Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: April 1939 Volume 2 Number 2, Pages 41–43

The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Chester County

J. Alden Mason

Page 41

When Cornells Hendrickson sailed up the Delaware in 1616 he was not, like Columbus, surprised at the native population. The accounts of even earlier explorers in adjacent regions had told him what to expect: people of a dark color but with straight black hair, dressed in skins and known as "Indians". This false name they have never been able to shake off; Columbus, seeking India and believing that he had reached islands off that coast, spoke of the aborigines in his reports as "Indians", and "Indians" they have been ever since. Europeans and purists prefer to speak of them as "American Indians", and at one time the term "Amerind" was proposed and attained some vogue, but it never received popular or scientific approval and now is almost forgotten.

The first question always asked regarding any people is "Where did they come from?" This is a natural question of foremost interest, and yet in another sense not. Every race must have originated somewhere, and it is conceivable that some groups may always have occupied their present habitat. However, so prone is the human species to migration that it is a reasonably safe assumption that any given people moved into their present homeland at some definite period in the past, more or less recent. The question of the origin of the Indian is therefore one of our first interests, and with that are coupled two others: "When did he come?" and "Did he find any other race preceding him?"

Whenever any unusual object or work, presumably pre-Colonial and of superior workmanship, is found in this region the names Aztec, Toltec, Inca, and Mound-Builder immediately crop up, and prosaic students have to scotch the report. There is absolutely no evidence that any race of a higher level of culture than that of the recent Indians ever visited this region. As for the Mound-Builders, they were merely the ancestors of the present Indians of the Mississippi drainage, and no mounds are found east of the Allegheny Mountains. Of a higher cultural level than our eastern Indians, they built great burial and residential mounds up until the time they were overwhelmed by white settlers.

Whether the first Indians to reach this region found it occupied by another race of an equal or lower grade of culture is a possibility, but one not granted by conservative scientists. There is little to support it. No ancient objects have ever been found that point toward any other continent, or that may not have been made by Indians, and no skeletal remains that could not be matched among those of present or recent Indians. It must be admitted, however, that, among the most ancient American skeletal remains known, an unexpected percentage are of unusual types. Two skulls found near Trenton many years ago showed a lowbrowed, rather primitive type, and a famous skull found near a fossil bed in Ecuador was pronounced by all experts to resemble most closely tho Australian type. However, the conservative point of view is that the ancestors of the Indians found America uninhabited when they arrived here.

Page 42

On several points there is no difference of opinion among anthropologists. Man did not originate in America and the first immigrants came here at a relatively recent time as compared with the age of man in the Old World. All the known aboriginal inhabitants of America, present and past, conform to one general type and are most closely related to the primitive Asiatics. The latter opinion is based on resemblance in physical type. While there is great variation as regards height, shape of nose, and such minor details, the skin color, the straight black hair, and various peculiarities of skeleton and teeth point conclusively to the relative homogeneity of the American Indian and to his relationship to the more primitive peoples of Asia, such as the Siberians, not specifically to the Chinese. For evidence that man was not autochthonous or of great age in America we point to the fact that no physical remains of a very primitive type, approaching the simian, have been found in America, nor any traces of the higher apes, man's nearest relatives. Also the oldest remains, while of considerable age, are obviously much more recent than the oldest in the Old World. The uniform opinion is therefore that man came to America from Asia at a relatively recent period and in his present state of physical development. He had no civilization however, and was a hunter and wild seed gatherer; he used the spear and spear thrower instead of the bow and arrow and was accompanied by the dog.

In only one place is migration from Asia to America feasible, via Alaska. Since the art of navigation must have been poorly, if at all, developed at this time, the passage was probably made on foot. This was not as difficult as it would seem, for Bering Strait is only fifty miles wide and broken in the center by islands. And there is good evidence that a land-bridge existed in late Glacial times. In no place is the water over one hundred and eighty feet deep, and it is calculated that, at the height of the Glacial Period, the sea-level was lowered some three hundred feet by the withdrawal of water to form the great continental ice masses. Strange to say, though the ice-cap reached as far south as Pennsylvania, parts of Alaska, including the valley of the Yukon, were not covered. The ancestors of the present Indians therefore, in the present opinion, entered America via Alaska during or just after the last Glacial Period, and soon spread over all America and began to develop the characteristics that today distinguish them from the other peoples of the world.

The last fifteen years have brought great discoveries bearing on the question of the antiquity of man in America. In several places in our western states, at Folsom, Clovis, and in caves in the Guadalupe Mountains in New Mexico; in Colorado; in Saskatchewan, Canada; and in Alaska, projectile points have been found in association with the remains of extinct American animals, mammoth, horse, camel, extinct species of bison and musk-ox, and other animals. The fauna, flora and geological aspects of the country indicate that this region was then in the early post-glacial period. Surprising to everyone, these projectile points are not crude, but probably the best examples of stone flaking and chipping ever made in America. They are of peculiar unmistakable shape and are known as "Folsom" and "Yuma" points. Points of

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similar shape but not so well made are found almost everywhere over the United States but generally turn up in private collections, found on the surface, and are very rare. We assume that they are of practically the same age as those found in situ in the west. Geologists estimate that these are from eight to fifteen thousand years old. No skeletal remains of these people have been found, but they were probably the first men to see Pennsylvania.

Within the last year or two, discoveries of the work of men even older than the Folsom people have been made in the west in layers underlying deposits of Folsom points. Even more unexpectedly, these finds consist of crude grinding stones, so far unassociated with projectile points. As it must have been long before the development of agriculture, it is assumed that those were used for the grinding of wild seeds and mesquite beans. So lacking in peculiar characteristics are these forms that they have not yet been identified in the eastern United States. As our region produces relatively few edible wild seeds it is unlikely that these earliest Americans came so far east.

Few discoveries indicating the presence of man on the Atlantic Coast in the Glacial Period or at any very ancient period have been made. One of the bones of contention has been the region of Trenton where excavations have proceeded from time to time for the past fifty years or more. A New Jersey WPA Project has been working on the Abbott farm there for the past several years with still indefinite results. Tho present opinion is, however, that the former claims of finds of artifacts made exclusively of argillite in the glacial gravels are unfounded, and that the site, while old, is not so ancient as formerly maintained.

Another discovery of great importance in this region many years ago was that of the famous "Lenape Stone" now in the Doylestown Museum. This is an engraved gorget showing men hunting the mammoth. When found it was discredited by most archeologists as a fraud, mainly because it was then believed that the mammoth became extinct in America many thousands of years ago. Now that it has been proved that in the west at any rate man was contemporaneous with this elephant, the stone should be reappraised in the light of recent knowledge. It is even possible that the mammoth existed here up to within the last millennium, and certain Indian myths or legends referring to an immense quasi-mythical animal may refer to him.

We may assume, then, that man first appeared in Pennsylvania shortly after the retreat of the glaciers from the northern parts of the state. He was undoubtedly a typical American Indian, but whether directly ancestral to the tribes found here by the first white explorers is, and may always remain, a problem.