90 



MORTARS AND PESTLES. 



Fig. 29. 



of more or less careful workmanship, and also several which are apparently 



water-worn cylindrical pebbles that have not been altered in shape, although 



Fig. 28. they exhibit traces of hard usage by their battered ends ; 



others have been wrought with the same care as the large 



specimens here figured, and differ from them only in size ; 



thus exhibiting, as do the mortars, the same care in the 



manufacture of the smallest examples 

 as of those of the greatest dimensions. 

 Several of the rude pestles are repre- 

 sented by Figs. 28, 29, 30, and 31. 



The one use of these pestles is so 

 evident that it seems scarcely neces- 

 sary even to refer to it, and only the 

 method of their use, in connection 

 with the projecting collars or rings 

 j of some, need be mentioned. This 

 feature clearly, in the large speci- 

 mens, is for use and not merel}' orna- 

 mental. B} r it the pestle could have 

 been suspended by a cord .to an 

 stone pestle, \ stone pestle, i. elastic branch of a tree ; and, again, 



it effectually prevents the hand from slipping, if used either solely by the 

 lifting power of the arm, or in connection with the limb of a tree, as 

 suggested. 



Schoolcraft* refers to one of the plates in his work as exhibiting "the 

 mode of pounding maize by suspending' the stone pestle from the limb of a 

 tree, as practiced by the ancient Pennacooks of the Merrimack Valley, in 

 New Hampshire," and adds, "the pestle was commonly ornamented by the 

 head of a man or quadruped, neatly carved from greywacke or compact 

 sandstone, the mortar being also of the same material." From this we learn 

 that ornamentation proper occurs on some pestles of the largest size, 

 though it is not common on the Santa Barbara specimens. The statement 

 in the above quotation, that these pestles were " commonly ornamented," 



* History and Condition of Indian Tribes, Pt. IV, p. 175, pi. 21. 



