30 PECICED, GROUND AND POLISHED STONE. 



generation to another, and are exempted from being buried with the dead. 

 They belong to the town where they are used, and are carefully preserved."" 



There are sevei-al kinds of discoidal stones which may have served in the 

 Chung-kee game. Some are quite large, measuring six inches and more in 

 diameter, and bearing a very regular dish-shaped cavity on each side. Their 

 material is often a beautiful (sometimes translucent) ferruginous quartz, and 

 specimens made of this mineral appear to be more numerous in Tennessee 

 than in other States of the Union. The roundness and general regularity of 

 many objects of this class hardl}^ can be surpassed, and not few of them are 

 beautifully polished. In some the outer circumference appears more or less 

 convex, though straight-sided specimens are not wanting (Fig. 116, yellow- 

 brown feri-uginous quartz, Tennessee; Fig. 117, brown ferruginous quartz, 

 Tennessee; Fig. 118, dark greenstone, mound in Illinois). In a number of 

 the stones, supposed to have been used in the Chung-kee game, the cavities 

 on both sides are carried somewhat deeper than in the preceding kind, and 

 their centre is marked by a perforation (Fig. 119, cast, Ohio; Fig. 120, quart- 

 zite, Ohio). These central holes sometimes attain a comparatively large size, 

 imparting to the objects a ring-like character, in which cases it is impossible 

 to state, with any plausibility, whether the specimens, which are, moreover, 

 often somewhat rudely shaped, sei'ved as Chung-kee stones, as net-sinkers, or 

 for other purposes. 



Some stones, supposed to have been used in the Indian game, show flat or 

 slightly convex circular faces, and perpendicular or even oblique circumfer- 

 ences (Fig. 121, quartzose stone, Georgia) .^^ Stones of this description have 

 been called "weights," on account of their resemblance to the iron weights in 

 common use. There are in the collection similarly shaped stone discs of small 

 size, in some cases measuring hardly more than an inch in diameter. Though 

 too diminutive to have served in the Chung-kee game as pi-actised by adults, 

 it is not improbable that children employed them for the same purjjose, if, 

 indeed, they were not designed for an altogether different kind of game (Fig. 

 122, argillaceous material, Pennsylvania).''^ In some instances the discoidal 

 stones assume a lenticular shape, the periphery being represented by a rounded 

 edge (Fig. 123, ferruginous quartz, Texas). 



The hollowed discs before described have now and then been taken for 

 mortars in which paint or other substances were pulverized, and the appear- 

 ance of the concavities in a few lends some probability to that supposition. 

 In those cases, however, they were made to serve a secondary purpose. Speci- 

 mens with convex or flat faces, again, probably were often utilized as mealing- 

 stones, or for grinding other substances, and some of them may have origin- 

 ally been fiishioned for such ends. 



The discoidal stones of the perforated kind pass over by slow degrees into 



"Adair: History of the American Indians, London, 1775, p. 40L 



■'See Du Pratz : Histoire de la Louisiane, Paris, 1758, Vol. Ill, p. 2. 



'^Somewhat similar discs, made of broken clay vessels, are often fonnd on the sites of Indian settlements. 



