with two or three small circular holes near the extremity or the center. Whether these had been drilled and used for weaving fish-nets from wood or hemp, constructing belts of wampum, or for other mechanical or ornamental purposes, is a matter of inquiry or conjecture.

Trees of Norway girth have grown upon the edge of this brook since this camp-fire went out forever, and almost upon these remains, one immense hemlock, green in its foliage, has defied the storms of centuries as it stands like a Roman sentinel of old, over this ancient sepulcher of the forgotten savage.

The absence of iron and copper utensils among the debris, furnished abundant proof that these relics had been deposited by the red-men in the stone period, long before their knowledge of the European race, but why they were thus left isolated from their war-paths, or the purpose or the cause of their smothered fire, the learned antiquarian can only conjecture.

The beaver, caught more for its furs than its castoreum-now a considerable medicinal agent-once held their court in a low marsh or meadow adjoining this camp, from which the Indians evidently obtained sand for their pottery.

In fact the Lackawanna, and the wilder waters of the Le-hr (Lehigh), were inhabited by the beaver at the time of the first settlement of the valley by the whites. Across these streams, especially the upper Lehigh, they built their "beaver dams" upon the most scientific principles of the engineering art, living upon ash, birch, poplars and the softer wood, of which they were particularly fond.' In the deepest part of the pond they built their houses, resembling somewhat the wigwam of the Indian, with a floor of saplings, sloping toward the water like an inclined plane. Here, secure in their moated castle, they

'There are many places along all the streams of the country, originally stripped of all their growth by the industrious and engineering beaver.

slept with their tails under water, ascending the floor with the rise of the stream. Rafting, when the rivers were swollen, destroyed their dams, and drove the beaver to creeks more quiet and remote. In 1826 there came from Canada an old trapper in search of the coveted furs, who caught with his traps all of these industrious animals but a single one lingering along the Lehigh and the Lackawanna; this lonely beaver by sharpened instinct, defied the trapper's cunning for a year or two, when, wandering down the swifter waters of the Alanomink in search of his lost companions, he was killed near Stroudsburg.

Is it not a little curious that with all the romantic ancient history of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys, so little attention until recently has been given toward gathering and preserving the various Indian implements once used in peace or in war? The writer has a passion for the old-not the old hills covered with forests, through whose hoary locks centuries have rustled unnumbered and unsung-but the lingering relics of a race, the bravest the world ever knew, which convey at once to the mind the ideal, the strife, the passions, the achievements, and the glory of another day and another race. These links and landmarks of remote antiquity; the rarer implements of copper sometimes found in their ancient graves; the rude inscriptions which mark the first impulses of the wild-men toward letters or written legend; the stone battle-ax or tomahawk once flung or brandished by the brave exulting over his fallen foe; the knife whose scalping edge gleamed alike over the victim in the cradle or the field; the keen edged arrow twanged upon its fatal mission, or the calumet cherished afar for its silent and subduing power, once smoked around the forest encampment—all are so associated with by-gone times, that as the plow now and then up-turns some little memento of the warrior's life, it astonishes the antiquarian to learn, that, aside from the really valuable and magnificent collection of Hon. Steuben Jenkins of Wyoming, and those possessed by the writer,

so few of these memorials have been treasured up in the valley to-day. Such a group of Indian relics, embracing every variety able to illustrate the life, religion, and character of the former occupants of the country, long before the aggressions and repeated wrongs of the white man had become a great national reproach, and had turned the simple savage into a western heathen, compelled to fight for a standing-place, or starve with plenty around him and yet beyond his reach, could not fail to be invaluable as years rendered their possession difficult or quite impossible.1

2

Whatever might have been the former character of Indian warfare in the earliest history of Wyoming, or however much the infant settlements throughout the country may have suffered from the fagot and the knifewhen the cries of helpless womanhood and the innocence of childhood plead alike in vain-it is established by indubitable evidence of government officials, and elsewhere, that in the more recent wars the Indians have not been the aggressors. We know, by living testimony, that they have been crowded, inch by inch, southward and westward by the constant incursions and shameful encroachments of the Caucasian race, until, from being a great, proud, and powerful nation, respected for their virtues and feared for their strength, extending immense influence over the Western world, they have been reduced to a mere handful of lurking warriors, rendered desperate by maltreatment and impoverished by misfortune.

INDIAN APPLE-TREE.

In a description of New Netherland (New York), published at Amsterdam, in 1671, the appearance of the New Netherlanders (Indians of the Island of New York), are thus described, and will answer every description of the

1 See Appendix.

2

See Mr. Bogy's Report on Indian Affairs.

Lackawanna Indians: "This people is divided into divers nations, all well-shaped and strong, having pitchblack and lank hair, as coarse as a horse's tail, broad shoulders, small waist, brown eyes, and snow-white teeth; they are of a sallow color, abstemious in food and drink. Water satisfies their thirst; high and low make use of Indian corn and beans, flesh meat and fish, prepared all alike. The crushed corn is daily boiled to a pap, called by them sappaen. They observe no set time for meals. Whenever hunger demands, the time for eating arrives. Beaver's tails are considered the most savory delicacy. Whilst hunting, they live some days on roasted corn, carried about the person in a little bag. A little corn in water swells to a large mass. Henry Hudson relates that he entered the river Montaines in the latitude of forty degrees, and there went ashore. The Indians made strange gambols with dancing and singing; carried arrows, the points of which consisted of sharp stones, fastened to the wood with pitch; they slept under the blue sky, on little mats of platted leaves of trees; suck strong tobacco; are friendly, but very thievish. Hudson sailed up thirty miles higher, went into a canoe with an old Indian, a chief over forty men and seventeen women, who conducted him ashore. They all abode in one house well built of the bark of oak-trees."'1

The domestic habits of the Monsey tribe, when not engaged in warfare, were extremely simple and lazy. Patches of open land or "Indian clearings" early were found in the valley, where onions, cantaloupes, beans, and corn, and their favorite weed, tobacco, were half cultivated by the obedient squaw.

On the low strip of land lying upon either side of the street railroad, midway between Scranton and Providence, and near the cottage built some years since by Dr. Throop, now known as the "Atlantic Garden," there

1 Documentary History of New York, vol. iv., p. 124.

was found by the first white explorers into the valley, a permanent camp-place which had, to all appearances, long been used for tillage and a dwelling-place. Within

this ancient clearing the passer can hardly fail to observe an apple-tree standing on the east side of the road, cragged and venerable, even if some of its limbs betoken the approach of age or the presence of neglect. Its precise location can be seen upon the Indian map of Capoose Meadow. This is the Indian apple-tree, of great age, thirteen and a half feet in circumference, and possibly was planted by the friendly hand of Capoose, more than a century ago. By arms selfish and rude, this old tree, which deserves a protecting fence to honor its memory, was bereft of its mates many years ago, because their wide-spread branches threw too much shade upon the inclosing meadow! A few sprigs of grass probably repaid for the destroying act. This single tree now stands alone as a relic of primitive husbandry at Capoose, affording in the summer months, by its green foliage, as ample shade to the lolling ox or idle boy as it once gave to the squaw or her lord when he skimmed along the La-ha-ha-na in his own canoe. In one of the apple-trees thus cut down, in 1804, were counted one hundred and fifty concentric circles or yearly growths, thus dating the tree back to a time long before the reports of the trapper or the story of the Indians came out of the valley to the whites. Seventy years ago a large wild-plum orchard, standing in a swale adjoining this clearing, hung with millions of the juicy fruit, while the grape, with almost tropical luxuriance, purpled the intermingling tree-tops. The vines, none of which now remain, as well as the apple-trees, were no doubt the result of Indian culture.

BEACON-FIRES AND INDIAN LEGEND.

Every gorge or up-shooting point in the range diversifying the valley is enriched with its tradition and story. In the Indian wars, the Moosic or Cobb Mountain, afford