Page:Anthropology.djvu/119

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118
MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY.

sive, reaching over into the town of Perufret, where a hill, known now as Fort Hill, gives unequivocal testimony of the work of man. Between Fort Hill and Mr. Gould's farm is found a hill about 30 feet high, with a circumference at its base of about 90 paces. The top of this hill is flat, oval in outline, and composed, as far as examined, of the material constituting the surface formation of the plain. The hill may possibly have been formed by currents of water, but there is no bluff or bank near it. It stands about 3 miles inland from the lake, and was originally covered with large forest trees in nowise differing from the trees of the surrounding plain. Mr. Gould, over seventy years of age, says he well remembers the hill as it was in his childhood, and that it was so conspicuously above the surrounding trees as to be regarded as a landmark by early navigators of Lake Erie. He describes one tree, which grew near the top of the hill, as being 4 feet in diameter. Careful examination of the plain gave no depression in the surface to indicate that the earth which composes the hill was excavated there. I am inclined to the opinion that the hill is in reality a mound, and that it was in some way connected with the other fortifications already mentioned. In this connection I may mention that some years ago, in plowing a field on his farm, Mr. Williams, of the town of Sheridan, turned up as much as two bushels of flint spalls or chips, and a number of arrow and spear heads. These were pretty much all together, and led Mr. Williams to suppose that Indians made their tools there. Some of these implements, in outline and material, very nearly, if not entirely, correspond to those found in Ohio, near what is called Flint Ridge. I believe that flint or chert is not to be found in this county. Whether the crude stone was brought to the place where the flints were found, and was there worked into shape, cannot be settled as yet. Some fifty-odd years ago I saw a large field in what is now the city of Zanesville, Ohio, plowed up for the first time. The whole field was dotted over with flakes, spalls, arrow and spear heads, stone hammers, and axes, indicative of a manufactory. Old and partly decayed stumps were overturned or pulled up and the spalls were found under them. From this field to Flint Ridge there was nearly a continuous water communication. There are grounds for believing that the material was originally quarried at Flint Ridge, where numerous excavations, partially filled up, are to be found, and having trees growing in them. Whether the persons or people who wrought in Sheridan were located there we do not know, neither can we safely say that the implements found were made by those who erected the fortifications.

I have an amulet which was plowed up on the farm of Mr. Prendergast, in the town of Westfield, this county, and by him presented to me. It somewhat resembles Fig. 27 in Colonel Foster's work, "Prehistoric Races," page 222, which he calls a totem. His totem was found in Wisconsin; the amulet was found in Chautauqua County. I will give my reasons for regarding these effigies as amulets in an article now pre-