Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/19

 A GLIMPSE INTO PREHISTORIC OREGON 11 islands? Were no canoes waiting among the willows and the maples along the shore while their owners hunted elk and bear upon the mountain side? Were the voices of happy children never heard across those waters? We do not know. There might have been, for it is well known that man lived in South America at this time, and it has long been claimed, though per- haps not quite proven, that man lived in North America and even in California before the time of which we write. While Europe has a rich chapter of very ancient human history, tell- ing of the "Cave Dwellers," who lived in England, France, Belgium and other countries, when this same Mammoth ele- phant still lived in Europe and America. Let us borrow for a time, some of those people who made their homes in caves, and in imagination transfer them to our Willamette Sound. No scientist will object, for they really belong here and this old Oregon was far too beautiful to have no human beings hunting in its forests, fishing in its streams or building little villages upon its wooded islands. But what kind of people were the Cave Dwellers ? We sup- pose they must have been savages, but they were certainly a very interesting people, perhaps the ancient ancestors of the Eskimos of the far north. They lived in caves because they found many caverns already fashioned in the limestone hills of Europe. They knew nothing of metals, such as bronze or iron, but made their weapons of chipped flint and horn or bone. They had spearheads, scrapers and large implements of chipped flint. They made lances and bodkins and bone needles and used cooking hearths, so we know the women had already learned to cook and sew. But they also carved in bone and ivory and drew pictures of the Mammoth and the reindeer, the horse and ox, and made drawings of fish and flowers. Their heads, too, show well-developed brain power, and we know their minds must have been quick and active for they were sur- rounded by all kinds of fierce, hungry animals, many of them larger and stronger than man himself, and yet he held his own and prospered while many varieties of those great animals have long since become extinct.