Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/477

 In Memoriam : Frank Hamilton Ciishing. 129

IN MEMORIAM : FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING.

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his great- est happiness in using it. — Goethe.

Frank Hamilton Cushing (born July 22, 1857, at Northeast, Pa. ; died April 10, 1900) was an anthropologist "born and made," if there ever was one. His boyhood was spent on a farm at Barre, Orleans County, N. Y., a district rich in Indian remains and relics. Before he was ten years old, a flint arrow-head, which his father's hired man picked up one day while ploughing, and tossed to him over the furrows, with the remark, "The Indians made that ; it is one of their arrow-heads," aroused his interest as nothing else had ever done before. As he himself tells us, in the autobiographical para- graphs contained in his paper on " The Arrow," this was the turn- ing-point of his genius : "That little arrow-point decided the purpose and calling of my whole life. It predestined me, ladies and gentle- men, to the honor I have in addressing you here [before the Anthro- pological Section of the American Association at Springfield, August 29, 1895] to-day on Arrows ; for I have studied archaeology far more, alas, than anything else — ever since I treasured that small arrow blade on the lid of an old blue chest in my little bedroom, until the cover of that chest was overfilled with others like it and with relics of many another kind." Not long after he discovered with delight a place where flint arrow-heads had been made, and, before many years were over, he had gathered " a collection of some hundreds of relics from all over central and western New York," and soon "be- gan a series of experiments to learn how these arrows had been made " — all this before he had ever looked into a book on anthro- pology. Through the gift of aneighboring farmer, who, in his youth, had been a " Forty-Niner," young Cushing became acquainted with obsidian-tipped arrow-heads, which he sought to imitate by hammer- ing pieces of bottle and window glass. When about fourteen years of age, he discovered in the woods south of the town of Medina (whither his father removed in 1870) an old Indian fort, and then his enthusiasm knew no limit. He built a hut there, and "used to go there and remain days at a time, digging for relics while the sun shone, and on rainy days or at night, in the light of the camp-fire, studying by experiment how the more curious of them had been made and used." How with a toothbrush flaking-tool (he had sac- rificed the article in the effort to reproduce a harpoon blade he had dug up) he discovered how flint arrow-heads were made, and how in the joy of invention he " made arrow after arrow, until his hands were blistered and lacerated, — in one place so deeply that the scar

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