THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 417 



lines. Mr Yager reports these stones from various localities and as 

 having been found by reliable persons in siki. The drilling, how- 

 ever, is modern and done by steel tools, but this need not argue 

 against their use and even manufacture by the Indians of the Susque- 

 hanna valley, for these Indians still lingered in the vicinity sixty 

 years ago. Figure 60 illustrates two of the Yager specimens from 

 Oneonta plains and from Afton lake. 



Fig. 60 Perforated disks or " moon stones," from Otsego county. W. E. 

 Yager collection. x%. The drilling appears to be modern. 



Mortars. Mortars are usually hollowed-out boulders of various 

 sizes. Some mortars were made in huge boulders and were not 

 portable ; others were hollowed out in rocks of such a size as might 

 with some effort be carried. The cavities vary from slight saucer- 

 shaped depressions to deep hollows with considerable capacity. As 

 common as mortars must have been among the aborigines only a few 

 are to be found in collections. This may be due to the difficulty of 

 transporting them to the cabinet or to the fact that they are really 

 rare, or to both reasons. We have seen mortars in stone walls, in 

 barn foundations, in well tops, in barnyards and dooryards as chicken 

 troughs, in creek beds where they had tumbled from village sites 

 above and we have excavated them from their original positions in 

 lodge sites. 



In certain localities a century ago it was a popular thing to have 

 dog and chicken bowls made from stone by blacksmiths. There are 

 a considerable number of these in the Genesee valley, some of them 

 being regarded as " Indian mortars." Most of them are easily dis- 

 tinguished by the signs of metal chisel strokes. 



