Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/584

* KITCHEN-MIDDEN. 528 KITE. wherever the camps uf primitive peoples were located with anj- permiUiciuv, the liuls or tents were set up on the site of the refuse pile of former villages, and were abandoned and rebuilt repeatedlj' until the whole mass was often as much as a hundred feet in depth. Tlie Danish KjuUktiiniuddiiifjs were at first thouyht to be natural formations on the beach. When, however, their arlilicial composition was made evident, only a few olVorls «ilh pick and shovel were needed to reveal piercers, knives, scra])ers, a.xes, hammers, slingstones, pottery, horns, bone needles, and flakes. The bones of mammals were ini.ed with the shells — stag, roedeer, wild boar, urus, dog, wolf, fox, marten, otter, seal, water-rat, beaver, lynx, wildcat, hedgehog, bear, and even the mouse. There too are found mingled bones of birds and fish and more than a dozen kinds of shells. Here and there ,a hearth maile up of flat stones showed the marks of tire and proved the existence of doniestie life. In some plates this debris was as much as ten feet thick and stretched along the beach a thousand feet. The width varied with the shoreline, being at times two hundred feet, but growing narrower in both directions. The excavation of the Danish kitchen- middens gave the impulse for the exploration ot similar formations in many parts of the world. In the slieil-lioaps of Omori. Japan, evidence has been found of the existcn.c of a far more primi- tive people than now dwell in those islands. In the shell-heaps of the Aleutian Islands layers of diH'crcnt s])ecics vci'c found which lead to the conviction that the present Aleuts were preceded by a nuich ruder race. Shell-heai)s on the coast of British Columbia, Oregon, and southern Cali- fornia, of vast size, have been explored and have shown the character of the true savage life here before the centuries of Spanish acculluralion. The Atlantic coast of America, from Xna Scotia to Tierra del Fuego. and even the inland waters, wherever fresh-water mollusks aboun<lcd. are full of similar evidence. In the Straits of Magellan the almost naked savages are still in the kitchen-mid- den epoch, just as seen by early explorers. On the Atlantic coast of IJrazil. wherever there is a favorable spot, is the sainhrK/ui. or ancient shell- heap, of such enormous proportions that the accunudation of some of them must have re(|uired thousands of years. Huge forests liave grown over them and river-drifts have hidden others from view. Farther north, on the Florida Keys, hun- dreds of specimens have been recovered from the water which idenfify the ancient Kcy-dwcUers with aborigines of Yucatan and Central America. Farther north the waters of Florida on both sides and along the Saint .John's are a vast repository of kitchen-middens or shell-heaps, which have been accumulating for ages. The Chesapeake Bay and its trilMitaries are now vast reservoirs of marine food, but in aboriginal times they were still richer. Some of the heaps are many acres in extent, from ten to twenty feet deep in places, and rich in relics of the makers. These heaps do not disappear from the coast until the Saint Law- rence is reached. A comparison of relics in the shell-heaps with those of inland tribes and with other peoples of the same grade of culture throughout the world leads to the conclusion that in none of them is it a matter of a unique race or culture. The pottery in the shell-heaps of the I'nitcd States was always characteristic of the region; at the North the ornamentation was ell'ected by press- ing twine iiilo the soft clay; from Florida, as among the Cherokees, and northward, stamps were used for this jjurpose; and around the Gulf States, painted ware was conunon. As the shell- heaps were for temporary abode, theie was little industry characteristic of residence there. Consult: Kau, Artificial Shell Deposits of New Jersey, Smitlisonian Ke])orts( Washington, 18G4) ; rtrinton, Arlijieinl ^Ih ll-IJrjmsits of the United •States, Smithsonian Keprts( Vashingt(jn, ISIWj) ; Wym.an, Frcshiiatcr Shell-Mounds: uf l-'lorida, Memoirs of the Peabody Academy of S<iencc, vol. i. (Cambridge, 1875) ; Lubbock, Prehistoric Times (New York, 1872) ; Dall. Tribes of the Extreme orthuest. Contributions to North American Eth- nology, vol. i. ( U ashington, 1877) ; Morse, IShell- Mounds of Omori (Tokio. 1S70) ; Moore, nu- merous papers on Floriila .Mounds, in which the shell-heaps are described and profusely illus- trated: Holmes, ■■Earthenware of Fhirida," in Moore, Shell-Mounds, etc. ( Pliiladclphia, 18114); Gushing, Ancient Kcy-Duellrrs' Jtemains (Phila- delphia, 1897). Consult, also: Schumacher, Paul, Kjokkcntniiddings on the orthcru Coast of America (Smithsonian Reports. 1873) ; id., .Ih- cicnt Graves and SheU-Ueaps in Californiii (il).. 187-1) ; id.. Ilesearehes in the KjokkcmnikUlinns of the Coast of Oregon, United States (ieological Survey Bulletins, vol. iii., sec. 1 (Washingtim, 1877); for Brazilian sambaquis, Keclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, vol. xix.. trans. (New York, 1890). KITE (AS. a/ta, kite), A diurnal bird of prey of the subfamily iMilvina>. which contains about thirty species, widely distributed over the world, but most frequent in the tro])ics. The kites have much weaker bills and talons than the falcons and liawks, but the wings are much longer, and the tail is rather long and usually forked. They are remarkable for their graceful- ness of flight and power of sailing and wheeling about, or gliding in the air. The ^■ommon Euro- pean kite [Mihus vuli/aris), or ■glede,' is found in almost all parts of Europe. Asia, and the north of Africa. It is fully two feet in length, the plumage mostly brown, mixed with gray. It feeds on reptiles, mice, moles, and other small quadrupeds, and the young of gallinaceous birds, searching for its prey on the gro i(l. but often from high in the air. It sometimes catches fish. In former times, when more plentiful, it was the scourge of poultry-yards, pouncing on young chickens, and it was highly regarded by mediiPval falconers, though more recently it has not been used at all in that sport. It was also the scaven ger of London and other English towns, devour- ing the ofTal, as it still does in some of the towns of Eastern Europe, but in England it is now nearly extinct. In India, the 'goond.' ■chil, or 'pariah' kite (Milvus poonda) is one of the recognized and imnortant sc:ivenginL' birds of the country, and abounds everywhere in the towns, going about tame and unharmed, and often making a nuisance of itself by its impudent fa- miliarity. In the United States four birds are called kites, but they are all Southern, only one of them reaching the Northern States. The Everglades kite ( Rnsthramtis soeiabilis) is found in Florida and far southward: the ^Mississippi kite (Ictinia Mississippiensis) occurs as far north as South Carolina and southern Illinois; the white-tailed