1896.] 'J^') [Gushing. 



its edge amazingly well. Several very ingenious hacking tools or broad- 

 axes had been made merely from the lips and portions of the outer 

 or body-whorls of these conchs. They were simply notched at the ends 

 so as to receive correspondingly grooved or notched sticks which were 

 bound to their inner sides with thongs passed around the ends and over 

 the backs. The wide, curved, natural edge of the lips, had then been 

 neatly sharpened. Among the blocked-out pieces of wood so frequently 

 found were examples of the work done not only with these hollow 

 hacking tools, but also with the chisel- and gouge-pointed implements 

 I have described, as was clearly shown by the results of my experiments. 

 In addition to these cutting tools, celts, or rather celt-shaped, but curved 

 adze-blades, two of them in connection with their handles — which were 

 made from forked branches, one limb cut short and shouldered to receive 

 the blade, the other left long, to serve as the handle — were also recov- 

 ered. True celts were found too, made from the heavy columellas ot 

 triton shells. One of them was accompanied Ly a pierced handle, the 

 most elaborately decorated object of its kind thus far found in our coun- 

 try. It was superbly carved from end to end with curved volute-like 

 decorations, concentric circles, ovals, and overpliced as well as parallel 

 lines, regularly divided by en circling bands, as though derived from ornate 

 lashings; while the head or extreme end was notched around for the 

 attachment of plumes or tassels, and the opposite or handle-end furnished 

 with an eyelet to facilitate suspension. Numbers of carving adzes, as was 

 plainly indicated by marks of their work on both finished and unfin- 

 ished objects, were also secured, quite in their entiiety. Each consisted 

 of a curved or crozier-shaped handle of hardwood about a foot in length, 

 sharply crooked toward the head, which consisted of a perfectly fitted, 

 carved, polished and socketed section of deer horn. The socket at the 

 point of this deer-horn head was deep, transverse, and so shaped as to 

 receive and retain measurably well, little blades made either from bits 

 of shell, the sharp ventral valves of oysters — of which kind numerous 

 worn-out examples were gathered — or sometimes, from very large shark 

 or alligator teeth. These peculiar little hand-adzes— that resembled 

 some of those one maj' see pictured in the figures of mask-carvers in 

 Central American and Mexican codices —seem to have been, judged from 

 the work performed with them, among the most perfect implements 

 possessed by the inhabitants. That they were favorite tools also, was 

 shown by the fact that many of them were elaborately carved. All had 

 eyes, mostly protuberant, just above the sockets, and one, for example, 

 was slightly crooked from side to side, and shaped to represent a fouged 

 serpent ; another had carved near its head, a surprisingly realistic horned- 

 deer's head, and yet another was surmounted by the figure of a gopher 

 or rodent gnawing at a stick— see Fig. 2, PI. XXXII ; and in these 

 forms I did not fail to recognize the association that was attempted, by 

 this sort of decoration between the carvings, and the functions of 

 these biting or gnawing implements, so to call them. 



