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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Mullers. Mullers were used in connection with mealing stones or 

 metates, as their name implies. Usually they consist of discoidal 

 stones of a size that might be conveniently held in the hand for 

 rubbing on the mortar. Some mullers are nicely shaped and have 

 smoothly polished surfaces. Others seem to have been combination 

 hammers and mullers. Hammerstones, mullers and game disks 

 grade into one another in such easy stages that it is sometimes diffi- 

 cult definitely to give a use name to a specimen. Plate 130 shows 

 certain types of stone balls and mullers, all from New York. 



Mutilation. Certain articles seem to show deliberate mutilation. 

 Among the conspicuous examples are owl pipes of stone. Very few 

 pipes having the owl effigy still have the head intact. Plate 48 shows 

 two with a' decapitation and figure 61 illustrating this paragraph 

 shows one from the Susquehanna valley that 

 is headless. There are too many such pipes 

 scattered through New York collections to 

 admit of a uniform answer of pure accident. 

 The preponderance points out a deliberateness 

 in the mutilation. On Algonkian sites near 

 Iroquoian sites there will be observed numer- 

 ous broken gorgets. In the Genesee valley 

 many hundred broken gorgets have been 

 found, the fragments of which appear to have 

 been the result of deliberate smashing. It is 

 quite possible that there were certain beliefs 

 that governed the breaking of articles, 

 especially effigies and the special insignia of 

 enemy tribes. 



We may pardon the uninstructed minds of 

 the aborigines for breaking the relics of their 

 enemies but what shall we say to the man in 

 civilization, who finding a fine spear point, 

 deliberately mutilates it by passing a blade of 

 steel over it to see it strike sparks or who 

 breaks a specimen to " see what it is made 

 of," or who carves his name and date on a 

 fine slate ornament? We can smile as we 

 forgive the housewife who paints a spray of 

 forget-me-nots upon a beautiful spear, or who gilds a gorget, but 

 science can not forgive the person who cuts or otherwise mutilates a 

 .specimen. 



Fig. 61 Owl effigy 

 pipe of striped slate 

 from Black creek, 

 Genesee county. Yager 

 collection. The miss- 

 ing head is common 

 to a large proportion 

 of Iroquoian owl 

 pipes. x%. 





