USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Bristol, Connecticut : "in the olden time New Cambridge", which includes Forestville > Part 10
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* Vide Churchill, Pop. Scie. Mon .. Dec. 1890, "The Duk Duk Ceremonies."
t See Lucian Carr, Antiquarian for 1897, page 92
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37.
35.
36.
39.
38
40.
AMULETS AND BANNER STONES.
A civilization blasted in its generous youth by the deathly germ of socialism, its age ever "looking backward" into the night of tradition, the future of the Indian had no hopes of ultimate amelioration. His highest efforts at civilization could not escape the ban of socialism. The priestly classes who ruled Mexico and Peru maintained the most elaborate forms of prohibitions and debasing paternalisms, ever the obverse sides of socialism.
All mankind, be it red, black or white, dream of an Arcadia where labor is not needed and selfishness unknown. The modern followers of Balaám, cursing at present progress, point to this golden age in a communal past. But the finger of investigation, ever delving deeper into the mysteries of the ages, always finds the golden age of socialism receding yet deeper into the elusive obscurity of the past. Along the centuries time has printed the immutable law of evolution. It is in the liberty to variation and the guaranteed integrity of the individual effort that progress plants her seeds. Whatever unduly restrains the individual under the bonds of a forced uniformity ultimately blights the whole collection of individuals. Such Aryan people as cast off socialistic communism progressed. The Indian retaining communism sank ever deeper in its hopeless enmeshments.
An interesting treatise might be elaborated upon this subject, but to our present purpose it limits itself to the uses of tobacco, the occurrence of images and totemism. The manner in which the religious idea was undoubtedly connected with the ceremonial objects just described is at present too much involved in obscurity for any description. Regarding images Dr. Brinton says, "Idols of stone, wood or baked clay were found in every Indian tribe without exception so far as I know."* We must not conclude from this that idols were largely venerated among the half-nomadic Connecticut aborigines. And we should hesitate to be- lieve that such images as have been found represented any fixed attri- butes or definite divine qualities, as they seem to have done in Mexico. In the Western States very many curious pieces of pottery representing
Myths of the New World, p. 343.
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OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
often old hunchbacked squaws are found among the mounds and called idol mugs. In the middle South, stone and clay images and heads occur. For the curious we insert a clay image, fig. 42, with the peculiar flat face seen upon the larger idols in stone, and a stone head, fig. 43, which we consider as very ancient, both from Nagooche, Ga., and never previously illustrated. The student will find a very ancient and probably pre- aztecan idol in the Bristol Museum, found in Central America. The writer possesses a quartzite mealing stone, or round pestle from Farm- ington which has been elaborately worked into a perfect shape, whose upper face shows a bird plainly scratched out, but not suitable for pho-
FIGURE 41.
tographing. We also show in fig. 44 a singular flat head exhumed on Union Hill, Bristol, some ten years ago. This is the only representation of a human head, we have ever known from this valley, except some pipes, which are obviously intrusive and apparently of post-Columbian Cherokee manufacture.
TOTEMS.
Among all peoples we find individuals or families with animal names, and among some remain beliefs or traditions which associate these people with animal ancestors. The ancient Jews possessed these Totemic animal names,* which was one among the many singular re- semblances of rites and customs that led many theoretical writers to
* "Israelite and Indian," by Garrick Mallory, Pop. Scic. Mon., 1889-Nov. and Dec.
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consider the Indians as the veritable lost ten tribes of Israel.t We now recognize that such resemblances do not indicate any necessary blood relationship or previous intercommunication, but that similar mental states when meeting similar environmental conditions develop similar expedients. It is hardly probable that the Indian actually believed himself to have descended from any brute such as he saw about him, but rather from some transcendant and spiritual animal, which possibly he may have considered as a common ancestor of both himself and his animal namesake. Among some tribes a belief was said to have prevailed that at death they would return into their totemic animal, and probably some animals were held as sacred from this cause. It seems probable that all animal worship may have grown out of this idea of metempsychosis allied with the veneration of ancestors. When an Indian found a natural object which he believed to resemble his supposed totemic ancestor he was led to venerate it, either as a reminder of his ancestral form, or perhaps as the veritable abode of the ancestral spirit, for the Indian in his ignorance of nature's laws was not troubled to explain the manner of things. The local Manitos we read about were often doubtless these totems, while others represented the mys- terious forces of nature, as the noises at Moodus. We are able to present a fine totemic image of a duck which was found on the Indian trail that ran from Bristol to Burlington. It is now in the cabinet of W .. C. Richards. at Bristol, a venerable and respected relic. [See frontispiece.]
TOBACCO AND PIPES.
To elaborate the use of tobacco alone would be more than sufficient to occupy all our allotted space. A great deal has been written upon it since the time when the earlier visitors from Europe were amazed upon seeing smoke pouring out from the nostrils of the naked Indians. Amid much that has been fancifully written about tobacco we may safely reach a few conclusions. The Indians believed the smoke to be agreeable to his invisible gods, and wafted it to them as an incense. He seems nearly everywhere to have connected the cardinal points with his creating spirits and to have wafted smoke to the four quarters of the horizon as well as to the east at sunrise. In the more agricultural sections where a sedentary population had bred up more elaborate cere- monies the pollen of maize was used as a holy sprinkling, or emblem of
fructification. Large pipes with long stems gaily painted and elaborately adorned with the heads, and more especially the wings of birds, were used by heralds and other travelers as passports or safe permits when approaching strange tribes. Treaties of peace or alliance and all social compacts seem to have been ratified and sealed, so to speak, by the general successive smoking among the contracting parties of one of these pipes. War is also said to have been proclaimed by sending a red pipe adorned with red feathers. Says the Jesuit Charlevoix :* "The custom is to smoke the calumet when you accept it, and perhaps there is no instance where the agreement has been violated which was made by this acceptation. To smoke in the same pipe, therefore, in token of alliance, is the same thing as to drink in the same cup, as has been practiced at all times by many nations." We have no calumet pipes from this section, but illustrate a noble specimen from Nagooche, Ga .. fig. 45. What would we not give could it only tell us the story
of all the lips that have pressed it. Among all peoples where the social compact has not yet acquired the force of definite and general laws and an efficient police, we find these singular substitutes, which stand to our laws as do hieroglyphics to our modern alphabets. The cities of refuge among the Semitic nations, the eating of salt among the Bedouin, blood brotherhood among the African, taboos in Australasia, and church sanctuary in mediæval Europe, seem various ways of attaining a common idea. Yet it remains probable that the Indian ordinarily had nothing
+ See "Peruvian Antiquities." Von Tschudi, pp. 8 to 12. New York, 1855.
* "Voyage to America," Vol. I. page 180. Dublin, 1766.
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HH
43.
IDOLS.
48.
46.
H7 .
49.
45.
PIPES.
more than a sensual love for its narcotic qualities in using tobacco. It gave him dreams, and dreams are ever the cherished mentor of the savage, and assisted him in acquiring the frenzy necessary to incanta- tion and prophecy. The pipes which have been found in this section all differ one from another, so that we cannot assign to any the honor of being a local form .. In the American Museum of New York is a magnificent greenstone calumet pipe from near Middletown, Conn., of the platform type, which has been called the mound-builder's pipe. Fig. 46 shows a pipe of steatite with a long stem, resembling a modern briar pipe. At the union of bowl with stem is a hole which has been luted with cement, a common Indian expedient rendering it easy to clean. Found in Plainville it represents a type thought by some to be common to the dreaded Mohawks. Fig. 47 m shows a very peculiar and elaborately carved pipe of black slate found on the west mountain of Southington. It hasa hole in the rim of the bowl for suspension. It resembles a raven. In the Algonkin myth of the deluge the raven took the place of the Jewish dove. This pipe also reminds one of the thunder bird of the Vancouver Indians. In fig. 48 we present a pipe made of red sandstone, the mate of which we have never seen. The superb collection of Commodore Douglass in New York contains nothing like it. It is certainly genuine, and was dug up in Bristol about ten years ago. Fig. 49 shows a small steatite pipe also found near Bristol pottery pipe was shown in the April paper. Several other pipes have been found in this valley. Such as the writer has seen are manifestly intrusive, and not prehistoric. Among them is one genuine Haidah black pipe and several green slate pipes from the Cherokee artisans
We now turn to the red man's art as we find it embalmed in his offensive and defensive weapons. We believe the primitive man was by choice an eater of meat, although made by his oft necessities, omnivo- rous. We are led more closely to this opinion from the belief which grows upon us that all our edible grains and fruits have been modified toward perfection by man, even by this naked savage man, from prim- itive forms not capable of sustaining human life As they journeyed and jostled together along the slow and rugged course of evolution. man gave such plants as were useful to him hus protection and they
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returned his care with an ever increasing harvest. It was also the spirit of primitive man to be cruel, for was not all nature cruel and pitiless unto him? He recognized nothing of that pity of our modern concep- tions of the brotherhood of life, and having the universal instinct of savageism which considers all mankind without the pale of its own clan as an enemy, war was, if not his pastime, at least his frequent necessity. Hence we find the highest development of his skill in those weapons devoted to the destruction of life, and in the manufacture and adorn- ment of those ceremonial objects whose functions were closely interwoven with the pomp and panolpy of war. It is our privilege today as at no other known epoch of the world's history to attempt a review of a people in their entirety. To seek man out ere he was able to record his achieve- ments and to follow him where his deeds were no longer worth recording. The Indian lived in the present, forgetful of his true past, and knowing nothing of his future beyond those unanswering fears and fancies which attend both the weakness of infancy and the decrepitude of age. But we may view him from the swaddling clothes of the primitive troglodyte, through the robust adolescence of invention, to the miserable senility that closed his epoch. It is this priceless privilege of forcing from the past a mental biograph of the progress of mankind and his inventions which contributes the truest zest in our study of man. .
The bow and arrow of the Indian furnished his most effectual weapon, both in war and chase, to which he added for closer thrusting the spear or lance and the knife or dagger. These arrows and spears, while some- times headed with bone or wood and canes tempered hard by heating in a fire, were mostly tipped with points of chipped stone. In the
50.
51.
FIG. 50 IS PROBABLY A FLAKER. FIGS. 51 ARCHAIC FORMS OF ARROWS.
57
52.
52
53'.
53. 53.
3.
ARROW POINTS.
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OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
"Story of the Pilgrim Fathers," by Arber, 1897, page 432, we find the following in "Governor Bradford's Relation," which was printed in 1622, referring to the first conflict with the Indians: "We took up 18 of their arrows, which we sent to England by Master Tones (of the Mayflower) : some whereoff were headed with brass, others with hart's horns and others with eagle's claws." Not a word spoken of stone heads. Some modern archæologists are beginning to believe that our historic Indians made none of such weapons as we now find. In the first interview with Sam- oset, we read, "He had a bow with three arrows, one headed and two unheaded." I find no mention in stone arrow points in use, in the Relations of Governor Bradford. Hence it is that we find the art of stone chipping, which we have classed as the eldest of his inventions' ultimately carried by the Indian to the highest point of perfection. The bows themselves that gave the Tunxan arrows force have turned to dust along with the arms that drew them; the shafts of the spear and arrow have melted in the pitiless crucible of nature. But the stones that gave them their cruel effectiveness remain, eloquent witnesses of their fabricators' skill. When we handle these beautiful objects of inanimate stone, we feel speaking from them an epitome of the Indian's civilization. When we compare the rude and almost formless figurines taken from the early tombs of Asia Minor with the finished works of a
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FIGS 54. ROCK CRYSTAL POINTS.
FIGS. 55. MINUTE POINTS.
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58
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60
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ARROWS.
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Phidias we may compass the evolution of Grecian art .* So here we find entombed the fruits of the entire evolution of the red man's art in chipping in stone. From the timid and uncertain blows of the pale- olithic savage, step by step the acquired skill of assured art was imper- ceptibly welded with the conscious hand, until we behold here such results as the white man with all his tools has nowhere been able to imitate. Stone chipping is now believed to be a lost art. The ethnologists of the Smithsonian Institute have never found an artisan who, even when supplied with all the tools of modern art, was able to imitate some of the leaf-shaped implements of prehistoric man. And the most skilful of the flint knappers of Brandon, England, men whose occupation is making gun flints also failed after months of effort to produce the forms made by a savage whose only tools were stones and bones.
It is not certainly known how the Indian made these arrow points. working such a brittle material as white quartz into the exquisite forms here portrayed. It is the general belief that chert jasper slate and quartz cobbles were first split into narrow flakes with stone hammers. Possibly they were heated in pits and split by cooling suddenly with water. Partly made implements were often buried in considerable quantities. It is supposed that these stones were thus softened and rendered more tractable. Such a cache was found some years ago near Hadley, Mass., containing sixty arrow and spear blocks. These blocks are so old that they were turned to an ashy white, they resemble the St. Acheul blocks in shape and coarse chipping. The flakes were gradu- ally chipped down into shape with the little knockers. When the stone had thus been partly outlined, it was finished by another process. Either some hard object as stone, bone or horn was used as a chisel driven by a hammer to force off little flakes from either side alternately, or the so-called flakerst were used to push suddenly against the arrow, being worked from alternate sides, each impulsion of the tool taking off a little splinter opposite the point of impact. Various arrow flakers have been found among surviving savages. The only tool resembling these from this section that we have seen is shown in fig. 50, which
* Vide De Cesnola Collection of Central Park, New York.
+ See figs. 15 and 16.
ARROWS.
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OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE.".
resembles the alleged bone flakers from the prehistoric cemetery of Madisonville, Ohio. We are able to conceive no other use for the above implement. Skillful men in all tribes where suitable materials were obtainable seem to have made a business of arrow chipping, and it is known that points were sent in barter to great distances from the places where they were fabricated. Some twenty-five years ago a cache of perfect jasper arrow points was found near Compounce containing seventy-eight fine specimens.
These chipped implements divide naturally into two orders, those notched or tanged for attachment to a shaft, and those with no per- ceptible arrangement for hafting. By general consent archæologists separate them into three divisions-arrow points, usually under two inches in length; spear points, two inches and upward, and knives. The arrow point differentiates into the drill, the bunter, and the tanged knife or scraper, as shown in our first articles. We shall here consider only those forms used in war and chase. Space forbids a consideration of the many curious forms, and speculations upon the manner of their development from some presumably primitive ideal. The inquiring reader will find the general type forms carefully worked out in a recent monograph by Mr. Gerard Fowkes .* A glance at the forms here illus- trated will readily convince the student that no one people had a monopoly of arrow forms, as we can show here every type of Mr. Fowkes except the long lozenged shape tang which we find from Arkansas and Miss- issippi. Anyone familiar with large collections of arrow points learns to distinguish certain peculiarities of finish and material by which the probable source of any individual point may be guessed. There is a distinct individuality which distinguishes the fossi chert points of Florida from the same colored type of Wisconsin. The white quartz of Con- necticut are easily separable from those of Virginia or Carolina. Yet this shows more in the material and the way it takes a finish than in the skill of the artisan. If there is any form inore common than others in this region, we think it is the small points of white quartz. Upon some work- shops, notably at Compounce, nearly all are found of this substance and upon the near mountain may be seen the veins and pits from which the Indian has pounded out his material. Also red sand- stone and shale seem to have been largely used. as they are the most abundant of our work- able stones; very many decayed fragments are found in every considerable workshop. If the writer were to express an opinion as to the more ancient forms in this valley, it would be for the type here illustrated, fig. 51, of which many are found so very old that all trace of the chipping has been eroded, and they look as though they had been rubbed into shape. Most of the forms occur universally, but occasionally local workshops are found with nearly all the points of one type, notably in Granby, where all the specimens are triangular; figs. 52. In one place in Farmington were found a number of very rude arrows of an intractable metal which may be very old; we have seen nothing like them elsewhere, either in shape or material: figs. 53 Basanite and red and yellow jasper pebbles were found in the bed of the Farmington and made into beautiful forms. Argillite occurs in older types. Also some exceedingly beautiful points are found of the'clearest rock crystal, equal to FIGURE 62. anything from North Carolina, fig. 54 Many arrows occur in materials of whose source we know nothing
* 13th Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology
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Arrows have been divided into war points and hunting points, the former inserted into the shaft so loosely that when the shaft was pulled out the head would remain in the wound; such a wound would be very serious in Indian surgery. While those styled hunting arrows are notched or tanged so as to secure firm attachment to the shaft and be easily recovered by cutting the dead animal. It is also possible that some of the smallest points were used in a blow tube made of a hollow reed. In such cases the point was probably poisoned. Venomous serpents were made to bite raw flesh, and when this had become partly putrescent the arrows were thrust into it and made highly poisonous. Fig. 55 shows these minute points from this valley. Fig. 56 shows eight war points of various shapes. Fig. 57 is a very curious shaped tanged point. Fig. 58 is a beautiful object of smoky quartz. Fig. 59 is of smoky quartz, and may have been a knife; it has sharp edges. Fig. 60 has serrated points with long barbs and a deeply notched tang, a rare and beautiful object in greenish stone. Fig. 61 is bevelled off on opposite sides like a reamer.
Many other forms are illustrated, which our space forbids us to classify.
THE SPEAR OR LANCE.
The spear was made both for war and chase, and used also for fishing. The long slender points are commonly called fish spears, but the writer has not found them as often on the banks of brooks as on the uplands. Spears represent some of our most beautiful objects of the Indian's handicraft. We believe that many were used for diverse pur- poses of which we know little. The spear is usually tanged for hafting similarly to the hunting arrow and was probably attached in the same manner. In fig. 62 we present a marvelous implement of black chert from Southington, fourteen inches long, and a small part, probably two inches, has been broken off and lost from one end. This tool has that peculiar elongated diamond shape which may be noticed in some large obsidian implements from Mexico, called sacrificial knives. Some
65.
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66.
68.
69. 70.
SPEARS.
71.
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OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
twelve years ago we saw two similar implements in white chert at Palatka, Fla., which were unfortunately lost in the great fire a few years later. The occurrence of such aberrant types of implements in such diverse regions opens many conjectures. We illustrate nine typical spears. Fig. 63 is an immense leaf-shaped blade of yellow slate from Plainville. This is our rarest form. It is probable that some of the leaf-shaped implements were intended to be finished in this shape. Figs. 64 and 65, beautiful black chert, Bristol. Fig. 66, fine arrow-shaped spear, Farmington. Fig. 67, red jasper, Plainville. Fig. 68, magnificent white spear, almost like noraculite, from Granby. Fig. 69, red sandstone, Bristol. Fig. 70, large awl-shaped spear, from Bristol.
We know nothing how the shafts of these spears were made, and possessing neither spear nor arrow shafts or bows from this region, shall not attempt to discuss their forms. Those interested in the subject of Indian bows should read the splendid monograph of Prof. Mason .*
KNIVES AND DAGGERS.
The earlier explorers of America, especially those who touched along the coast of Florida, described the Indians as using knives of shells with which they cruelly cut and mangled their victims. It is probable that similar implements were used by all Indians dwelling near the seas, but none have come down to us from this section. We also believe that very many of the sharp points which we class as arrow heads, were inserted into split wooden handles, securely fastened with fibres, glue or pitch, and used as knives.
It is also more than probable that some of our long slender spears were used with very short handles as daggers. In fig. 71 is given an ideal restoration of a fine red jasper knife from Farmington, which would serve equally for a scalping knife or a dagger. In figs. 72, 73, 74, we show three typical forms. Fig. 75 is a curious implement which both curves on the edge and bends sideways upon itself.
In fig. 80, from Granby, is a magnificent specimen of the leaf-shaped implement which represents the highest perfection of the art of stone chipping. Made of a fine yellow chert, it is absolutely perfect in all directions. Near the edge of the broad end is a crystal that sparkles like a nest of diamonds. This tool was dug up from apparently un- disturbed gravel in digging a well six feet below the surface. It is be- lieved that many of these leaf-shaped tools were wrapped in pieces of fur or rawhide for handles and used as daggers. Fig. 81 is a beautiful chert dagger from Bristol.
We have shown what. vestiges of the prehistoric man have come down to us. There yet remain many articles which undoubtedly are Indian-notably a fine canoe found at Plainville, and now in the Bristol Historical rooms. There is also a large stone mortar which tradition associates with an old Indian who gave his name to Chippen's Hill in Bristol, and the traditionally historic cave dwelling of one Compounce, whose name lingers in the beautiful glacial lakelet that he owned. But the writer intended only a description of prehistoric remains. There are many graves in Farmington of unknown age. On the highway from Bristol to Burlington, in the edge of Edgewood, there is a hill of glacial debris that rests upon stratified gravel. On this hillside have been seen low mounds which were undoubtedly artificial, and which had not been constructed since the white man settled in Bristol. Of this, the owner of the adjoining land, Mr. Jerome, is sure. Some years ago, Mr. William Richards and the writer met Mr. Jerome and dug into one of these mounds. Digging down about two feet through soil that showed plainly marks of previous disturbance, we came to a level floor made of round cobble stones, perhaps three feet long by two in width. When these stones were removed, we found yet another layer beneath, which
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