560 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHIN^OLOGY [Bull. 187 



The mortar which is simply a log several feet high with the bark removed 

 having a cavity about eight inches deep, seems, moreover, to be an important 

 domestic fetish. We find that it is connected in some way with the growing 

 up and the future prospects of the children of the family. It occupies a 

 permanent position in the door yard, or the space in front of the house. Only 

 one mortar is owned by the family and there is a strong feeling, even today, 

 against moving it about and particularly against selling it. We shall see later 

 that the navel string of a female child is laid away underneath the mortar 

 in the belief that the presiding spirit will guide the growing girl in the path 

 of domestic efficiency. 



The pestle that goes with this utensil is also of wood. Its length is usually 

 about six feet. The lower end that goes into the cavity of the mortar and 

 does the crushing is rounded off. The top of the pestle is left broad, to act 

 as a weight and give force to its descent. Several forms of carving are to be 

 observed in these clubbed pestle tops which are presumably ornamental. 

 (Speck, 1909, p. 41.) 



Mortars were found at Key Marco in the greatest profusion by 



Gushing, though they were evidently not used to pound corn into 



flour. 



They ranged in size from little hemispherical bowls or cups two and a 

 half to three inches in diameter, to great cypress tubs more than two feet 

 in depth, tapering, flat-bottomed, and correspondingly wide at the tops. The 

 smaller mortar-cups were marvels of beauty and finish as a rule, and lying near 

 them and sometimes even with them, were still found their appropriate pestles 

 or crushers. . . . The smaller mortars and pestles, like the one illustrated, 

 seemed to have been personal property, as though they had belonged to in- 

 dividuals and had been used in the crushing of berries and tubers, and perhaps 

 cunti-root; as well as in other ways, that is, in the service, rather than merely 

 in the general preparation, of food. (Gushing, 1896, p. 364.) 



Plate 72, figure 2, and plate 73 show mortars and pestles in use 

 among the Alabama, Hitchiti, and Caddo. 



Mortars made from holes cut in the sides of logs are reported from 

 the Seminole (MacCauley, 1887, pp. 513-514), as noted above, but also 

 from the Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb (Bushnell, 1909 a, p. 11), and 

 the Choctaw of Mississippi (Swanton, 1931 a, p. 48). 



WOODEN CHESTS 



The Indians of the Southeast manufactured a wooden box or chest, 

 and we seem to get some intimation of this even as far back as the 

 time of De Soto. Elvas tells us of "a cane box, like a trunk, called 

 petaca, full of unbored pearls," which was carried along by the chief- 

 tainess of Cofitachequi when she accompanied De Soto through the 

 territories northward of her town somewhere south of the present 

 Augusta, Ga. (Robertson, 1933, p. 101). But petacas are described 

 by Ran j el as "baskets covered with leather and likewise ready to be 

 so covered with their lids, for carrying clothes or whatever they 

 want to," from which it seems that they might have been cane baskets 

 (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, p. 104). However, in the temple of Cofita- 



