22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY tsott. 3S 



of rodents. Herbs, roots, and fruits were dried and stored. A pic- 

 ture similar in most respects might be drawn in the households of the 

 living Pueblo Indians. 



Industries 



stonework 



The Gila peoples pecked, chipped, ground, and drilled stone, using 

 these practically universal processes with a fair degree of skill; but 

 the products are very unequal, some specimens being of the rudest 

 type and some of high excellence in design and finish. The stone 

 art of the present Pueblos has these characteristics. 



The process of pecking is seen extensively on metates, manos and 

 other hand stones, axes, hammers, and rubbing stones. Apparently 

 this work was carried on in certain rooms of the pueblos, where 

 numerous examples have been found in every stage of completion. 

 Great care was frequently given to the finish of a metate, especially 

 to those set up on a foundation and rimmed with an oval frame of 

 hardened clay, and the lines of these specimens are nearly perfect 

 (see pi. in). Even an ordinary hand stone sometimes displays a 

 perfection of shape and finish that gives an excellent impression. 

 In the Pueblo Viejo valley slabs of a greenish fine-grained, not very 

 hard stone were worked into polishing stones, tablets, and sculptured 

 objects. 



Chipping was employed in fashioning arrowheads, knives, and 

 drills and in edging thin plates of hard volcanic rock used as saws 

 for working wood. Arrowheads, principally of translucent obsidian, 

 show the finest workmanship (see p. 41), and drills exhibiting mar- 

 velous skill in chipping are found. From the large ruin at the Spur 

 ranch there was secured a disk of chalcedony, chipped and battered 

 into form and polished on one face, probably for use as a mirror or 

 reflector. The forms of chipped instruments follow conventional 

 patterns and were scarcely influenced by the motives which induced 

 tribes of other localities to produce eccentric shapes or tours de force, 

 as animal and other forms suggested by nature. 



Frequently stone implements which were pecked into shape had 

 the cutting part ground (as the edge of an ax) and the body left in 

 a rough state. Often the groove of an ax was unground, apparently 

 to secure a stronger grip of the hafting. In the vicinity of dwellings 

 there remain on rocks scores and depressions made during the grind- 

 ing process. A fine example may be seen near the cave at the head 

 of the Tularosa river, where a large block of hard rock bears a row 

 of such concavities scooped out by the finishers of implements. 



Soft rocks of the class of tufa admitted working by means of 

 flint points or scrapers. Small mortars and large tubular pipes, 



