The execution of such imitations also usually betrays their
   origin. The lines on the Lenape Stone are obviously cut with a
   metal instrument, making clean incisions, deepest in the centre
   and tapering to points--quite different from the scratch of a
   flint point. Shrewder fabricators than the unknown author of
   this one make use of flint points. Some of the Western "tablets"
   have been so inscribed. They may thus conceal their tools, but
   there are other resources for the archaeologist. The surface of
   all stones undergoes a certain chemical change on exposure to
   the air, which is called by the French term _patine_. In many
   varieties, as flints, jasper, and hard shales, this affords
   a decisive means of discriminating a modern from an ancient
   inscription or arrow-head. It requires the use of the microscope
   and some practice, but with these most of such impostures can
   be detected. This does not exhaust the resources at the command
   of the antiquary to circumvent those who would practise on his
   love for relics of the past. But I have said enough to show that
   opinions on relics need neither be vague nor prejudiced. It is
   most desirable that the citizens of our Commonwealth should
   take an earnest interest in the collection of our aboriginal
   remains, and it is gratifying to learn that Bucks County is not
   behindhand in this direction.

                Respectfully yours,
    [Signed]                   D. G. BRINTON, M.D.

  From the Bucks County _Intelligencer_
         of Sept. 6, 1884.

Letter from Mr. H. Carvill Lewis, Professor of Mineralogy, Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 19, 1884.

CAPT. J. S. BAILEY:

   _Dear Sir_:--Upon careful examination I am convinced that the
   mammoth on the Indian tablet is a forgery, being copied directly
   from the drawing of a mammoth on a piece of ivory found in the
   cave of La Madeleine, Perigord, France. The tablet is genuine,
   but the drawing upon it is recent.

   Who do you think perpetrated this fraud?

              Yours, very truly,
  [Signed]                  H. CARVILL LEWIS.

Letter from Dr. F. W. Putnam, Curator of the Peabody Museum of
Archaeology, Cambridge, Mass.

CAMBRIDGE, March 17, 1884.

DEAR MR. MERCER:

   In answer to your request, I put on paper a few thoughts in
   relation to the carved gorget of slate said to have been found
   in Bucks Co., Penna. It is needless to say that I have examined
   the stone with great care; for if it is a work of prehistoric
   times in America, it is a specimen of very great archaeological
   interest. The first impression I received was that it was
   probably a fraud. This was of course natural, after having
   seen several gorgets with figures carved upon them which were
   unquestionable frauds. I therefore first of all examined the
   stone, and was sorry to find that it had been so much cleaned,
   and rubbed, and scrubbed, and probably oiled, that no evidence
   could be derived from the character of the lines cut upon the
   surface of the stone, or from the stone itself, bearing upon
   its antiquity. So far as the testimony of the stone itself is
   concerned, the lines may have been cut within a few weeks or
   many years ago. Throwing out of consideration all the facts you
   have given me in relation to the history of the stone as known
   to you, I am left with the character of the carvings alone upon
   which to draw conclusions. From a study of these I get the
   following results:

   1st. The person who carved the stone must have been familiar
   with the appearance of an elephant or mammoth, either from
   having seen one or the other in life or represented in pictures.
   There is too much expression given to the details of outline of
   forehead, curve of back and belly, and position of the legs,
   representing the animal as walking, to be the work of one who
   only knew the animal from a general description handed down by
   tradition.

   2d. Most of the other figures on both sides of the stone are of
   a character common to Indian picture-writing, but there are a
   few which, like the "mammoth," show an appreciation of details
   or ideas unlike any I can recall in Indian picture-writings.
   Take, for example, the fish on the edge of the small piece, and
   the long eel-like figure by the side of the bird--each of these
   have a few hair-lines drawn from the back as if to represent
   the rays of fins, in order to impress the character of a fish,
   although the rays are out of natural position. The figure of a
   man on his back under the foot of the "mammoth" is not drawn in
   the usual conventional manner, like the figure of the man with
   the bow.

   3d. The idea of the heavens, conveyed by the figures of stars,
   moon, and sun, is probably not an unusual way of representing
   the sky or the heavens, but the mass of crossed lines near the
   sun, which are supposed to represent lightning, seems to me to
   be more the conventional symbol of the white man than the Indian.

   Considering all these points I draw these conclusions:

   1st. The carvings were made in ancient times by an Indian of
   superior artistic skill, who had seen a living mammoth, and
   who wished to preserve some myth or tradition relating to the
   animal, in picture-writing upon his gorget; or,

   2d. The carvings were made by an Indian in comparatively recent
   times, with the same idea of preserving a myth about the "great
   beast," and he was aided in his work by some white man; or,

   3d. That the carving is the work of some white man in very
   recent times, who may or may not have known of the myth and
   tradition of the Indians relating to the "mammoth."

   An attempt to read the stone as a pictograph illustrating the
   myth of the "great beast" may be going too far, but if it can be
   shown to be a piece of Indian work beyond reasonable doubt, the
   interpretation of the figures in that connection is certainly
   legitimate from the remarkable coincidence between them and the
   myth.

   I certainly hope you will bring every possible evidence to bear
   in your work, and that by a study of many pictographs you will
   be able to test the doubtful figures on the stone.

              Yours very truly,
  [Signed]                 F. W. PUTNAM,
                      Curator Peabody Museum.

Extracts from a report of an examination of the Lenape Stone by Dr.
M. E. Wadsworth, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The answers are Dr.
Wadsworth's.

Q. Are the carvings made by steel or flint instruments?

A. The depth and regularity of the carvings indicate that they were
made by some dulled steel tool like an awl.

Q. Are the carvings later than the fracture of the ends and the middle?

A. Later--for the tool-mark can be seen at one end striking across the
broken surface, and lines crossing the middle fracture do not match on
both sides. On one side they pass down on the rounded and worn surface
of the fracture, below their position on the other side. This is seen
in all the marks (three only) crossing the line of fracture. One other
line sinks down on one side, and ends against the fractured portion
opposite. This appears to have been made after the fracture by holding
the pieces together. It is very remarkable that the line of fracture
should cross the specimen at the only place it could and intersect the
minimum number of the lines of carving. Even in two of those cuts, the
fracture breaks across the point where they cross one another. * * *

  [Signed]                  M. E. WADSWORTH.

  Cambridge, Massachusetts,
      March 17, 1884.

Extracts from a report of an examination of the Lenape Stone by Mr. J.
P. Iddings, of the U. S. Coast Survey. The answers are Mr. Iddings'.

Q. Can it be decided beyond reasonable doubt whether the carvings were
made with a steel or flint instrument--is there a great probability
either way?

A. I do not know.

Q. Are the carvings beyond a reasonable doubt later than the fracture
in the middle--(or other fractures)?

A. They appear to be later than the middle fracture; they do not lie
at the same depth on the edges of both pieces. The small arrow's shaft
does not appear to have been a continuous line. It is interesting to
note that the middle fracture only crosses three lines on one side and
none on the other side, and that in no other position could one happen
without cutting half a dozen or more. The carvings appear to have been
arranged with reference to the break.

  [Signed]                  JOSEPH P. IDDINGS.

  New York, March 24, 1884.

Letter from Dr. F. W. Putnam referring to the two carved stones (figs.
19 and 20) found on the Hansell Farm in the summer of 1884.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Oct. 30, 1884.

DEAR MR. MERCER:

   I have examined the two specimens you have placed in my hands
   from the Hansell Farm, Bucks Co., Penn., and see no reason to
   doubt their authenticity. The lines cut upon them seem to have
   been made a long time since, as exhibited by the weatherings
   within the incisions. One stone seems first to have been
   designed for a perforated ornament, but not completed, and was
   afterwards used as a rubbing implement, as shown by the notches
   on the edge. The other stone is of a natural form, in which two
   holes have been drilled, and on one surface a number of waves
   and zigzag lines were cut, evidently for the purpose of using
   the stone for an ornament.

              Yours very truly,
  [Signed]                 F. W. PUTNAM.

       *       *       *       *       *

The reader is referred to a series of articles mentioning the Lenape
Stone in the Bucks County _Intelligencer_ of August 9, 23, and 30, and
September 20, 1884, and headed, "Who Perpetrated the Forgery?" also to
a personal discussion which took place in the columns of that newspaper
between the owner of the Stone and Mr. H. C. Lewis, of the Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, in which arise various questions of
veracity as to the facts of an interview which had taken place between
them--_i. e._, whether Mr. Lewis had or had not wished to buy the Stone,
and how long he had been allowed the loan of it; whether he had or had
not been permitted to take photographs; and whether he or Mr. Paxon
had scratched the surface of the Stone "to see its inside structure."

After a fair consideration of every fact bearing upon the case, and
with ample knowledge to judge of the particulars of this interview at
the time it took place, personal considerations prevent the writer
from discussing the merits of this controversy, purely personal in its
nature and irrelevant to the question before us.


EVIDENCE OF AN HONEST DISCOVERY.

The first evidence to be certain of in a case of this kind is doubtless
that deducible from the circumstances attending the discovery itself,
and upon it, in the present instance, for the reason that the Stone has
been cleaned, and all vestiges of the soil which originally clung to it
unfortunately removed, we must chiefly depend.

The fact that several persons saw the first fragment immediately after
it left Hansell's hands, throws back the period of possible doubt as
to its authenticity to the nine years of his ownership, while the
remarkable skill and archaeological knowledge necessary to forge such
a stone place him as the possible maker of the carvings above the
slightest suspicion. The motive of gain must be eliminated from the
possibilities of the case, when we consider the trifling sum received
by Hansell for the relics, and the fact that the small piece was
presented by him to the present owner, while the supposition that he
could have been in collusion with any person unknown for the purpose
of a practical joke is rendered impossible by his own honest simplicity
and the conduct of his family and friends throughout. Again, no one
clever enough to have made the relic could have been a neighbor of
Hansell's and remained unknown or unsuspected, and it is quite absurd
to suppose that some one from a distance, having entrusted the fortunes
of so elaborate a practical joke to the fragments of this small stone,
would have "planted" the results of his labor in Buckingham Township,
Bucks County, where the chances were very strongly against its being
brought to the notice of archaeologists, even if discovered.


OBJECTIONS OF ARCHAEOLOGISTS.

From the _a-posteriori_ point of view--_i. e._, from the character
and appearance of the carving, there are objections which have been
considered important to the Stone's authenticity; these the writer has
carefully noted, and will allow them to speak for themselves.

First, in the opinion of Messrs. M. E. Wadsworth, of Cambridge, and
Joseph P. Iddings, of the United States Coast Survey, the carvings were
made after the Stone was broken. The fact is proved, they say, by the
appearance of certain lines crossing the fracture, as in the case of
the lightning above the hole on the right, which, when exposed to the
microscope, seem as they cross to descend into it.

Secondly, the fracture, they say, crosses the minimum number of
carvings as if they had been arranged with reference to it.

Thirdly, the mammoth on the Stone resembles the La Madeleine carving.

As to the first point--the carving being later than the fracture,--Dr.
F. W. Putnam (of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.) observes, on
the other hand: "It is possible that an Indian might have made his
carving on a broken gorget, and there is no reason why he should have
discontinued his work if the gorget were broken during the carving,
a likely thing to happen,"--nor, we may add, need it be difficult to
suppose that the Indian would have glued the pieces together or cleaned
out the grooves crossing the fracture. In such a case the instrument
would naturally have broken somewhat into the fracture--"sinking down,"
as Dr. Wadsworth says, "and ending against the fractured portion
opposite," while the subsequent weathering and brushing might account
for the slight difference in level of the lines on either side of
the break. Again, supposing the mammoth carving to have been made
before the fracture, the carvings on the reverse of the Stone, and
the apparently meaningless scratch below the perforation, which, as
it were, skips the fracture, may have been made long after it. As Dr.
Putnam says: "The fact that a very large number of perforated stones
are broken when found is worthy of consideration, and also that in
most cases the fracture is through one of the holes." As regards the
resemblance of the mammoth on the Stone to the La Madeleine carving,
a point which after a careful examination of all the facts struck
Professor Shaler, of Harvard, as suspicious, there is certainly in the
outline of the tail and the indicisive drawing of the back a great
similarity in the treatment of the two figures; while, on the other
hand, as Dr. Charles Rau, of the Smithsonian Institute, supposes, the
resemblance may perhaps be ascribed to accident, the drawing of the
head, ear, trunk, and hair being, as he suggests, totally dissimilar.
The seeming repetition of the outline of the back in the two figures
may perhaps be looked upon as a suggestion of the mane-like ridge of
hair, which, as seen in some of the reconstructions, extended along the
back of the animal from the neck to the tail; and it may be observed
that any two profile drawings of the same animal, as realistic as the
above, would naturally possess striking points of resemblance. Dr. D.
G. Brinton, of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, objects,
in a letter above quoted to the Bucks County _Intelligencer_, that
"no lines indicating shading or rounding are found in the aboriginal
designs of pure native origin in the Eastern United States," that
in these designs grouping was unknown, and that "any such triple
arrangement as the brute, the human, and the divine groups standing in
immediate relation to each other and forming parts of a picture, was
far above aboriginal aesthetic conceptions," that "lightnings shooting
from a central point (as from the hand of Jove) were unknown to the
art-notions of the red race," and that "the treatment of the sun as
a face with rays shooting from it, I also consider foreign to the
pictography of the Delaware Indians; nor have I yet seen any specimens
proved to be of their manufacture that present it. It is found, indeed,
in Chippeway pictography, but there only in late examples."

To this we can only say that nothing is more common than "grouping" in
the pictography of our modern Western Indians, while the more ancient
pictographs of the pre-Columbian Indian, a study of which would be
necessary in forming definite opinions, as to their character, have
been almost entirely lost to us.

These were probably very rarely carved upon stone or made upon any
thing but the most perishable materials, and few have survived the
bigotry or indifference of the early settlers and explorers. Their
character is, we think, not fully represented by the meagre data
furnished us from the allusions of the early writers, the Chippeway
bark records, the "wallum olum," or the rock inscriptions now within
the student's reach, and from which we are left to draw our conclusions
as to the evolution of "grouping" or "shading," or the ability of the
Indian to treat the sun, moon, and stars, or lightning.

There could have been no great mental chasm, we think, between the
aesthetic conceptions of the modern Sioux or Comanche, who pictures a
buffalo hunt on his robe, and those of his pre-Columbian red brother,
who, as Loskiel says, painted his "bedeutende figuren" on the trees of
a Pennsylvania forest.

Domenich says, in the "History of North America," p. 426:

"We have seen painted upon bark the representation of a Chippeway
emigration, passing through rivers, forests, and mountains, on their
way from the borders of a lake to a more civilized country; above the
river were creeks and trees, symbols of forests, and tumuli indicating
mountains; finally, on top of the picture a dozen animals, totems of
the Chippeway chiefs, each with a heart in his breast."

The same author says, again: "One seldom sees a garment on which there
is not a drawing in black, yellow, red, white, or blue, representing
guns, lances, heads of hair, arrows, shields, the sun, moon, men,
horses, roads, etc., and sometimes mythological objects."

Possessed as we elsewhere find of a considerable power of delineation
of which our present extremely insufficient vestiges can give us no
adequate idea, and having already conceived the idea of a "brute,
human, and divine group" in his numerous traditions of a great monster,
the enemy of man, destroyed by divine wrath and lightnings, we can
by no means think that the ancient Delaware would have found it more
difficult than the Chippeway mentioned above, to express his conception
in a rude picture involving such a triple grouping.


TREATMENT OF THE SUN IN INDIAN PICTOGRAPHY.

As to the "treatment of the sun," we find faces with rays, or divergent
curves, in Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 362, figs. 16 and 17, and p. 409,
fig. 9; vol. iii., p. 493,--a circle with rays in the rock inscription
(Delaware perhaps) on the Susquehanna near the Maryland line, a face
without rays in the rock inscription (also Delaware, possibly) at Safe
Harbor on the Susquehanna, and a face with rays, the counterpart of the
carving in question, on a small broken tablet found near Akron, Ohio,
in the collection of the late Mr. Dupont, of Philadelphia, who had no
doubt of its authenticity.


LIGHTNING IN INDIAN PICTOGRAPHY.

The marks in the picture evidently representing forked lightning, and
directed as in the language of the tradition at the forehead of the
beast, are without parallel among the Indian pictographs within the
writer's reach. The symbolic snake, or barbed zigzag of the Moquis--the
only Indian lightning that the writer has been able to find--differs
greatly from this, yet there seems no good reason why the Indian should
not have sometimes represented lightning as he saw it.


LINES CUT BY STEEL AND FLINT INSTRUMENTS.

As to the steel-cut appearance of the lines, Dr. Brinton says: "The
lines on the Lenape Stone are obviously cut with a steel instrument,
making clean incisions, deepest in the centre and tapering to points,
quite different from the scratch of a flint point"; and Dr. M. E.
Wadsworth thinks that "the depth and regularity of the carvings
indicate that they were made with some dulled steel tool like an
awl." On the other hand Mr. J. E. Iddings does not know whether it is
possible thus to distinguish the work of steel and flint instruments,
and a series of experiments with the microscope and steel and flint
points has induced the writer to believe that lines cut on a similar
stone by "a dulled steel instrument" and a flint arrow-point cannot be
distinguished after both have been washed and scrubbed.

The appearance of such lines would of course depend much upon the
sharpness of the flint or steel point, the kind of stone used, and
whether the lines were cut by one or by a series of strokes. The single
scratch of a scissors point on a shale tablet of similar hardness
makes an incision in shape like the letter V; that of either an awl or
flint arrow-head one like the letter U; while any line made by either
instrument and consisting of a series of strokes will have its bottom
furrowed by parallel grooves, as in the case of the large lines on the
Lenape Stone.

The fresh flint-cut grooves, however, when separately examined with the
microscope, exhibit many faint scratches running along the furrow, not
so conspicuous in the steel incisions, yet a few applications of soap,
water, and a scrubbing-brush efface these scratches in both cases,
and render the surface of the grooves indistinguishably alike and in
appearance similar to the now polished incisions upon the Lenape Stone.
In other respects the scratch of the arrow-head can be made of equal
depth, clearness, and regularity, the flint point, if held carefully,
not appearing to tear the edges of the incision more than the awl.
Moreover, we can cause the flint-cut line to "taper to a point" or not,
as we choose.


NEWLY DISCOVERED INDIAN CARVINGS FROM THE HANSELL FARM.

Strongly in support of the authenticity of the Lenape Stone and
its honest discovery, are the two carved stones, figs. 19 and 20,
recently discovered on the Hansell Farm, while the present paper was
preparing, and proving that, however rare in other localities, small
stones were not infrequently carved in this neighborhood. Dr. Putnam
"sees no reason to doubt their authenticity," and Professor Shaler,
of Harvard College, to whom the writer has shown fig. 19, says: "If,
upon comparing the incised lines with those on the Lenape Stone, it
appears that they have the same character--_i. e._, the same shape of
furrow,--then you will undoubtedly add a good deal to the weight of
evidence in favor of the antiquity of the other ornament."

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Carved "Gorget" from the Hansell Farm.]

Considering, however, the variety of lines which may be cut with a
flint instrument, we would hesitate to assign great importance to this
comparison. An examination with the microscope proves that the lines
on the gorget, fig. 19, are not so neatly and deeply cut as those on
the Lenape Stone, and that the bottoms of the grooves are more rounded.
While most of the lines on the banner stone, fig. 20, "tapering into
points," seem as deeply and clearly cut as those of the mammoth
outline, the microscope shows few, if any, scratches on the surface of
the grooves, which bear all the traces of long exposure to the weather.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Carved Banner Stone from the Hansell Farm.]


OPINION OF INDIANS.

The writer has made several efforts to obtain opinions upon the Lenape
Stone from modern Indians, particularly Delawares, in the West and in
Canada. Mr. Horatio Hale, of Toronto, who kindly showed photographs
of the carvings to several Indians in Canada, among whom were some
very intelligent Delawares, says that "they thought that the Stone
showed Indian workmanship, and would have been inclined to consider it
authentic but for the mammoth, which perplexed them. They had never
heard of such a creature, and, fearing a hoax, were shy of saying much
about the symbols on the reverse side of the Stone; the pipes would
naturally, they said, indicate a treaty; the snow-shoe, that some of
the tribes concerned came from the North; and the tortoise, hawk, deer,
etc., would be the marks or totems of the different tribes; with regard
to the doubtful figures, they could give no explanation."

Of course, the value of these opinions would in each case depend
upon the tribe to which the Indian belonged, and how far his former
knowledge of a pictographic art or the traditions of his race may have
been lost by many years of contact with the whites.


INDIAN PIPE-FORMS.

The strong resemblance of the pipe figure (_l_) to the modern Sioux
calumets, made of catlinite or red pipe-stone from the famous quarry
in Southwestern Minnesota, has been spoken of as another objection
to the authenticity of the Stone. The form does not occur, as far
as the writer can learn, in any of the ancient rock-writings of the
eastern Algonkins, and no pipes of exactly the Sioux shape, which Mr.
E. A. Barber, of Philadelphia, considers the most modern of Indian
pipe-forms, have as yet been discovered in the ancient Delaware era,
nor even in the mounds.

On the other hand, the profile of the Sioux form itself could not
more closely correspond with the minute outline, which is too small,
perhaps, to be taken very strictly, than does the _profile_ of fig.
21--a pipe now in the Archaeological Museum, at Salem, Mass., and found
by Dr. Putnam, in an ancient Indian grave near Beverly, Mass.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.]

The other pipe figure on the stone might easily have been suggested by
the form from the mounds, with a slightly curved base (fig. 22), now in
the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Mass., and discovered in a mound in
Ohio.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]


INDIAN PICTURE-WRITING.

Schoolcraft, who has been more explicit than other writers respecting
the picture-writings of the North American Indians, speaks of two
distinct pictographic systems among the Algonkin tribes, called by
them respectively _Kekeewin_ and _Kekeenowin_. The first appeared to be
their method of recording facts of every-day occurrence, and embraced
the heraldic devices used upon the grave posts--the communications
written upon birch bark, and the caution marks, itinerary, hunting, and
war records inscribed upon the trunks of blazed trees by travelling
bands, to communicate intelligence to their comrades in the forest.
These writings, the signs of which were carefully taught to the
young, like the language of signs common at present to a majority of
the Western tribes, could be understood by any Indian. Loskiel, the
Moravian missionary, who makes frequent mention of picture records,
states that "it gave the Indians great pleasure if one halted on coming
to such a tree, and listened to their description of the great chief
and his exploits thereon inscribed."

The Kekeenowin, on the other hand,--the pictographic system of
the prophets, jugglers, and medicine-men,--was far less generally
understood by the Indians themselves. It was the method used in the
historical records, sung before the tribe at religious feasts and
dances, and was likewise invariably employed in the incantations of the
priests, prophets, and medicine-men, of which Schoolcraft gives seven
kinds relating to medicine, necromancy, revelry, hunting, prophecy,
war, and love.

The chief characteristic of the Kekeenowin is the fact that in it each
symbol recalled to the mind of the reader learned in the art a song,
previously committed to memory by him in connection with the symbol,
and the general idea of which was more or less arbitrarily connected
with it. "The words of the song," says James, in his appendix to
Tanner's narrative, "were not variable, but must be learned by heart,
otherwise though from an inspection of the figure the idea might
be comprehended, no one would know what to sing." The main object,
however, was the preservation of the songs, which the priests, on
consulting their birch-bark scrolls or painted wooden tablets, were
thus enabled to sing at the great feasts, giving the many verses in
their proper order. The connection between the symbol and the idea
expressed by the song was often beyond the power of divination to the
uninitiated, and the key to these sacred incantations, a knowledge of
the songs, once lost, could never be recovered, as it was doubtless far
from the intention of the priests that the uninitiated Indian should
divine their mysteries from an inspection of the symbols. It was only
upon the payment of many beaver skins, says Tanner in his narrative,
that he was permitted to learn the mystic signification of the
twenty-seven symbols of the Chippeway song for medicine hunting, which
it took him more than a year to learn.

The historical records, however, were sometimes, it appears, written
in Kekeewin and sometimes in Kekeenowin; some were related in songs,
others were not. Those inscribed upon painted wooden tablets, or the
bark scrolls, and pieces of slate alluded to by George Copway, were
doubtless generally sung at stated occasions before the tribe, while
the Muzzinabicks or rock-writings upon the face of cliffs and boulders,
as at "Bald Friars" and "Miles Island" on the Susquehanna or West
River, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, at the Cunningham Islands, Lake
Erie, or upon the famous Dighton Rock at Fall River, Mass., although
including many of the characters seen in the song records were probably
not expressed in songs.


TRADITION OF THE GREAT BUFFALO.

Another version of the big-buffalo tradition is found in Rembrandt
Peale's pamphlet on the mammoth, published in Philadelphia in 1803.
Notwithstanding the highly colored style of the translation the ideas
expressed seem to be those of the Indian. It reads as follows: "Ten
thousand moons ago, when naught but gloomy forests covered this land
of the sleeping sun, and long before the pale men, with thunder and
fire at their command, rushed on the wings of the wind to ruin this
garden of nature, when naught but the untamed wanderers of the woods,
and men as unrestrained as they, were lords of the soil, a race of
animals existed, huge as the frowning precipice, cruel as the bloody
panther, swift as the descending eagle, and terrible as the angel of
night. The pines crashed beneath their feet, and the lake shrunk when
they slaked their thirst; the forceful javelin in vain was hurled,
and the barbed arrow fell harmless by their side. Forests were laid
waste at a meal, the groans of expiring animals were everywhere heard,
and whole villages, inhabited by men, were destroyed in a moment. The
cry of universal distress extended even to the region of peace in the
west, and the Good Spirit interposed to save the unhappy. The forked
lightning gleamed aloud, and loudest thunder rocked the globe. The
bolts of heaven were hurled upon the cruel destroyers alone, and the
mountains echoed with the bellowings of death. All were killed except
one male, the fiercest of the race, and him even the artillery of the
skies assailed in vain. He ascended the bluest summit which shades the
source of the Monongahela, and roaring, aloud, bid defiance to every
vengeance. The red lightning scorched the lofty firs, and rived the
knotty oaks, but only glanced upon the enraged monster. At length,
maddened with fury, he leaped over the waves of the west at a bound,
and at this moment reigns the uncontrolled monarch of the wilderness,
even in despite of omnipotence itself."


THE CHEROKEES AND CHOCTAWS DESCENDANTS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

If the account of Cusic and the Lenape traditions concur in solving
the mystery of the mound-builders, and proving their identity with the
Allegewi of the Lenape tradition, the evidence is strengthened by the
concurrent testimony of language, which, as Mr. Hale and others have
shown, renders it probable that the conquered race, fleeing down the
Mississippi, were received and adopted by the Choctaws and Cherokees,
who thus became in part their descendants. Both the language of the
Cherokees lying to the southeast of the mound-builders' dominions, and
who claim to have built the Grave Creek mound, and that of the Choctaws
lying to the southwest, have in their vocabularies been largely
recruited from a similar foreign linguistic element. One remnant of
the Allegewi mingling with their conquerors, the Talamatan or Hurons,
became in part the ancestors of the Cherokees. Living to the southeast
of the mound-builders' dominions, the Cherokees had their council lodge
on the summit of a vast mound, the construction of which they ascribed
to a people who had preceded them. In grammar their language resembled
the Huron-Iroquois, while in vocabulary it has been largely recruited
from some foreign source.

The other remnant of the vanquished Allegewi, fleeing down the
Mississippi "to the southward," would have been received and protected
by the warlike Choctaws, themselves a mound-building people in
comparatively recent times, and the peculiar foreign element in whose
language, which differs considerably from that of the sister Creek and
Chicasaw nations, would thus be explained.


CARVED "GORGET" FOUND ON THE HANSELL FARM, JANUARY 8, 1885.

While the foregoing pages were in course of publication, the carved
"gorget" (fig. 23) was found on the Hansell farm, on Thursday, January
8, 1885.

The circumstances of the discovery were as follows: Late in the autumn
of last year--1884--the writer had caused an excavation to be made at
a spot in one of the fields on the Hansell property, where the carved
stone (fig. 19) had been found. At this place the soil of the field, a
yellowish clay, was very noticeably discolored as if by the fires and
decayed refuse of aboriginal dwellings; the discolored spot was of a
dark brown color, and covered an area of about twenty square yards.

The excavation measured about 25 feet in length by 4-1/2 feet in width,
and about 3 feet in depth. The dark brown stratum had a depth of 1-1/2
to 2 feet, and beneath it appeared the yellow clay of the surrounding
field. The place was at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from
the spot where the Lenape Stone had been found. In digging the trench
many small stones were thrown up, but no human remains or implements
were discovered. The earth was not thrown through a sieve. As the
excavation was to have been continued in the spring, the trench and
pile of earth were left undisturbed.

Bernard Hansell, the discoverer of the Lenape Stone, states that he
found the carved gorget (fig. 23) in this heap of earth on Thursday
the 8th of last month; his brother had previously found there several
flint chips, and Hansell had gone to the spot, on the day in question,
expressly to look for "Indian relics."

The day was warm and the trench full of water. The field was very
muddy. Hansell found the stone, the perforation in which had attracted
his attention, protruding a little from the mud on the outside of the
heap, and in the yellow earth last thrown out. Without displacing it,
he returned to the house, and brought his brother, William Hansell, to
the spot, that the latter might witness his discovery. Then removing
the stone from the mud, he washed it in the water of the trench, not
rubbing it, but holding it in the water for about five minutes. The
mud clinging to it, having melted and frozen several times within a
few days, was very soft and dissolved easily. On the same day Hansell
informed the writer of his discovery in a letter.

The stone is a soft, red shale, similar in appearance to the Lenape
Stone. Unlike the specimens (figs. 19 and 20) found on the surface of
the ground, its surface presents a very polished and rubbed appearance,
as if it had been subjected to long wear after the carvings had been
made. The lines, the edges of which are much worn and rubbed, do not
seem sharply and deeply cut, as those of fig. 20 or the Lenape Stone,
and the bottoms of the grooves, to which the soil still clings, appear
rounded, as if cut with a dull point--as in the case of the shallow
incisions upon fig. 19.

The discovery of this stone in the clayey soil, beneath the black
stratum above mentioned, and where it had lain for an indefinite
period beyond the reach of the ploughshare, would account for its
polished appearance and the absence of weathering upon its surface--the
conditions of its discovery generally corresponding with those in the
case of highly polished implements found in the mounds.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--(Natural size) Carved "Gorget" Found on the
Hansell Farm, January 8, 1885.]

The design consists of: (_a_) three waving lines representative of
water; (_b_) three points between the perforations, referring probably
to wigwams--possibly an allusion to the triple clanship of the Lenapes
and their settlement by the _Lenape whittuck_ or Delaware River; (_c_)
a bow; (_d_) an arrow; and (_e_) a quiver.

The design on the reverse side, of which we here give a rough outline
(fig. 24) consists mainly of a series of circular waving lines,
representative probably of water; numerical dots and "tallies";
and three triangular outlines, common Indian symbols for the human
figure, and again suggestive perhaps of the Wolf, Turtle, and Turkey
brotherhood of the Lenapes.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Reverse of fig. 23.]




                    FOOTNOTES:
                    ----------

[A] See Hansell's sworn statement in the appendix.

[B] Nothing seems to contribute so much to the problem of their use
as the absence, in most cases, of any sign of friction around the
holes. Similar stones have been recently seen in use by the Pah-Utes
of Southern Nevada, "for giving uniform size to their bow-strings,"
yet the clean edges of the perforations make it impossible to believe
that these stones could have been used for such a purpose, while the
difficulty of supposing they could have been used as buttons, or that
they could have been suspended at all is almost as great, unless we
adopt the very ingenious theory of Dr. F. W. Putnam, _i. e._, that the
raw deer thong used for suspending them, and forced tightly through the
holes, becoming hard when dry, remained motionless in its place, and
rendered friction impossible.

[C] See an interesting little book, from which we here quote, entitled
"Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man." By J. P. McLean. Cincinnati, 1880.

[D] A term, says Filson (Imlays' Topographical Description of the
Western Territory, 2d Ed., p. 276) formerly applied by the Indians "to
the fertile region now called Kentucky."

[E] A word meaning "hog" in modern Iroquois.

[F] "Notes of a Military Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth to San
Diego, Cal.," Col. W. H. Emory, Washington, 1848, p. 90.

[G] See article on Indian picture-writing, appendix, p. 87

[H] Heckewelder states that he had himself seen "many of these
fortifications,"--of course the works of the mound-builders. He
mentions in particular two "entrenchments" along the Huron River,
and several large flat mounds near them, in which were buried, as he
learned from the Indians, hundreds of the Alligewi, slain in the bloody
wars which the narrative proceeds to mention.

[I] This view coincides with the opinion of the Indians who have seen
the carving since the above was written.

[J] The point projecting behind the handle in the figure reminds us
forcibly of the shape of the modern iron tomahawk; yet that stone axes
of this shape were anciently in use among the Indians was proved by the
discovery of the "Thorndale Axe" with a similar projection, and found
in the original wooden handle, now at the Museum of Natural History in
New York.

[K] The word Namaesi Sipu (Fish River) given by Heckewelder, but
published _Messussipu_ (Great River) in Mr. Squier's version of the
_Wallum Olum_, appears _Namasipi_ in the Rafinesque version of 1836,
and in the original manuscript now in Dr. Brinton's possession it seems
that the latter word has been written over the word _Messussipu_ by the
author, who probably had been comparing the account with Heckewelder.

[L] See article on "Indian Migrations" by Horatio Hale, _American
Antiquarian_, Jan.-April, 1883.

[M] On the other hand, how shall we account for the occurrence of
the word _Messusipu_ in the Wallum Olum, or, more exactly, in the
Rafinesque copy of it--the only version we possess?

_Messusipu_ is derived, says Squier, from the Algonkin words _Messu_,
_Messi_, or _Michi_ (great), and _Sipu_ (river).

The name _Mississippi_ is of Algonkin origin, and has the same
etymology,--it means "great river." Among the Algonkin tribes living
to the north and along the eastern shore of the Mississippi, the
Sauks called it _Mecha-sapo_, the Menomonees _Mecha-sepua_, the
Kicapoos _Meche-sepe_, the Chippeways _Meze-zebe_, and the Ottawas
_Missis-sepi_; _Mecha_, _Meche_, _Meze_, _Missis_, meaning "great," and
_sapo_, _sepua_, _sepe_, _zebe_, and _sepi_, "river." (Wisconsin Hist.
Col., ix., 301.)

The Lenape word _Messusipu_ must therefore refer to the Mississippi.
Yet we may suppose that Rafinesque had written the word by mistake in
his copy of the Wallum Olum, a supposition which gains strength from
the fact that _Messusipu_ plainly appears in his manuscript to have
been changed to _Namasipi_. Had he been comparing his copy with the
original "painted sticks" or some other Indian authority not mentioned?
or did he merely borrow the word _Namasipi_ from Heckewelder? Again
we may suppose the word _Messusipu_ to have been an indefinite term
applied by the Lenape to more than one of the great streams crossed by
them in their migrations.

[N] See Appendix.






End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lenape Stone, by H. C. Mercer

*** 