266 Stone Implements and Ornaments. [ May, 
spears, as they are too clumsy and heavy to have been employed 
in conjunction with the bow. ; 
The smaller varieties of axes may have been used as toma- 
hawks in war. Under the head of weapons I have placed the 
arrow-straighteners or polishers, although they may more prop- 
erly be classed with the second division, as they were not used 
either for offense or defense, but only for polishing or straighten- 
ing the wooden shafts of arrows.! We found but one specimen, 
or rather the half of one. This instrument originally consisted 
of two flat stones about three inches long, two inches wide, and 
half or three quarters of an inch thick. These were ground 
smooth on the faces so as to fit accurately together, and through 
one end of the united halves was bored a circular hole, penetrat- 
ing to the other end. Half of this orifice lay in each stone. The 
wooden shaft was laid horizontally in one stone and the other 
fitted over, and by drawing the stick in and out it was polished 
and straightened. (See Figure 52.) This specimen is made of 
a coarse, pink sandstone. 
(Fic. 52.) ARROW-STRAIGHTENER. (Natural Size.) 
The latter class, or household implements, though not so numer- 
ous, we found more widely distributed than the former. These 
were scattered through all of the ruins, the majority crudely made, 
but some of them smoothly polished and ground to a cutting edge. 
The edges of the latter class of stone axes were kept in order 
by abrasion or by rubbing them down on stone whenever a notch 
was accidentally made. Sometimes this laborious process occu- 
pied days, and a single careless blow with the axe might destroy 
the results of many hours of labor. I noticed along the sloping” 
surface of the narrow ledge of sandstone on which was built the 
Casa del Eco, a ruin on the San Juan, several rounded depres- 
1 For an illustration of a similar tool refer to Evans’s Ancient Stone Implements 
of Great Britain, page 241. : 
