wKiq DISCOIDAL POTSHERDS. 109 



r. Sides Hat; cdy^econvox; snino size :ind use as last. 



District. 



Southonstorn Temu'ssee 



Kanawh.i valley, West Virfjiiiia. 



Warron ronnty, Ohio 



Madisou county, Alabama 



Q. Prom southeastern Tennessee and nortliwestern Georgia tbere 

 are many disk-shape fragments of pottery, small, thin, and coarse, 

 with the edges roughly chipped ; and from 

 northeastern Kentucky there are similar 

 pieces, exceiit that they have been fashioned 

 from fragments of limestone and sandstone. 

 These specimens are illustrated by figure 

 108 (pottery, from a mound iii Bartow 

 county, Georgia). 



Spuds. 



Fig. 108. — DiacoiiLal pottery frag- 

 ment. 



It has been a puzzle to archeologists to 

 assign to any class the peculiar stones 

 called " spuds." They are usually of a 

 comparatively soft material, carefully worked and polished, and bear no 

 marks of rough usage. On the other hand, tliey seem too large for 

 ornament. Perhaps their office may have been in some ceremony or 

 game. Something similar in form seems to be denoted in the following 

 extracts : 



Gol. James Smith' says, speaking of the Indians of western Penn- 

 sylvania^ that as soon as the elm bark will strip in spring, the squaws, 

 after finding a tree that will do, cut it down, and with a crooked stick, 

 broad and sharp at the end, take the bark ofi' the tree, and of this bark 

 make vessels. The Twaua Indians, who formerly lived at the south 

 end of Hoods canal, Washington, in barking logs nse a heavy iron 

 implement about 3 feet long, widened and sharpened at the end;'^ and 

 the tanbark workers of our day use an instrument of somewhat similar 

 form. 



The ordinary spud is too weak to endure such usage, though it is 

 claimed by old people living in the Shenandoah valley, Virginia, that 

 in the last century the Indians in that locality used an implementiof 

 this pattern for stripping iiie bark from trees. The implement may 

 have been used in dressing hides, the hole being for attachment of a 

 handle. 



' Captivity Among the Indians, Lexington, 1799 ; reprinted, Cincinnati, 1870, p . 36. 

 ' EuUs, Myron; Hayden Surv., Bull. 3, 1877, p.81. 



