EAU.) NORTH AMERICAN PITTED STONES. 43 



further, an intact flattish stone, used with its broad side as a hammer for 

 beating upon the end of a flint tool — an operation probably often per- 

 formed iti savage life — would gradually receive at the point of contact the 

 impression of the harder flint. Hence a number of pitted stones may owe 

 their cavities to such a mode of application. 



Fig. o2 represents a stone of the class under notice, which was found 

 near Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee, and belongs to the series 

 exhibited in the National Museum. It is a somewhat flattish pebble of oval 

 shape, about two inches in thickness, and showing only on one side a small 

 cavity, worked out very carelessly, and just large enough to receive an 

 object of the size of a nut. The material is a clayey sandstone. 



Sometimes these stones exhibit two cavities close together, as though 

 it had been intended to crack with one blow two nuts placed in these pits. 

 Such a stone is represented by Fig. 33. The original belongs to a series of 

 pitted stones which were sent to me, many years ago, b}^ my friend, Mr. J. 

 M. M. Gernerd, of Muncy, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, and had been 

 collected by him in that neighborhood, more especially near the banks of 

 the Susquehanna River. This specimen, a gray wacke pebble not exceeding 

 an inch and one-quarter in thickness, shows on both sides two shallow con- 

 tiguous cavities. When the first white •settlers penetrated to that part of the 

 Susquehanna Valley, they found on or near the present site of Muncy a 

 village of the Minsi or Miinsey Indians, the Wolf clan of the gi'eat Lenni- 

 Lenape or Delaware nation; and the name "Muncy," indeed, perpetuates 

 the designation of that clan. There is still a tradition, I am informed 

 by Mr. Gernerd, that they Avere in the habit of gathering large 

 supplies of shell-bark hickory-nuts, which formerly grew plentifully in the 

 neighborhood. 



It should be borne in mind that nuts played a conspicuous part in the 

 household of the North American Indians. The first adventurers of the 



consisted of oak, split witli wedges of stone, and the roof was flat. A stone celt and a flint arrow-head 

 found in the interior of this primitive building furnish additional proofs of its remote antiquity. " Ou 

 the floor of the dwelling," observes Captain Mudge, "lay a sl.-vb of freestone, three feet long and four- 

 teen inches thick, iu the centre of which was a small pit, three-quarters of an inch deep, which had been 

 chiseled out. This is presumed to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked by means of one of 

 the round shingle-sf ones, also found there, which had served as a hammer. Some entire hazel-nuts and a 

 great quantity of broken shells wore strewed about the floor." — Lijcll : AntUjuiti) of 2Ian ; Loudon aud 

 Philadelphia, 1873, p. 32. 



