320 COLLECTIONS OF 1879. 



ARTICLES OF STONE. 



These consist of pestles and mortars for grinding pigments; circular 

 mortars, in which certain articles of food are bruised or ground ; me- 

 tates, or stones used for grinding wheat and corn; axes, hatchets, celts, 

 mauls, scrapers, &c. 



The cutting, splitting, pounding, perforating, and scraping implements 

 are generally derived from schists, basaltic, trachytic, and porphyritic 

 rocks, and those for grinding and crushing foods are more or less com- 

 posed of coarse lava and compact sandstones. Quite a number of the 

 metate nibbing stones and a large number of the axes are composed of 

 a very hard, heavy, and curiously mottled rock, a specimen of which was 

 submitted to Dr. George W. Hawes, Curator of Mineralogy to the 

 National Museum, for examination, and of which he says: 



"This rock, which was so extensively employed by the Pueblo Indians 

 for the manufacture of various utensils, has proved to be composed 

 largely of quartz, intermingled with which is a fine, fibrous, radiated 

 substance, the optical ijroperties of which demonstrate it to be flbrolite. 

 In addition, the rock is filled with minute crystals of octahedral form 

 which are composed of magnetite, and scattered through the rock are 

 minute yellow crystals of rutile. The red coloration which these speci- 

 mens possess is due to thin films of hematite. The rock is therefore 

 flbrolite schist, and from a lithological standpoint it is very interesting. 

 The flbrolite imparts the toughness to the rock, which, I should judge, 

 would increase its value for the purposes to which the Indians applied it." 



The axes, hatchets, mauls, and other implements used for cutting, 

 splitting, or piercing are generally more or less imxierfect, worn, chipped, 

 or otherwise injured. This condition is to be accounted for by the fact 

 that they are all of ancient manufacture ; an implement of this kind 

 being rarely, if ever, made by the Indians at the present day. They 

 are usually of a hard volcanic rock, not employed by the present inhabi- 

 tants in the manufacture of implements. They have in most cases been 

 collected from the ruins of the Mesa and Cliff dwellers, by whose ances- 

 tors they were probably made. I was unable to learn of a single in- 

 stance in which one of these had been made by the modern Indians. 

 In nearly all cases the eelges, once sharp and used for cutting, si)litting, 

 or piercing, are much worn and blunt from use in pounding or other 

 purposes than (hat for which they were originally intended. On more 

 than one occasion I have observed a woman using the edge of a hand- 

 some stone axe in pulverizing volcanic rock to mix with clay for malviug 

 pottery. Nearly all the edged stone implements are thus injured. Those 

 showing the greatest perfection were either too small to utilize in this 

 manner or had but recently been discovered when we obtained them. 



The grinders and mortars are frequently found composed of softer 



