The relics commonly called gorgets have been found in Europe; they may be convex on one side, concave on the other, and are supposed to be for bracers.[100] It is said that the Miami Indians wore similar plates of stone to protect their wrists from the bowstring.[101] Herndon and Gibbon remark that a gold ornament in shape like a gorget, but not pierced, is worn on the forehead by some of the Amazon Indians.[102] According to Schoolcraft the so-called gorgets were sometimes used as twine-twisters;[103] but Abbott holds that while some may have been twine-twisters, or may have been used for condensing sinews or evening bowstrings (that is, reducing the strings to a uniform diameter), most were simply ornaments, as they are generally found on the breast of a buried body.[104] Stevens is even more conservative, holding that they were neither twine-twisters nor devices for condensing sinews or evening bowstrings, as they show no marks of wear in the holes.[105]
Some writers suppose the gorgets to have been shuttles; but this supposition can hardly be entertained, although it is true, according to Chase, that the Oregon Indians passed thread with a curved bone needle.[106] As twine-twisters they would be about as awkward as anything that could be devised. As to evening bowstrings, it would seem that if a string were too large in places to pass through a hole it could not be pulled through; pounding and rolling the wet string with a smooth stone, or some such means, would be the remedy. The bracer theory is plausible; but no one seems ever to have seen a gorget used for this purpose.
Few of the gorgets in the Bureau collection show such marks of wear around the edges of the hole as would be made by a cord; but the majority are thus worn at the middle, where the hole is smallest. Some specimens among every lot are not perforated, or only partially so; the drilling seems to have been the last stage of the work. The hole is almost always drilled from both sides, and the few in which it goes entirely through from one side would probably have had it enlarged later from the other. A number are fragments of larger gorgets, the pieces having been redrilled.
Some of the specimens have various notches and incised lines, the latter being sometimes in tolerably regular order; but there is not the slightest indication that these marks had any meaning or were intended for any other purpose than to add to the ornamental appearance of the stone.
If they were to be worn at the belt or on any part of the dress they could easily have been fastened by a knotted string, or if the wearer desired he could have an ornamental button of some kind. If suspended around the neck, in order to make them lie flat against the breast they probably had a short cord passed through the perforation and tied above the top of the object, the suspending cord being passed through the loop thus formed.
Fig. 130.—Gorget.
The principal division is into group A with one hole and group B with two holes, though in many cases this forms the only difference between two specimens.
A. General outline rectangular, or perhaps slightly elliptical, sometimes with one end somewhat narrower than the other, or with one end rounded off, or with the corners slightly rounded. Perforation commonly near one end. The form is represented by the specimen with two perforations illustrated in [figure 133], which otherwise fully answers the description. The argillite specimens have the broader ends striated as though used for rubbing or scraping, but in other respects conform to those of other materials. The materials are generally the softer rocks, as shown in the accompanying table:
| District. | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Tennessee | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | |
| Wilkes county, North Carolina | 1 | ||||
| Knox county, Ohio | 1 | ||||
| Kanawha valley, West Virginia | 7 | 2 | |||
| KEY: A = Steatite. B = Slate. C = Sandstone. D = Schist. E = Argillite. | |||||