BOLAS STONES. 159 



California they were used for some purpose after contact with the Spaniards 

 during the sixteenth century, as they have heen found in connection with 

 iron and other articles of European manufacture. 



Mr. Powers, in his work on the California Indians,* gives a figure of 

 two of these perforated stones connected by a cord, of which he writes : 

 •'In the accompanying sketch f are figured two implements, which may 

 have been only net-sinkers, but are said by an old pioneer to have been 

 used formerly as bolas are in South America, being tied together with raw 

 hide and hurled at the feet of an enemy to entangle him and throw him 

 down. To me it seems more probable that they were used rather like a 

 slung-shot." From the statements I have made in the following pages it 

 will be seen that I incline to the belief that many of these perforated stones 

 from California were used somewhat after the method of "slung-shots," or 

 as club-heads fastened by pieces of hide. I may mention, however, that 

 Lieut. A. W. Thackara, of the U. S. Navy, who had just returned from the 

 Strait of Magellan, informed me that at Sandy Point he saw one of these 

 perforated stones, which was about 4 inches in diameter, and he was told by 

 an old resident of the place that it was a bolas-stone. Unfortunately the stone 

 he saw was not then actually forming part of a bolas, and I have Hot noticed 

 any account of perforated stones being used by the Patagonians for that 

 important weapon. There is a bolas in the Peabody Museum, and another 

 in the Peabody Acadenry of Science at Salem. Each of these is made by 

 enclosing three round imperforated stones in strips of raw hide, which are 

 braided and united together.f 



On page 433 of the same work, Mi-. Powers writes : " In the collection 

 of Mr. A. W. Chase, of the U. S. Coast Survey, there are spindle-whorls of 

 stone. Some of these were found in mounds raised by extinct tribes, and 

 others found among the Klamath Indians and the Noamlakki in gravel - 

 mining claims. The Indians of this day use no such implement for any 

 purpose whatever. Near Freestone, Sonoma County, I saw in possession 

 of the finder what was probably a spindle-whorl of pottery, the only 

 instance of the kind I know of." 



* Page 53. t Of weapons of war of the Ynrolc. 



; iJr. Cunningham, in his Notes on the Natural History of the Strait of Magellan, 1871, p. 148, 

 describes the bolai as made of either two or three round halln of stone, iron, or brass covered with 

 leather. 



