The arrival of the canoes at nightfall after a day's fishing or oystering was the signal for the villagers to crowd the path to the landing-place, whence, in notassen of woven grass and basswood fiber, they aided the men to fetch the catch of oysters and fish; or when the whoop of the returning hunters echoed through the darkening forest, to run on the main trail to meet them, as on boughs of ash they carried the welcome venison to the smoking village fires, freshly kindled in anticipation of their success.

Around every such site the debris of these pursuits and the waste of feasts and meals lay scattered; scraps of skin and bones and charcoal sometimes dumped into a hollow when they became too numerous, and oyster-shells, fish-scales, and fish-bones when they became too objectionable of smell, deposited in the scooped-out oven pits or the holes in which the stores of corn, beans, and dried roots had been preserved over winter.

And so, long years after the native life had departed and the name and even the place of the once busy village had disap-

INDIAN NOTES

INTRODUCTION

peared from sight and human memory, the humble but indestructible debris of shell and sherd and spearhead have re-opened the book of history, and recorded in no uncertain terms the place of one-time aboriginal habitation.

And in the trodden paths that once united these recorded, recovered, or other unknown sites, the forerunners of our modern means of communication are found, a practical and permanent result of the life and the arts of the wild men.