DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF SLINGS IN PRE-COLUM- 

 BIAN AMERICA, WITH DESCRIPTIVE CxVTALOGUE OF 

 ANCIENT PERUVIAN SLINGS IN THE UNITED STATES 

 NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



By Philip Ainsworth Means, 

 Collaborator in Archeology, United States National Museum. 



I. THE CHARACTER OF PERUVIAN SLINGS; THEIR OCCURRENCE 

 AND EMPLOYMENT IN PERU AND IN OTHER PARTS OP AMERICA. 



Introduction. — Planned originally to be hardly more than a de- 

 scriptive catalogue of a collection of slings in the United States 

 National Museum, this paper has been gradually extended so that a 

 more just appreciation of the importance of the sling in early Peru 

 might be gained. 



The remarkable collection upon which the study is based was made 

 wholh'^ by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka in the year 1913. Through his kind- 

 ness and that of Dr. W. H. Holmes, head curator of anthropology in 

 the United States National Museum, I have been enabled to study the 

 collection and write this paper. Miss Sarah G. Flint, of the Museum 

 of Fine Arts, Boston, has been so good as to help me with some of 

 the technicalities of the weaving in some of these specimens, and 

 Dr. Walter Hough, of the United States National Museum, has done 

 likewise. I wish to express my thanks to all of theni. 



The distribution of the ding in ancient America. — Concerning the 

 sling in North America, north of the Rio Grande, Doctor Hough 

 says there is no absolute proof that the sling was known in that part 

 of the continent before the coming of the white men, although it 

 became more or less common after that event. It has, however, been 

 assumed that the clay pellets found in some of the California sites 

 were sling missiles.* 



Slings were among the numerous weaj)ons for offense used by the 

 natives in Mexico, although they do not seem to have been of the 

 first importance there, probably because the spear-thrower (otlatl) 

 was more efficacious.^ It is interesting, for purposes of comparison, 



> Hough, In Bulletin 30 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, vol. 2, p. 602. 

 * Clavigero, 1883, vol. 1, p. 247. Maudslay, Introduction to Bernal Diaz, p. Ivil 

 (Hakluyt Society, 1908). Nuttall, 1891. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 55— No. 2276. 



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