The study of the decoration and method employed reveal the implements used for that purpose. The imprint of a finger nail is clearly defined on some of the rudest as a decoration. Others show the imprint of a coarse netting or cloth, while the edge of an escallop shell or clam shell was often used. Pointed sticks, wedge-shaped sticks, and straws were also common implements for decorating with. These people twisted fibers, from which they made cloth.

Their numerous weapons, implements, and utensils of stone -- including mortars and pestles, axes, hatchets, adzes, gouges, chisels, cutting tools, skinning tools, perforators, arrow and spear heads, scrapers, mauls, hammer-stones, sinkers, pendants, pierced tablets, polishers, pipes, ami ceremonial stones -- of all of which specimens

ABORIGINAL

INHABITANTS

have been found in Westchester County, were very well wrought, and, considering the extreme difficulties attending their fabrication on account of the entire absence of metal tools, bear high testimony to the perseverance and ingenuity of the Indians as artificers. They had great art in dressing skins, using smooth, wedge-shaped stones to rub and work the pelts into a pliable shape. They produced fire by rapidly turning a wooden stick, fitted in a small cavity of another piece of wood, between their hands until ignition was effected. When they wished to make one of their more durable canoes they had first to fell a suitable tree, a task which, on account of the insufficiency of their tools, required much labor and time. Being unable to cut down a tree with their stone axes, they resorted to fire, burning the tree around its trunk and removing the charred portion with their stone implements. This was continued until the tree fell. Then they marked the length to be given to the canoe, and resumed at the proper place the process of burning and removing.