They gather a number of hiccory-nuts, which they pound with a round stone, upon a stone, thick and hollowed for the purpose. When they are beat fine enough, they mix them with cold water, in a clay basin, where the shells subside. The other part is an oily, tough, thick, white substance ... with which they eat their bread.[30]
Lawson’s language regarding the Indians of North Carolina is even more definite. He says:
[They gather] likewise hickerie nuts, which they beat betwixt two great stones, then sift them, so thicken their venison broth therewith, the small shells precipitating to the bottom of the pot, whilst the kernel, in the form of flour, mixes it with the liquor, both these nuts [hickory and chinquapin] made into meal makes a curious soup, either with clear water, or in any meat broth.[31]
Neither of these statements seems to have any reference to cupped stones. The first is a good description of a mortar with a round pestle, while the second says nothing about any particular form of stone; yet they have been referred to time and again as proof of the nut-stone theory. There would be some difficulty in pounding nuts fine in small holes half an inch or more below where the pounding stone could reach.
C. C. Jones[32] was satisfied that cupped stones were used for cracking nuts because great numbers of nut-bearing trees grow where they are found; while Whittlesey, noting the fact that hundreds of them are found throughout northern Ohio, considered them as sockets in which the end of a spindle rested. Dawson[33] speaks of “stones having deep hollows in the sides which were mortars for grinding pigments, or sockets for fire drills.”
The cupped stones in the Bureau collection are almost invariably of reddish sandstone, of varying texture, from a few ounces to 30 pounds in weight. The holes are from one to twenty-five in number, of various sizes even in the same stone, and follow the natural contour of the surface even when that is quite irregular; the stone is never dressed or flattened to bring the cups on a level; none show any marks of work, but are the rough blocks or slabs in their natural state.
Many of the holes are roughly pecked in, but the larger ones are usually quite smooth, as if ground out, and almost complete hemispheres. They range from a pit only started or going scarcely beyond the surface to one 2 inches in diameter. The smaller ones with one cup pass into the pitted stones. Occasionally at the bottom of a large cup there is a small secondary hole as though made by a flint drill.
The polished cups may have been used for fire-drill or spindle sockets, though why there should be a number of holes when but one could be used at a time awaits explanation. The rough ones may have been for holding nuts, and so long as they were on the same plane any number could be utilized; but when they are on different parts of the stone, even on opposite sides, as many of them are, the question remains open. Slabs or thin pieces nearly always have cups on both sides, while blocks or thick slabs have them on one side only. On the former a number of nuts could be cracked with one blow of a flat stone and thrown into a receptacle of some kind, either side of the stone being used at pleasure; but there would be no economy of time or work in this method, and it would be very strange that any one should not learn with so much experience that a nut should never be laid on the flat side in cracking. No theory yet advanced accounts for the greater number of such relics, namely, the irregular fragments of stone with cups at varying intervals and different levels.
No division can be made in regard either to size or material of the stone, or to form or finish of the cups. Many of the smaller ones were no doubt paint mortars. One well finished specimen of this class is shown in [figure 89]; it is of quartzite from 4 feet beneath the surface in Crittenden county, Arkansas.
