IMPLEMENTS OF STONE. 



221 



impossible to tell of what description of bone they are made. They are as com- 

 pact as ivory. Judging from the abundance of fragments, a considerable deposit 

 must have been made where they were found. None were recovered entire ; 

 pieces were nevertheless found three inches in length. Some have round and 

 tapering, others flat and chisel-shaped points ; resembling in this, as in other 

 respects, the different varieties of awls in use at the present day. They were 

 probably used for similar purposes as needles and bodkins.* 



Many implements made of elk and deer horns, and of the bones of the 

 buffalo, have been found with the recent deposits in the mounds. These are all 

 exceedingly rude. 



DiscoiDAL Stones. — A few singular discs of stone have been discovered in the 

 mounds, which seem related to a very numerous class of relics found scattered 

 over the surface, from the valley of the Ohio to Peru. Those from the mounds 



Fig. 131. 



will claim our first attention. Fig. 121, Numbers 3 and 5, are examples. They 

 were taken, in connection with numerous other remains, from a mound numbered 

 1 within the great enclosure on the North fork of Paint creek. (See Plate X, 



* " The needles and thread they used formerly (and now at times) were fish- bones, or the horns or 

 bones of deer rubbed sharp, and deer's sinews, and a sort of hemp that grows among them spontane- 

 ously." — Adays American Indians, p. 6. 



Mr. Stevens found a similar implement with the skeleton, in one of the ancient tombs near Ticul in 

 Yucatan. " It was made of deer's horn, about two inches long, sharp at the point, with an eye at the 

 other end. The Indians of the vicinity still use needles of the same material." — Travels in Yucatan, 

 vol. i. p. 279. 



