SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 545 



but this must have been some attempted reconstruction by a modern 

 red ethnologist. 



Du Pratz says that the Natchez employed "deep gray stones of 

 fine grain, almost like touchstone," ground down on pieces of sand- 

 stone, and adds, 



these stone axes are fully an inch thick at the butt, and half an inch thick three 

 quarters of the way down [to the edge]. The edge is beveled, but not sharp, 

 and may be four inches across but the head is only three inches across. The 

 head is pierced with a hole through which the finger may be passed which 

 is to enable them to tie it better onto the cleft at one end of the handle, the 

 latter being well bound so that the cleft will not split farther. (Le Page 

 du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, p. 166; Swanton, 1911, p. 58.) 



The reliability of this description is somewhat questionable since 

 no pierced axes of the kind described have been found. In Florida 

 Le Moyne noted "green and blue stones, which some thought to be 

 emeralds and saphires, in the form of wedges, which they used instead 

 of axes, for cutting wood" (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 8; Swanton, 1922, 

 p. 355). Beverley speaks of axes employed by the Virginia Lidians 

 as "sharp Stones bound to the end of a Stick, and glued in with 

 Turpentine" (Beverley, 1705, bk. 3, p. 60). In the Sound country 

 of North Carolina Hariot (1893, p. 35) speaks of a gray stone used for 

 hatchets and Smith also of "a long stone sharpened at both ends" 

 mounted in a wooden handle pickax-fashion and used both as a 

 battle-ax and a hatchet. (Smith, John Tyler ed., 1907, p. 102). 

 Catesby (1731-43, vol. 2, p. ix) also tells us that the warclubs set with 

 celts ("stone ground to an edge") were used in hollowing out their 

 canoes. The horn of a deer was mounted in the same way, and later 

 the place of both was taken by iron. To the early contact between 

 our Gulf Indians and the Spaniards we must attribute the meager 

 notices of these stone axes and hatchets, for they were everywhere 

 replaced by iron as soon as iron was available. It may be added 

 that the actual splitting up of wood into planks was probably done 

 largely by means of wedges as Adair says (above). 



STONE PIPES 



The stone pipes did not give way to trade objects so quickly as 

 stone axes and flint arrow points. By the Powhatan Indians, pipes 

 seem to have been made of pottery more often than of stone, but 

 the words of Michel (1916, p. 130), "they also make tobacco pipes, 

 very beautifully cut out and formed" indicate that pipes of the 

 harder material were in use among the Indians of Monacantown. 

 Lawson observed the women of the Congaree tribe living near the 

 junction of the Congaree and Wateree smoking pipes of stone, and 



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