In this view it is important that all discoveries of the remains, either of the works or the skeletons, of the aborigines, it matters not how insignificant, apparently, or how similar in kind they may be, should be carefully noted and accurately recorded, as each may possibly increase in some particular our knowledge of the primitive American tribes, or serve to confirm anew some fact of their history already known. Every stone implement, shell or bone ornament, and earthen vessel recovered, is a silent revelation of the past; and from this accumulated material the restoration of ancient life upon this continent is becoming annually more and more distinct.
It is well known to have been the custom of pre-Columbian Indians, as of their descendants in later times, to hide in the ground, for security until again wanted, stores of surplus provisions, and such implements and other articles as were not immediately needed or easy of transportation. Many of these buried stores of perishable materials, forgotten, or from other causes never recovered by their owners, soon totally disappeared; but others, consisting of objects wrought in stone, bone, and shell, are yet occasionally discovered in all parts of our country previously inhabited by the red race. These deposits are all full of interest, and some are wonderful for the surprising numbers, or weird beauty of design, or marvellous forms of the strange things they comprise.
Within the limits of this county two small subterranean long-hidden stores of flint implements have been recovered by the plow during the last two years. In the alluvial soil of Central Illinois, so destitute of surface rock, a stone of any kind turned up by the plow is of so rare occurrence as to at once attract the attention of any plowman, but unfortunately many valuable specimens so found excite but momentary notice and are again lost.
In the spring of 1880, Mr. George W. Davis, an intelligent farmer residing in Monroe precinct, 10 miles east of the Illinois River, when plowing one day in a field that, until a few years ago, had been covered with a heavy growth of timber, observed in the furrow his plow had just made a few sharp pointed flints, and stopping his team to secure them, he found on examination that they formed part of a deposit consisting of thirty-two small implements, which had been carefully placed in the ground, on edge, side by side, with their points toward the north. They seem to have been buried near the foot of a large oak tree long since prostrated and decayed. This spot was on the crest of the ridge bounding the valley of Clear Creek on the south, and half a mile distant from a corresponding elevation on the north of the little stream, known locally as "Indian Hill," so called because the skeletons of several (supposed) Indians with stone implements, bone awls, glass beads, &c., were some years ago disinterred there in the process of grading a public road.
The thirty-two implements were presented to me by Mr. Davis. With one exception they are made of a cherty, muddy-looking siliceous
