556 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



been noted, and Florida was a very probable "port of entry" for this 

 object or the conception of it. 



These stools are reported from as far west as the Caddo Indians, 

 but not in Virginia or the Carolinas (S wanton, 1942, p. 155). 



Several of these stools were found by Gushing at Key ^larco, and 

 some of them appeared to have been made especially for use in canoes 

 (Gushing, 1896, p. 363). 



DISHES AND SPOONS OF WOOD AND HORN 



Their wooden dishes, and spoons made of wood and buffalo horn, [says 

 Adair] shew something of a newer invention and date, being of nicer work- 

 manship, for the sculpture of the last is plain, and represents things that are 

 within the reach of their own ideas. (Adair, 1775, p. 421.) 



By "newer" Adair can hardly mean post-Golumbian, but if he 

 does he is plainly in error, though the use of excavated wooden 

 utensils was no doubt facilitated considerably by iron tools. On the 

 other hand, importation of European vessels would be likely to re- 

 sult in the abandonment of native artifacts. However, we have a 

 number of notices of their use from various parts of the region under 

 discussion. In a Timucua house visited by Laudonniere, he saw "a 

 little vessel of wood" used as a cup, and Le Moyne, the artist, men- 

 tions round bottles or wooden vessels in which they carried the 

 black drink, though these last may in reality have been gourds. 

 (Laudonniere, 1586, p. 74; Le Moyne, 1875, p. 12; Swanton, 1922, 

 p. 354.) Wooden spoons were manufactured by the Greeks in Swan's 

 time, "very large and simple in their form. One serves a whole fam- 

 ily, who use it round by turns" (Swan, 1855, p. 692). The Quapaw 

 made wooden platters which they exchanged with the Gaddo and 

 Tunica, along with other objects, for salt and bows and arrows 

 (Joutel in Margry, 1875-86, vol. 3, p. 443). It is from the tribes 

 toward the northeast, however, that we get most information regard- 

 ing wooden vessels. Barlowe says that the Algonquian Indians of 

 North Garolina had "wooden platters of sweet timber" (Burrage, 

 1906, p. 236). Strachey also refers to wooden pots and platters in 

 use by the Powhatan Indians, and, from what he and Smith tell 

 us, it is evident that the wooden food platters kept in the houses 

 of chiefs were very large (Strachey, 1849, p. 59; Smith, John Tyler 

 ed., 1907, pp. 45, 54) . Beverley ( 1705, bk. 3, p. 17) makes little note of 

 these dishes, but says that "the Spoons which they eat with, do gen- 

 erally hold half a pint; and they laugh at the English for using 

 small ones, which they must be forc'd to carry so often to their 

 Mouths, that their arms are in danger of being tir'd, before their 

 Belly." Byrd comments on the large spoons made of bison horn 

 by Virginia Indians "which they say will Split and fall to Pieces 

 whenever Poison is put into them" (Bassett, 1901, p. 288). 



