The Senecas and Cayugas are said by Morgan to have used wooden mortars in which to pound corn after it was hulled,[42] and it is possible that the long pestles of soft stone were used with wooden mortars, though some are not well adapted to this use. The Iroquois women pounded in stone mortars the stony material used in tempering the clay for their pottery.[43] The California Indians made mortars by knocking a segment off a bowlder, making a flat surface, and working out with a hammer and chisel,[44] while the tribes of the interior worked directly from the surface of a suitable rock. The Yokuts, according to Powers, use tolerably well made stone mortars, and sometimes place a basket-like arrangement around the top to prevent the acorns from flying out.[45]
Fig. 94.—Grooved hammer.
No two specimens of the mortars and metate-like stones in the Bureau collection are alike; the nearest approach that can be made to a classification is as follows:
A. Smooth and flat on one or both sides; for use with mullers; from McMinn county, Tennessee, and Allamakee county, Iowa.
B. With round cavities on one or both sides; for round or cylindrical pestles; from McMinn county, Tennessee. A cobblestone from Bradley county, Tennessee, has a shallow cavity in either side and a pit in the center of each. From Kanawha valley there is a slab weighing about 25 pounds, flat and smooth on one side, as though primarily used with a muller and the regular even cavity afterward made; on the other side a cavity and a cupped hole have been worked in from the natural surface. A slab from Warren county, Ohio, has a shallow cavity worked into one side and a cupped hole in the other. From Union county, Mississippi, there is a flattened bowlder with a shallow cavity on each side; a shallow cup has been pecked on the edge of one of them. From Caldwell county, North Carolina, comes a bowlder of water-worn mica-schist, with a shallow cavity and a deeper one on one side, and on the other a cupped hole opposite each of these cavities.
C. With one side hollowed out, the other flat and smooth. Specimens of this type come from Caldwell county, North Carolina; McMinn county, Tennessee, and Bradley county, Tennessee, the last with a pit in the center and another on the edge of the flat side.
D. With a long, narrow depression on each side. A very large specimen of fine-grained sandstone from Lincoln county, Arkansas, represents this type.
There are, in addition, two pieces of fine-grained sandstone with uniform thickness of less than an inch and about 10 inches across, from Kanawha valley, West Virginia, and Hale county, Alabama, respectively. Both sides are ground perfectly smooth, and flat. The objects were probably for some culinary purpose.