THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 



365 



occur in Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. In New 

 York at least two specimens have been found in Iroquois graves 

 and others in Iroquois sites. 



No use has been yet ascribed to the bar celt and its purpose is 

 problematical. The long, flat underside may indicate that it was 

 fastened to a piece of wood the same width and used as the spike of 

 a warclub. (See plate 88, Fig. 4.) 



Fig. 51 Banner stones of compact, hard rock, partially drilled, drilling is 

 nearly always started on the wider portion 



Beads, bone. Cylindrical sections of tubular bone, of various 

 sizes and lengths, are termed bone beads. They are found in all 

 stages of completion, from the initial incisions on the tubular bone, 

 through specimens of partly cut beads, rough ended cylinders, and 

 finally to fully polished forms. The smaller tubes having lengths of 

 from one-half of an inch to 4 inches were probably strung as beads 

 on necklaces. Larger tubes cut from heavier and flatter bones prob- 

 ably had other purposes. Deposits of ten to thirty of these have been 

 found in graves. Some have been filled with pigments and others 

 with black substances not possible to determine. Some of the 

 smaller tubes also seem to have been used in other ways than as 

 beads. Inquiry among the Seneca brought forth the information 

 that polished bone tubes were used to hold certain medicines and 

 greases and that medicine men would ceremonially select one, " put 

 it in his mouth and swallow it to kill the disease of his patient."^ 

 The Ojibwa have a similar ])ractice, related by Miss Densmore, in 

 her work on Ojibwa music. 



^ Related l)y M. Shongo, a Seneca medicine man. 



