One of several seed beater types used locally
Pestles of stone were long, smoothed, and sometimes flattened on the sides. This resulted from use of these implements also as rubbing or mulling stones for processing small seeds on flat slabs without employment of basket hoppers. The pestles were always without the ornamentation used by certain other California tribes. The pounding end of the food grinding pestles are ever so slightly convex—their grinding surfaces are nearly flat. This is in contrast to pestles used in the deep bowl-shaped portable stone mortars for ceremonial purposes. The grinding ends of these pestles were strongly rounded, nearly hemispherical in shape.
The muller or small seed crusher used on the flat grinding slab without a hopper basket was of oval or rectangular shape, and it too was unornamented.
Small brushes used in miscellaneous food preparation were made of pounded dried soap-plant bulb fibers.
Hot rocks for cooking were usually handled with two sticks. None of our tribes used spoons. Crude obsidian knives with, or more commonly without, bone handles were used for many chores.
Yana used split cobble stones for cutting and scraping operations. Their stone knives sometimes had wrapped buckskin handles.
Bone awls, usually with wrapped handles, were commonly used for sewing buckskin and other hides. Atsugewi are said by some to have had both eyed and open notched needles of bone for sewing skins and tule mats.
The wooden shuttle for net weaving was a stick notched at both ends and was used by all of the local tribes. A squarish wooden net mesh spacer permitted nets to be properly made.
Mountain Maidu used deer antler wedges for splitting wood while Atsugewi used wooden wedges—especially of mountain-mahogany. Wedges were usually driven with simple wooden clubs, though rocks might be employed for the purpose.