times are open to criticism and may be given alternative explanations, whereas the physiographic evidence can be explained only by postulating long-continued coastal stability. Professor Brown suggests to me that, if he is right, our site may have been a winter encampment on the surface of the frozen marshes, and that the stone artefacts left there gradually sank down through the peat to their present level. It seems far from likely that any people would have chosen to encamp, especially for as long a time as is indicated by the number and variety of our specimens, on a position so exposed to wintry blasts, when there are sheltered valleys close by, and from which they would have had to go some distance for their fuel and drinking-water, unless they used blubber and melted ice for these purposes. It seems impossible, moreover, that they could have occupied for long-continued dwelling a position that is only a small island whose surface is submerged sometimes under three or four feet of water when tides rise to their extreme height. However, even if this possibility represents the correct opinion, it must have taken a very long time for all of the stones to sink down through the peat, and we should still be justified in assuming an ancient date for the occasion of residence there. Another suggestion by Professor Brown, that there may have been slipping clays underneath our implement-bearing stratum, whose displacement submerged the original level of the latter and permitted a growth of peat above it, again avoids the hypothesis of a general coastal subsidence but seems to involve our original estimates of antiquity, based upon a probable rate of peat-growth whose formation was complete, as we know, as early as 1640. Leaving the geologists, as we must, to settle this question as to subsidence or stability themselves, we may conclude that the discoveries at Grassy Island, taken by themselves alone, are at least most easily accounted for on the assumption that there were Indian tribes living in New England at a time when the soil level underneath the peat of this island was at least nine feet higher than it is now, and that this cannot have been later, and may have been an indefinite time earlier, than about a thousand years ago. If Abner Morse's "hearths" were also due to human agency, the habitat of these people extended at least as far as Cape Cod. So far as can be judged by the specimens of their handiwork already gathered, there is no evidence of any particular relation of their culture to that of the Red Paint people. They seem to have been expert in the manufacture of chipped objects, took pains also sometimes, at least, in shaping gouges, sinkers, pestles, hoelike implements, and possibly tablets, but contented themselves with the crudest kind of other tools. These latter were used for various cutting, pounding, rubbing and grinding purposes, and were naturally shaped stones with a minimum of retouching, and, when necessary for hafting, with roughly made notches or rare and exceedingly shallow grooves. We know nothing further about them except that they made use of fire and of both red and black paint, and probably engaged in agricultural operations.9 BROWN UNIVERSITY, Since this paper was written a few further objects have been found, including two broken pieces of long spear-heads, a small fragment of a second gouge, and a curved fragment that looks as if it might have been part of the bottom and side of a stone pot. TH DEBTOR AND CHATTEL SLAVERY IN ABORIGINAL NORTH AMERICA BY WILLIAM CHRISTIE MACLEOD HE facts as to debtor slavery and chattel slavery in aboriginal North America are of considerable interest to economic history, yet they have been somewhat slighted. A survey of the data will no doubt be of interest and value. DESTOR SLAVERY Le Jeune, in 1639,1 wrote of the gambling of the Algonkian met by him in the region of Quebec: I have seen a savage woman who, having lost all she had, staked herselfnot her honor, but indeed her services-that is to say, she would have been a slave or servant of the winner if she had lost. They say that it sometimes happens that when men or women stake themselves, he who wins them keeps them one or two years and employs them in fishing, hunting or in minor household duties; then he gives them their liberty. The savages may not exercise severity, nor harshly exact a service from their countrymen. Lescarbot, concerning the gambling of the Micmac specifically, wrote that men sometimes staked their wives, but at the cost of their self-respect, for: True it is, as to women lost at play, that to hand them over is full hard, for often they make mock of the gambler, and point the finger of scorn at him. Roger Williams, speaking of the gambling of the Narragansetts and their neighbors affords an interesting additional note on New England gambling: 1 The Jesuit Relations, v. 16, p. 201. (The italics in this paper are my own.) 2 M. C. Lescarbot: History of New France, (Biggar, H. P., ed.), 1907, v. 3, p. 197. 3 R. Williams: A Key to the Language of America, Proceedings of the Rhode Island Historical Society, v. 1, 1827, p. 146. In this doggerel verse the author moralises (p. 147) to the effect that "Our English gamesters scorn to stake, Their clothes, as Indians do, Nor yet themselves; alas, yet both, Stake souls, and lose them too." J. Carver, Travels, (1766), 3rd. ed., 1838, p. 228, observes of the gambling of the natives of the western Great Lakes region that they gamble away "sometimes even their liberty." When they have staked and lost their money, clothes, house, corn, and themselves (if single persons), they will confess [to the evil of gambling], ready to make away with themselves, being weary of their lives. Choctaw practices were similar to those of New England: When they are very much excited they wager all they have, and when they have lost all, they wager their wives for a certain time, and after that wager themselves for a limited time. Of the Carolina tribes Lawson wrote, describing their gambling at intertribal festivals and markets," that: they game very much, and often strip one another of all they have in the world, and, what is more, I have known several of them to play themselves away so that they remained the winners' servants till their relatives or themselves could pay the money to redeem them. So much we are able to gather concerning debtor slavery arising from gambling. Of the servitude of thieves Lawson writes for the Carolinas, that the natives had: no fence to part one another's lots in their corn fields, but every man knows his own, and it scarce ever happens that they rob one another of so much as an ear of corn, which, if any is found to do, he is sentenced by the elders to work and plant for him that was robbed, till he is recompensed for all the damage he has suffered in his corn field . . . . Concerning indebtedness incurred in ordinary commercial transactions Lawson notes certain peculiar practices. He states that if a man dies in debt his widow is not required to pay anything of the debts, unless she is willing. This is not surprising, inasmuch as the wife presumably did not have any share in her husband's property interests. But strangely enough this freedom from obligation lasts only so long as the widow does not remarry, for "whosoever takes her to wife pays all her husband's obligations, though ever so many"; and if a man merely "court her for a night's lodging and obtain it, the creditors will make him pay her J. R. Swanton (ed.): An Early Account of the Choctaw Indians, (?1715), Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, v. 5, 1918, p. 68. 5 J. Lawson: History of Carolina, 1714, p. 287. Lawson also notes that "They never differ at gaming, neither did I ever see a dispute about the legality thereof ever so much as arise among them." Lawson, p. 292. On page 329 he observes of thieves that "they are slaves until they repay the person." husband's debts." Peculiarly, furthermore, if a man takes a widow thus laden with her husband's debts, she seems to have some of the attributes of a chattel, although also a wife. Her husband may, "if he will, take her for his money paid to her deceased husband's creditors, and sell her to another for his wife. I have seen several of these bargains driven in a day; for you may see men selling their wives as men do horses at a fair, a man being allowed not only to change as often as he pleases but likewise to have as many wives as he is able to maintain."7 For the coastal regions of Washington and Oregon-Puget Sound and the Columbia River, etc.-Gibbs writes: If one Indian has wronged another, and failed to make compensation, or if a debtor is insolvent, he may be taken as a slave. Their mode of procedure is characterized by their wonted deliberation. The plaintiff comes with a party to demand satisfaction, and holds out to the other the option of payment or servitude. If no satisfaction is given he must submit, unless he is strong enough to do battle. And this slavery is final degradation. The rule of once a slave always a slave extends so far that if the debtor should have given up some relative in his power, and subsequently redeems him, he becomes his slave in turn. If a man purchase his father or mother they become his slaves and are treated as such. . . . . Even if one purchase his [own] freedom he is yet looked upon as an inferior. Parker for the same region' noted that persons are made slaves when "taken in payment of debts, if they are orphans of the debtor"; and that persons "sell themselves in pledges." While for this region Swan wrote10 concerning gambling that: 7 Lawson, p. 114. For New England, on commercial debts, we have only the note of Williams (op. cit., p. 45) that “it is common for a brother to pay the debt of a brother deceased." P. Jones: History of the Ojibway, 1861, p. 109, notes concerning liability for payment of blood money, that this falls on the murderer and his relatives, and that the amounts are usually such that these persons may have to labor for years in order to pay up. Equivocally enough, he notes concerning the murderer himself, that "This is, in fact, a sort of servitude, for the murderer is not his own, having to exert himself until the injured parties are satisfied." 8 G. Gibbs: Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon, (Smithsonian Contributions, 1877), p. 188. 9 S. Parker: Journal, 1846, p. 156. 10 J. G Swan: The Northwest Coast, 1869, p. 156. H. J. Spinden: The Nez Percé Indians, (Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, v. 2), says of the Nez Percé of the adjacent plateau that "it is said that women could gamble away their freedom, but men were not allowed to do this." There was apparently method in the madness of the Indian gambler. Father De Smet wrote for the "Flatheads" or the Indians of the plateau generally, in the |