toric fire places, flints, arrow heads,
fragments of pottery, and a vast quantity of bones and
kitchen refuse.
The traditions of all
the Indians found in Nebraska by white men assert a
comparatively brief residence here, and a migration from
regions farther east and south. These scattered
discoveries raise the question: Is it possible that a
thousand years ago or more scattered off-shoots of the
mound builders found their way up the Missouri, made
their homes upon its hill tops and in its secluded
valleys, burned pottery, mined for flint, and were
finally exterminated by the ruder tribes of hunters who
migrated here later? Or was it rather the ancient
ancestors of the Pawnees who left these memorials in a
time far antedating Pawnee traditions? The systematic
exploration and investigation which will furnish the data
to answer these and other questions has only recently
begun. The evidences themselves are fast being destroyed.
All over the state the broken pottery of ancient Indian
villages is being trampled into smaller fragments and
even into dust by the thousands of head of domestic stock
close grazing the fields; the plow and harrow are
leveling the traces of old fortifications and burial
mounds; the flint knives, arrow-heads and spalls once so
abundant are being picked up and sent out of the state by
private collectors. If even a part of the story of
prehistoric man in this state is to be deciphered and
preserved it must largely be through the scientific
interest and generous state pride of her citizens. There
are now living in nearly every one of the six thousand
school districts of Nebraska some of the first settlers
who knew every mark and mound on the prairie before it
was cut by the breaking plow; there are children born in
these school districts who know, as only children learn
to know, every feature of their native fields and woods,
the spots where arrow heads and burnt clay and curious
stone tools were found, where pits or trenches used to
be. It is to these the appeal is made by the writer of
these pages to communicate to him the hint which may lead
to careful exploration and mapping of these
sites--possibly to discoveries unthought of.
A few general outlines
of the localities where remains of early and probably
prehistoric aborigines have been noted in the state: The
tops of bluffs along the entire course of the Missouri
river. The valley of the Weeping Water. The upper valley
of Salt Creek. The valleys of the Loups for a long
distance up each of the forks. The upper Elkhorn and
especially in Madison, Antelope and Holt counties. The
upper Niobrara in Sioux county. There are probably other
localities, but these
