HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES^ — PART I 361 



found ordinary grooved axes, most of them remodeled or resharp- 

 ened bv chipping to increase their eiHcienc}^ as cutting tools; then 

 there is a large class of chisel-like tools of varied sizes and 

 shapes, some improvised from stones of approximate proportions 

 slightly flaked or ground to effective points, some chipped out of 

 the inchoate raw material and well finished by grinding. These 

 steatite working tools are very numerous in places. Around a single 

 pit located in a plowed field on Patuxent Kiver, Md., and nearly 

 obliterated by successive plowings, the writer found during a single 

 visit some 30 entire and broken implements, and from the excavation 

 in the quarry near Clifton, Va., cleared out by Mr. William Din- 

 widdle, nearly four dozen of the chisel-like tools, some broken and 

 some entire, were found. 



There are three or four ways in which these cutting tools were 

 utilized. The simplest was that of using the imple- 



Manner of Using , i • i i i i • j.i i i 



the Tools ment as a chisel or gouge held m the hand or 



hands. Another suggested method was that of set- 

 ting the sharpened stone or chisel in a short handle of buckhorn and 

 striking this with a stone or billet of wood. The chisel marks left 

 in many cases suggest this method, and the heavy end of the tool 

 was found in cases furnished with a short and rough-chipped point or 

 stem suitable for setting in a. haft socket. Many specimens of these 

 implements found in the quarry shops are too minute to be utilized 

 unhafted. A third method is that of hafting the pointed stone as an 

 adz or ax is ha f ted. The grooved tools were undoubtedly used in 

 this way, and many of the grooveless forms could have been at- 

 tached as in the ordinary primitive adz. 



That incising tools were used in the shaping of other of the softer 

 materials is amply indicated by the traces left on unfinished speci- 

 mens of pipes and other objects carved from slate, catlinite, cannel 

 coal, chalk, tufa, and the various indurated clays, and sheets of mica 

 were neatly cut into ornamental forms for personal embellishment. 

 Catlinite was employed in the manufacture of many articles of use 

 and ceremony. When first extracted from the quarry this stone is 

 soft enough to be cut or shaved with a keen edge, but on exposure it 

 becomes too hard to be cut effectively except with tools of steel. The 

 same is true of various kindred materials employed to a lesser extent 

 by the tribes. The black slates of the northwest coast, of which 

 material a vast number of interesting carvings have been made, 

 may be cut with comparative ease when fresh from the bed, but it 

 does not seem probable that in this case or even in that of catlinite 

 the incisive methods were much employed before the introduction of 

 iron; fracture, crumbling, and abrasion, in the absence of efficient 

 keen-edged tools, served every purpose. Indurated clays, clay slates, 



