of buffalo bones occurring in alluvium, and evidently of considerable antiquity, near Fort McLeod, Alberta. The nearest source of such a material is the Yellowstone Park region. The coast tribes of British Columbia have been traders for untold generations, exchanging oolactin oil for such material as they could make implements from, and there seems to be no doubt that the Mound-builders of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kentucky were also acquainted with obsidian, which they could only have obtained by the process of barter. It was thus either to be found in the regions from which the Nahua are thought to have come, or else obtainable through the channels of trade.
If, then, it be granted that the Chichimec Nahua were acquainted with obsidian and its properties before their entrance upon the Plateau of Anahuac (a hypothesis which is strengthened by the material differences of workmanship between their tools and weapons made of this material and those of the aboriginal peoples of Mexico), sufficient time had elapsed for their development of a cult, which, at the era of the Conquest, exhibited traces of a very considerable antiquity. It was, naturally, as a hunting people that they employed weapons of obsidian. The herds of deer on the flesh of which they chiefly