Part 8

CHAPTER TWELFTH

._A PRE-COLUMBIAN DINNER_

A ponderous geologist, with weighty tread and weightier manner, brought his foot down upon the unoffending sod and declared, “These meadows are sinking at a rapid rate; something over two feet a century.” We all knew it, but Sir Oracle had spoken, and we little dogs did not dare to bark.

Not long after I returned alone to these ill-fated meadows and began a leisurely, all-day ramble. They were very beautiful. There was a wealth of purple and of white boneset and iron-weed of royal dye. Sunflower and primrose gilded the hidden brooks, and every knoll was banked with rose-pink centaury. Nor was this all. Feathery reeds towered above the marsh, and every pond was empurpled with pontederia and starred with lilies. Afar off, acres of nut-brown sedge made fitting background for those meadow tracts that were still green, while close at hand, more beautiful than all, were struggling growths held down by the golden-dodder’s net that overspread them.

It does not need trees or rank shrubbery to make a wilderness. This low-lying tract to-day, with but a summer’s growth above it, is as wild and lonely as are the Western plains. Lonely, that is, as man thinks, but not forsaken. The wily mink, the pert weasel, the musk-rat, and the meadow-mouse ramble in safety through it. The great blue heron, its stately cousin, the snowy egret, and the dainty least bittern find it a congenial home.

The fiery dragon-fly darts and lazy butterflies drift across the blooming waste; bees buzz angrily as you approach; basking snakes bid you defiance. Verily, this is wild life’s domain and man is out of place.

It was not always so. The land is sinking, and what now of that older time when it was far above its present level,—a high, dry, upland tract, along which flowed a clear and rapid stream? The tell-tale arrow-point is our guide, and wherever the sod is broken we have an inkling of Indian history. The soil, as we dig a little deeper, is almost black with charcoal—dust, and it is evident that centuries ago the Indians were content to dwell here, and well they might be. Even in colonial days the place had merit, and escaped not the eager eyes of Penn’s grasping followers. It was meadow then, and not fitted for his house, but the white man built his barn above the ruins of his dusky predecessor’s home. All trace of human habitation is now gone, but the words of the geologist kept ringing in my ears, and of late I have been digging. It is a little strange that so few traces of the white man are found as compared with relics of the Indian. From the barn that once stood here and was long ago destroyed by a flood one might expect to find at least a rusty nail.

The ground held nothing telling of a recent past, but was eloquent of the long ago. Dull indeed must be the imagination that cannot recall what has been here brought to light by the aid of such an implement as the spade. Not only were the bow and spear proved to be the common weapons of the time, but there were in even greater abundance, and of many patterns, knives to flay the game. It is not enough to merely glance at a trimmed flake of flint or carefully-chipped splinter of argillite, and say to yourself, “A knife.” Their great variety has a significance that should not be overlooked. The same implement could not be put to every use for which a knife was needed; hence the range in size from several inches to tiny flakes that will likely remain a puzzle as to their purpose.

Besides home products, articles are found that have come from a long distance, and no class of objects is more suggestive than those that prove the widely-extended system of barter that prevailed at one time among the Indians of North America. There are shells and shell ornaments found in Wisconsin which must have been taken there from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; catlinite or red pipe-stone ornaments and pipes found in New Jersey that could only have come from Minnesota. Shell beads are often found in graves in the Mississippi Valley that were brought from the Pacific coast, and the late Dr. Leidy has described a shell bead, concerning which he states that it is the _Conus ternatus_, a shell which belongs to the west coast of Central America. This was found, with other Indian relics, in Hartman’s Cave, near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Two small arrow-points found in New Jersey a year or more ago proved to be made of obsidian. These specimens could only have come from the far South-west or from Oregon, and the probabilities are in favor of the latter locality. It is not unlikely that objects like the above should find their way inland to the Great Lakes, and so across the continent and down the Atlantic coast. On the other hand, arrow-points could have had so little intrinsic value in the eyes of an Indian that we are naturally surprised that they should have been found so far from their place of origin. Obsidian has occurred but very rarely east of the Alleghanies, so far as I am aware. In the Sharples collection, at West Chester, Pennsylvania, is a single specimen, reported to have been found near that place, and a few traces have since been discovered in the uplands immediately adjoining these Delaware meadows, and really there is no reason to suppose that objects of value should not have passed quite across the continent, or been carried from Mexico to Canada. There were no vast areas absolutely uninhabited and across which no Indian ever ventured.

It has been suggested that, as iron was manufactured in the valley of the Delaware as early as 1728, the supposed obsidian arrow-points are really made of slag from the furnaces, but a close examination of the specimens proves, it is claimed, this not to have been the case, and at this comparatively late date the making of stone arrow-points had probably ceased. Just when, however, the use of the bow as a weapon was discarded has not been determined, but fire-arms were certainly common in 1728 and earlier.

A careful study, too, of copper implements, which are comparatively rare, seems to point to the conclusion that very few were made of the native copper found in New Jersey, Maryland, and elsewhere along the Atlantic coast, but that they were made in the Lake Superior region and thence gradually dispersed over the Eastern States. The large copper spear from Betterton, Maryland, recently found, and another from New Jersey, bear a striking resemblance to the spear-heads from the North-west, where unquestionably the most expert of aboriginal coppersmiths lived. Of course, the many small beads of this metal occasionally found in Indian graves in the Delaware Valley might have been made of copper found near by, but large masses are very seldom met with.

Speaking of copper beads recalls the fact that a necklace comprising more than one hundred was recently found on the site of an old Dutch trader’s house, on an island in the Delaware. They were of Indian manufacture, and had been in the fur trader’s possession, if we may judge from the fact that they were found with hundreds of other relics that betokened not merely European, but Dutch occupation of the spot. This trader got into trouble and doubtless deserved his summary taking off.

It is not “a most absurd untruth,” as was stated not long ago in the _Critic_ in a review of a New York history, that the Indians were “a people of taste and industry, and in morals quite the peers of their Dutch neighbors.” They had just as keen a sense of right and wrong. There never was a handful of colonists in North America whose whole history their descendants would care to have known. The truth is, we know very little of the Indian prior to European contact. Carpet-knight archæologists and kid-gloved explorers crowd the pages of periodical literature, it is true, but we are little, if any, the wiser.

It is supposed, and is even asserted, that the Indian knew nothing of forks; but that he plunged his fingers into the boiling pot or held in his bare hands the steaming joints of bear or venison is quite improbable. Now, the archæologist talks glibly of bone awls whenever a sharpened splinter of bone is presented him, as if such instruments were only intended to perforate leather. They doubtless had other uses, and I am sure that more than one split and sharpened bone which has been found would have served excellently well as a one-tined fork wherewith to lift from the pot a bit of meat. Whether or not such forks were in use, there were wooden spoons, as a bit of the bowl and a mere splinter of the handle serve to show. Kalm tells us that they used the laurel for making this utensil, but I fancied my fragment was hickory. Potsherds everywhere spoke of the Indians’ feasting, and it is now known that, besides bowls and shallow dishes of ordinary sizes, they also had vessels of several gallons’ capacity. All these are broken now, but, happily, fragments of the same dish are often found together, and so we can reconstruct them.

But what did the Indians eat? Quaint old Gabriel Thomas, writing about 1696, tells us that “they live chiefly on _Maze_ or _Indian Corn_ rosted in the Ashes, sometimes beaten boyl’d with Water, called _Homine_. They have cakes, not unpleasant; also Beans and Pease, which nourish much, but the Woods and Rivers afford them their provision; they eat morning and evening, their Seats and Tables on the ground.”

In a great measure this same story of The Indians’ food supply was told by the scattered bits found mingled with the ashes of an ancient hearth. Such fireplaces or cooking sites were simple in construction, but none the less readily recognized as to their purpose. A few flat pebbles had been brought from the bed of the river near by, and a small paved area some two feet square was placed upon or very near the surface of the ground. Upon this the fire was built, and in time a thick bed of ashes accumulated. Just how they cooked can only be conjectured, but the discovery of very thick clay vessels and great quantities of fire-cracked quartzite pebbles leads to the conclusion that water was brought to the boiling-point by heating the stones to a red heat and dropping them into the vessel holding the water. Thomas, as we have seen, says corn was “boyl’d with Water.” Meat also was, I think, prepared in the same manner. Their pottery probably was poorly able to stand this harsh treatment, which would explain the presence of such vast quantities of fragments of clay vessels. Traces of vegetable food are now very rarely found. A few burnt nuts, a grain or two of corn, and, in one instance, what appeared to be a charred crab-apple, complete the list of what, as yet, have been picked from the mingled earth and ashes. This is not surprising, and what we know of vegetable food in use among the Delaware Indians is almost wholly derived from those early writers who were present at their feasts. Kalm mentions the roots of the golden-club, arrow-leaf, and ground-nut, besides various berries and nuts. It is well known that extensive orchards were planted by these people. It may be added that, in all probability, the tubers of that noble plant, the lotus, were used as food. Not about these meadows, but elsewhere in New Jersey, this plant has been growing luxuriantly since Indian times.

Turning now to the consideration of what animal food they consumed, one can speak with absolute certainty. It is clear that the Delawares were meat-eaters. It needs but little digging on any village site to prove this, and from a single fireplace deep down in the stiff soil of this sinking meadow have been taken bones of the elk, deer, bear, beaver, raccoon, musk-rat, and gray squirrel. Of these, the remains of deer were largely in excess, and as this holds good of every village site I have examined, doubtless the Indians depended more largely upon this animal than upon all the others. Of the list, only the elk is extinct in the Delaware Valley, and it was probably rare even at the time of the European settlement of the country, except in the mountain regions. If individual tastes varied as they do among us, we have certainly sufficient variety here to have met every fancy.

With a food supply as varied as this, an ordinary meal or an extraordinary feast can readily be recalled, so far as its essential features are concerned. It is now September, and, save where the ground has been ruthlessly uptorn, everywhere is a wealth of early autumn bloom. A soothing quiet rests upon the scene, bidding us to retrospective thought. Not a bit of stone, of pottery, or of burned and blackened fragment of bone but stands out in the mellow sunshine as the feature of a long-forgotten feast. As I dreamily gaze upon the gatherings of half a day, I seem to see the ancient folk that once dwelt in this neglected spot; seem to be a guest at a pre-Columbian dinner in New Jersey.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH

_A DAY’S DIGGING_

As long ago as November, 1679, two Dutchmen, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, worked their way laboriously across New Jersey from Manhattan Island, and reached South River, as the Delaware was then called, at least by the Hollanders. They were all agog to see the falls at the head of tide-water, and spent a miserable night in a rickety shanty, which was cold as Greenland, except in the fireplace, and there they roasted. All this was not calculated to put them in excellent humor, and so the next day, when they stood on the river-bank and saw only a trivial rapid where they had expected a second Niagara, their disgust knew no bounds. These travel-tired Dutchmen quickly departed, rowing a small boat down-stream, and growling whenever the tide turned and they had to row against it.

When they reached Burlington, they recorded of an island nearly in front of the village, that it “formerly belonged to the Dutch Governor, who had made it a pleasure ground or garden, built good houses upon it, and sowed and planted it. He also dyked and cultivated a large piece of meadow or marsh.” The English held it at the time of their visit, and it was occupied by “some Quakers,” as the authors quoted called them.

One of these Dutch houses, built in part of yellow bricks, and with a red tiled roof, I found traces of years ago, and ever since have been poking about the spot, for the very excellent reasons that it is a pretty one, a secluded one, and as full of natural history attractions now as it was of human interest when a Dutch beer-garden.

Had no one who saw the place in its palmy days left a record concerning the beer, I could, at this late day, have given testimony that if there was no beer, there were beer mugs, and schnapps bottles, and wineglasses, for I have been digging again and found them all; and then the pipes and pipe-stems! I have a pile of over five hundred. The Dutch travellers were correct as to the place having been a pleasure-garden. It certainly was, and probably the very first on the Delaware River. But there was “pleasure,” too, on the main shore, for the men who referred to the island stayed one night in Burlington, and, the next day being Sunday, attended Quaker meeting, and wrote afterwards, “What they uttered was mostly in one tone and the same thing, and so it continued until we were tired out and went away.” Doubtless they were prejudiced, and so nothing suited them, not even what they found to drink, for they said, “We tasted here, for the first time, peach brandy or spirits, which was very good, but would have been better if more carefully made.” They did not like the English, evidently, for the next day they went to Takanij (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Finns, and there drank their fill of “very good beer” brewed by these people, and expressed themselves as much pleased to find that, because they had come to a new country, they had not left behind them their old customs.

The house that once stood where now is but a reach of abandoned and wasting meadow was erected in 1668 or possibly a little earlier. Its nearest neighbor was across a narrow creek, and a portion of the old building is said to be still standing. Armed with the few facts that are on record, it is easy to picture the place as it was in the days of the Dutch, and it was vastly prettier then than it is now. The public of to-day are not interested in a useless marsh, particularly when there is better ground about it in abundance, and whoever wanders to such uncanny places is quite sure to be left severely alone. This was my experience, and, being undisturbed, I enjoyed the more my resurrective work. I could enthuse, without being laughed at, over what to others was but meaningless rubbish, and I found very much that, to me, possessed greater interest than usual, because of a mingling of late Indian and early European objects. With a handful of glass, porcelain, and amber beads were more than one hundred of copper; the former from Venice, the latter the handiwork of a Delaware Indian. With a white clay pipe, made in Holland in the seventeenth century, was found a rude brown clay one, made here in the river valley. Mingled with fragments of blue and white Delft plates, bowls, and platters, were sundried mud dishes made by women hereabouts during, who can say how many centuries? How completely history and pre-history here overlapped! We know pretty much everything about Dutchmen, but how much do we really know of the native American? After nearly thirty years’ digging, he has been traced from the days of the great glaciers to the beginnings of American history; but we cannot say how long a time that comprises. The winter of 1892-1893 was, so far as appearances went, a return to glacial times. Ice was piled up fifty feet in height, and the water turned from the old channel of the river. The cutting of another one opened up new territory for the relic hunter when the ice was gone and the stream had returned to its old bed. Many an Indian wigwam site that had been covered deep with soil was again warmed by the springtide sun, and those were rare days when, from the ashes of forgotten camps, I raked the broken weapons and rude dishes that the red men had discarded. It was reading history at first hands, without other commentary than your own. The ice-scored gravel-beds told even an older story; but no one day’s digging was so full of meaning, or brought me so closely in touch with the past, as when I uncovered what remained of the old Dutch trader’s house; traced the boundaries of the one-time pleasure-garden, hearing in the songs of birds the clinking of glasses, and then, in fancy, adding to the now deserted landscape the fur-laden canoes of the Indians who once gathered here to exchange for the coveted gaudy beads the skins of the many animals which at that time roamed the forests.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

_DRIFTING_

Make an early start if you wish an eventful outing. Why know the world only when the day is middle-aged or old? A wise German has said, “The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” For many a rod after leaving the wharf the river still “smoked,” and the scanty glimpses between the rolling clouds of mist spurred the imagination. There was nothing certain beyond the gunwales. The pale-yellow color of the water near at hand and the deep-green and even black of that in the distance had no daytime suggestiveness. It was not yet the familiar river with its noonday glitter of blue and silver.

It is not strange that the initial adventure to which the above-mentioned conditions naturally gave rise occurred while this state of uncertainty continued. Very soon I ran upon a snag. To strike such an object in mid-river was rather startling. Was I not in or near the channel? Steamboats come puffing and plowing here and sailing craft pass up and down, so my only care had been to avoid them; but now there came in my path the twisted trunk of an old forest tree and held me fast. All the while the mist rose and fell, giving no inkling of my whereabouts. In the dim, misty light what a strange sea-monster this resurrected tree-trunk seemed to be! Its thick green coat of silky threads lay closely as the shining fur of the otter, a mane of eel-grass floated on the water, the gnarly growths where branches once had been glistened as huge eyes, and broken limbs were horns that threatened quick destruction. There was motion, too. Slowly it rose above the water and then as slowly sunk from view. Could it be possible that some long-necked saurian of the Jersey marls had come to life? Nonsense; and yet so real did it seem that I was ready for the river-horse to rise

“from the waves beneath, And grin through the grate of his spiky teeth.”

With such an uncanny keeper, I was held a prisoner. At last I struck it with an oar to beat it back, and rocked the frail boat until I feared plunging into the deep water and deeper mud beneath. Deep water? It suddenly occurred to me to try its depth, and the truth was plain. I was far from the channel, and might with safety have waded to the shore. As usual, I had rashly jumped at conclusions. The mouth of an inflowing creek was near at hand, and this sunken tree, a relic of some forgotten freshet, had been lying here in the mud for several years. The tide lifted and let fall the trunk, but the root-mass was still strongly embedded. I knew the spot of old, and now, fearing nothing, was rational again.

Such sunken trees, however, are well calculated to alarm the unthinking. It is said of one yet lying in the mud of Crosswicks Creek, that it rose so quickly once as to overturn a boat. This is not improbable. That occurrence, if true, happened a century ago, and the same tree has since badly frightened more than one old farmer. I am told this of one of them who had anchored his boat here one frosty October morning and commenced fishing. While half asleep, or but half sober, the tree slowly raised up and tilted the boat so that its occupant felt compelled to swim. His view of the offending monster was much like my own fevered vision of to-day. He not only swam ashore, but ran a mile over a soft marsh. To him the _sea_-serpent was a reality, although he saw it in the _creek_.