Home / Scharf, J. Thomas, ed. History of Westchester County, New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I. Philadelphia: L.E. Preston & Co., 1886. / Passage

History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I

Scharf, J. Thomas, ed. History of Westchester County, New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I. Philadelphia: L.E. Preston & Co., 1886. 289 words

Specimens of all these have been found in Westchester County. The mortars were usually bowl-like depressions worn into some rock beside the village site, where the women could conveniently resort to grind the corn. Sometimes they were made in portable stones. The pestles were from two to three inches in diameter and from six to twenty inches in length, and generally of fine sandstone, greenstone or hornblende. Axes were made of varieties of greenstone, syenite,

1 With black flint drill foiind in hole. These epeciniena were found at Crofoii I'uitit, and Mr. J;imes Wood says they are uniiiiie.

HOEKBLEXDE AXE. Found in Bedford.

granite, porphyry and sandstone. They may be described as wedges, encircled by a groove near the heavy end. They varied in weight from half a pound to six or eight pounds. The groove was made for securely fastening the handle. This was bound with pieces of raw hide, or sometimes a young tree was cleft while yet growing, and the axe, being inserted, was left in the proper position until the growth had closely formed about it. Adzes, gouges and chisels were made of tough greenstone and hornblende, and were used in the manufacture of their canoes. The cutting tools were leaf-shaped implements made of flint or jasper, finely chipped to an edge, which combined in its cutting the principles of the saw and the knife. There were also flakes of obsidian that had sharp cutting edges. Skinning tools, or celts, were wedge-shaped implements made of many kinds of stone, worked to a fine edge at one end, and generally polished. Perforators were delicately wrought of flint or jasper. Scrapers, were small implements of flint used in -dressing skins. Arrow and spearheads form the best known