Sticks Tied Together
Fig. 15. Sticks tied together.
Among the wooden objects found are many perforated sticks tied together by strings. This specimen (fig. 15) is not complete, but enough remains to show that it is not unlike the covering in which the Hopi bride rolls her wedding blankets. From the place where the object was found, it appears that the dead were wrapped in coverings of this kind. Although the specimen is much damaged, it is not difficult to make out from the remaining fragment the mode of construction of the object.
Slabs
Fig. 16. Wooden slab.
Nordenskiöld figures a wooden object of rectangular shape, slightly concave on one side and more or less worn on the edges. Two similar wooden slabs (fig. 16) were found at Spruce-tree House. The objects occasioned much speculation, as their meaning is unknown. It has been suggested they are cradle-boards, a conjecture which, in view of the fact that similar specimens are sometimes found in child burials, is plausible. In this interpretation the holes which occur on the sides may have served for attachment of blankets or hoops. These boards, it may be said, are small even for the most diminutive Indian baby.
Another suggestion not without merit is that these boards are priest’s badges and were once carried in the hands suspended by strings tied to the holes in their edges.
Still another theory identifies them as parts of head dresses called tablets, worn in what the Pueblos call a tablita dance.