American Anthropologist

PART 6.-The Cheyenne Indians. By JAMES MOONEY. Sketch of the Cheyenne Grammar. By RODOLPHE PETTER. (Pages 357-478. Plates X-XII.) Index to Volume I. Price $1.20.

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PART 1.-Weather Words of Polynesia. By WILLIAM CHURCHILL. (Pages 1-98.) Price 80 cents.

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American Anthropologist

VOL. 27

NEW SERIES

JULY, 1925

A POSSIBLE PRE-ALGONKIAN CULTURE IN

SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS

BY EDMUND BURKE DELABARRE

No. 3

HE Algonkian tribes who occupied New England at the time when its known history began were probably not its earliest inhabitants. Remains of what may have been a pre-Algonkian culture have been discovered, notably that of the so-called Red Paint People of Maine. No indication, however, is given as to when these people flourished, and but little as to when the Algonkians themselves first arrived and displaced them. There is evident value in any discovery that contributes even slightly to the problem of determining how long this portion of the country has been inhabited. The writer believes that he has found evidence that some tribe, whether Algonkian or pre-Algonkian he does not know, was living in southeastern Massachusetts at least a thousand years ago. The evidence is in the form of numerous stone implements, of such variety as to indicate a probable village site, lying scattered widely over a surface that is now covered by a deposit of several feet of salt-water peat.1

Grassy Island in Taunton River is the site of these deposits. It is in the town of Berkley, in a shallow broadening of the river called Smith's Cove, which lies between that town on the east and Dighton on the west. The southerly projection of Berkley, a peninsula two miles long between the Taunton and Assonet rivers, is known as Assonet Neck. This place is noted as having been, together with Mount Hope in Bristol, Rhode Island, the

1 Abner Morse, in Traces of Ancient Northmen in America, 1861, describes ancient hearths found under four feet of peat on Cape Cod. If he was correct as to their nature, they seem to give evidence of another inhabited site at about the same period as that of the one here described, although there is no need to accept his assumption that they were constructed by Northmen.

last land retained for their own exclusive use by the Wampanoag Indians; also, as being bordered by extensive salt-grass meadows which were the first source of hay for the early settlers in Taunton; and, finally and most widely, as the location of the famous inscribed Dighton Rock, situated near its northwesterly corner on the edge of Smith's Cove. The island is about fifty-six rods north of this rock.

Since 1640, when Grassy Island was first assigned to an individual owner as of value for its hay, the deeds conveying it have always described it as comprising three acres, "more or less," although at the present time it contains but little more than an acre. It is roughly triangular in shape, with a length of about 550 feet and a greatest width of 260 feet. It is entirely submerged at the highest tides, and its level surface is covered wholly with salt-marsh growths, underneath which there is peat overlying what was once doubtless an exposed surface before the peatgrowths began, but which is now exposed only at low tides along the edges of the island where the peat has washed away. This "ancient surface," as I shall call it, is sandy, and, in places, somewhat stony soil, sloping slightly downward toward the south at the rate of about one foot in 200; and thus, while the depth of peat above it is five feet at the southerly end of the island, it is only about 212 feet at the northerly end. Along the westerly and most exposed edge of the island, erosion by tides, storms, and fiddler crabs, continually but slowly weakens and undermines the peat, so that from time to time sections of it split off and are washed away, leaving the remaining edge of peat almost vertical with a sandy beach at its foot, where the line of junction between ancient surface and later peat-growth is clearly marked. The general appearance thus produced can be seen in the first two of our illustrations.

My attention was called to this island by a report that a pocket of Indian relics had been found there some fifteen or twenty years ago, from which something like a bushel of specimens had been removed. During the last seven years I have made occasional visits to the island, about seventy-five in all, at favorable periods of low tide, and have secured numerous specimens

from the beach and by excavation underneath the peat along the exposed edge. I made an attempt to mark off the excavation work into measured sections and thus to definitely locate each find, but shortly abandoned it, partly because of the difficulty of maintaining stakes subject to the wash of tides and sure to be broken by ice in the winter, and largely because there appeared to be little or no significance in the relative positions of the objects found. Apart from those already washed out and picked up from the beach, these were all discovered lying upon the ancient surface and to a depth of some nine inches below it, scattered irregularly about through a length of about 300 feet and a width extending as far as excavation was made, which in some places reached to as much as fifteen or twenty feet. The impression produced was that of a village or encampment site, where in the course of time numerous articles were left about in a haphazard manner, or thrown away when broken. This interpretation is strengthened by the character of the artifacts, many of them being such as would naturally occur, at least in such numbers and variety, only at a place of residence, such as mortars and grindingstones, and likewise very numerous chips, cores and unfinished pieces indicating a place of manufacture. A considerable length of occupation seems to be attested by the number of articles accumulated on the site, and perhaps by the depth to which some of them lie buried. It is impossible to form any idea as to the actual extent of the occupied area, inasmuch as only about 1000 square feet of it have been uncovered, which is probably a very small proportion of the whole. For this reason the objects thus far discovered may be far from adequately representative of the character of the culture there exhibited.

A large number of chips, flakes, broken fragments, cores, and unworked pebbles of materials used in manufacture, are found everywhere on the site.2 Besides these, I have gathered approximately 400 artefacts, about half of which were dug out and

2 In four scattered places, for instance, which were carefully worked over, covering about 42 square feet, I counted 44 unworked pebbles of quartz, one of them over four inches long, 61 quartz pieces that showed some marks of flaking, 7 green shale chips, and 9 chipped objects. Chips and cores, as well as finished objects, were found in considerable numbers as much as 8 or 9 inches below the surface.

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