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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 26, 1901)
jk'I ' /jk' " 10 Cbe Conservative * * \1 THE HOLLINGWORTH INDIAN VIL LAGE SITE. It lias been so long since I found time to prepare matter for The Conservative vative in my line , that I shall not try to tell you , in order , the story of my summer's exploration , but shall de scribe the various Indian village sites according to geographical or ethnolog ical groups. A few weeks go The Conservative published some very fine illustrations of the ruder types of flint implements found in the state. These will assist you in understanding the Holling worth site , which is located two miles southwest of Holmesville on the west side of the Blue river and on high ground not far from its banks. The site is on the farm belonging to James Hollingworth , six miles south east of Beatrice. We had the pleas ure of meeting this genial gentleman ; he stopped while passing by his large field of winter wheat to enquire the object of search ; when informed of the importance attaching to the numer ous rudely chipped blocks of flint found here , he seemed greatly inter ested and gave the freedom of his lands to further the aims of science. The site covers about one hundred acres and is so thickly strewn with flint spalls that they must be an injury to the plow as it turns the soil. There is a strata of limestone cropping out at the very water edge of the Blue river , which contains flint nodules ; the flint strewn so thickly over the field was doubtless obtained at the water edce , or , possibly from the bed of the stream ; however , I did not examine the rocks in the river bed but found the strata in a quarry near Holmes ville and traced its level. At Ne- hawka the flint nodules break out of the limestone easily but here they seem to be a part of the solid ledge and will not fracture off easily ; the shape and size of the nodules are the same as at Nehawka ; the two ledges are undoubtedly of the same geological formation , however , this is a question for geologists to settle. The vicinity of the vast beds of flint found farther south was the home of the Indians which Coronado and con temporaneous writers described to us in 1542. The ledges of flint grow less and less as yon come up the Blue river from the vicinity of Manhattan , until it is found at Holmesville , at a depth of ten to twelve feet below the level of tine Blue river valley. Undoubted ly exploration will reveal the fact that Indian village sites containing this particular typo of rudely chipped im plements will be found more and more frequent as you go down the Blue river towards Manhattan. Slight traces of the same debris are found near Be atrice ; a systematical search ( which will bo prosecuted by team next sum mer ) may reveal many sites similar to the Hollingworth site. This site contains what I have desig nated as "the Quivera" type of chipped flints , only. They are rougher and more rudely chipped than any found in this state before. They re semble in some ways the Nohawka specimens ; they differ materially from them in more ways ; they are so simi lar to the implements found in Kan sas , south of Manhattan , that I must class the village as belonging to the same people. I can not use space to describe the conditions as I found them during my week's visit to the Kansas field in company with Hon. J. V. Brewer of St. Paul , Minn. , but you shall have a complete account of that trip later. There is no pottery to be found on this site ; shells are quite numerous but badly wasted away. In the Con servative of Nov. 14 , 1901 , plate III , number 20 , you will find illustrated a knife very similar to knives found hero. Many of the implements found in the brief half day of my visit to the Hollingworth site , were broken. Could one make a sj'stematical search , covering every foot of ground , after a fresh plowing , followed by a hard , dashing rain , he would be able to carry away a thousand perfect specimens in a week. In a brief walk over the site one may determine the class to which it belongs and the im plements likely to be found , but the matters for careful , comparative study are met later. These nomadic tribes met other wandering bands with whom they trafficked and fought , with whom they associated and , I suspect , inter-married ; if you should visit all the houses , one after another , in a cer tain precinct , during the absence of the owners , and , from study of the implements and utensils found , class ify the owners as to nationality , you would find many errors in your list , if your trip was a cursory one ; but if you examined carefully every article in each house , and , side by side , com pared it with every known article , implement or utensil used by each na tion , you would make few errors if your work -was exhaustively com pleted. I can tell you only what types I have found here , at this time ; I can give you an opinion as to the people , but it is in no way final ; new devel opments may change it all. I found blades here which corres pond very well with numbers 14 , 16 and 18 of the Conservative illustra tions. A few specimens of scraper , much ruder , but of the same type as 19 were found. The variety differing from the specimens illustrated in The Conservative , may be found il lustrated in Mr. Brewer's memoir "Harahey" and there described by him. They are found in the "Qui- vera field" in Kansas. Here we see some of the effects of association ; the people of this site had implements like the people once living in Kansas and like the people who once lived on the Weeping Water in this state ; this village site is between the two and forms a link in the chain of evi dence proving that the people of both sites associated with the people of the Hollingworth site , and that the Weep ing Water people and the Kansas river people were contemporaneous. If this ground can be successfully maintained , wo are much nearer a solution for some of the vex questions iu Nebraska archaeology. . The people of the Hollingworth site resembled the people of Kansas ( Wichatasinore ) than the people of the Weeping Water. There is an individ uality in the chipped flints of any people , which is hard to describe and which can hardly bo sensed in one or two pieces , but is very pronounced when amass of implements is brought together , along with cores and spalls ; this individuality sways my judgment more than any point of similarity. It is shown by the general manner of taking off a chip , a general direction of fracture , general size of imple ments and similarity of breakage which shows the implements broken to have been subjected to the same tests in use or stroke in making. All those points must bo taken into ao- V > I AlJra t. J-lT count in classifying a village site. These people were at least closely re lated to the Wichatas and may have been a band belonging to Coronado's Quivera. One very numerous specimen found is the chipped colt , which has never been found in this state before. This celt is shaped like a pear leaf and is so thick that a cross section , through the middle from end to end , would form a circle. I found a very fine tomahawk the ' ' resembling Quivera tomahawk" of Kansas. The typical hoe of the Wichata 'people is very nu merous. The Union Pacific station agent at Holmesvillo is very much interested in archaeology ; it is through the kind assistance of this gentleman , Mr. A. O. Hollingworth , that we are able to tell yon so much about this site. We hope to hear from people in the southeastern part of the state who may know of similar sites , and thus we will be armed with data for a good mouth's work along the Blue in the early spring. E. E. BLAOKMAN. Roca , Neb. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. The tidal bore of the Severn has been photographed for a linemato- graphaud a most impressive phenom enon has been thus reproduced on a screen. The solid matter deposited by a London fog has been found by Sir W. Thistletou-Dyer to reach six tons in a week on a single square mile. Injur ious hydrocarbons were included , as well as soot. The blood pressure in lunatics has been measured by two French physi ologists. They find a distinct connec tion beween the blood pressure and mental troubles , and that there is al so a change in the blood pressure cor responding to different states of mind iu the same patient. That the north magnetic pole re volves about the geographical polo along the seventieth parallel of lati tude is the theory of a French physi cist , who maintains that his theory explains the observed variations. As a cause he suggests a lagging of the earth's center , which must be liquid or viscous , behind the cruse in the revolution toward the east. The fall of red dust that covered most of Europe a few months ago is proving unexpectedly useful. Meteorologists elegists had proposed coloring parts of glaciers so that their movements might be more apparent , and the dust storm has supplied the desired colored stratum and made it practicable to ob serve the movement and fracture of the glacial surface on a scale much grander than could have been attained by ar tificial means. As the five great scientific discover ies of the nineteenth century , Sir William Proeco mentions the princi ple of evolution ; the atomic structure of matter ; the existanco of the ether and the uudulatory theory of light ; the principles of electro-magnetic induc tion and electrolysis ; and the prin ciple of the conservation of energy. At the beginning of the twentieth century the trend of research is to prove that the basis of all matter is