Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/86

 the vital energy of the people that made them. Wherever I go, I am still on the track of the Indian. The light sandy soil which the first settlers cultivated were the Indian corn-fields, and with every fresh plowing the surface is strewn with their relics. Arrow-heads, spear-heads, tomahawks, axes, chisels, gouges, pestles, mortars, hoes, pipes of soapstone, ornaments for the neck and breast, and other curious implements of war and of the chase, attract the transient curiosity of the farmer. I have myself collected some hundreds, and am as surely guided to their localities as to the berry-fields in autumn. Unlike the white man, they selected the light and sandy plains and rising grounds, near to ponds and streams, which the squaws could easily cultivate with their rude hoes.

And where these fields have been harrowed and rolled for grain, in the fall, their surface yields its annual crop of arrow-heads and other relics, as regularly as of grain. And the circles of burnt stones on which their fires were built are seen dispersed by the plow on every side.

The arrow and spear heads are of any color, [38]