Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  
  • 5
  •  

ABORIGINAL HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY

ABORIGINAL HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY.

 

[AFTER a brief popular discussion of the evidences of

pre-glacial man in France, England, and New Jersey, Mr.

MacLean spoke of the analogy between the situation of the

gravel terraces along the Miami, in Butler county, and those

in which the remains of man have been found in the other places

referred to. Like the terraces on the Delaware at Trenton,

New Jersey, where Dr. C. C. Abbott had found rough stone

implements of pre-glacial age, the terraces of the Miami

present an important field of investigation, though they have

as yet yielded no direct evidence of man's presence as early

as those in New Jersey. When the ice of the glacial period

had retreated to the central and northern part of the State,

Butler county was for a long period left in a most favorable

condition for some race of hardy hunters like those which

followed the retreating ice on the Atlantic coast to do the

same here. It is worth while, therefore, for local investiga-

tors to be constantly on the lookout along the terraces of

Southern Ohio. The negative and disappointing results of

Mr. MacLean's efforts are thus stated:]

In the valleys of the Somme and the Delaware Bouches

de Perthes and Dr. Abbott have found rude Palaeolithic im-

plements in situ as they were originally deposited in the

gravel terraces of glacial age. But this cannot be said of the

rude implements from Butler county.

With my own hands I have indeed taken rude chert im-

plements from the bottoms of our creeks. But this proves

nothing tangible in regard to antiquity. Whence came they

there? Did they fall from the embankment above, or were

they washed down from a point further up the creek, or were

they recently exposed and still remained in position ? No man

can tell. The same thing has occurred in the bed of White-

water, in the adjoining county of Franklin, Indiana.

1Abstract of a Paper read before the Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Society at a meeting at Hamilton, October 27th, 1885.

64