In addition to corn, which is placed first, the Indians gathered wild rice in the North and koonti and tuckahoe in the South. Of these roots, it is stated: “It grew like a flagge, in the marshes, and when made into bread had the ‘taste of potatoes.’” There were also great stores of dried meat and fish put up in every village, quantities of maple sugar, squashes, beans, pumpkins, and an endless variety of roots and nuts. We now know that there are seventeen separate foods for which civilization is indebted to the Indian. [Illustration: FIG. 504 _A_. (S. 1–4.) From the collection of B. H. Young, Louisville, Kentucky. Rare forms of pestles from the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys. ] What we should consider the simplest form of mortar is a question. Of course, the mortar, rather than the pestle, is the essential thing. Man must have something in which to grind or crush his food, and it did not matter to him whether the receptacle was wood, stone, or leather so long as it served the purpose, and it was of no consequence to him whether his pestle was a round stone, an oval, an elongated pestle or bell-shaped, or a flat mano stone. What he wished to accomplish, the reduction of grains or nuts or chunks of dried beef to flour, was of primary importance, and the agencies employed to obtain this result were secondary. Of course, he may have used elaborately ornamented and artistically worked pestles and mortars in the preparation of sacred meal; as to that I do not know. What I am talking about now is the common form of mortar and pestle. [Illustration: FIG. 505. (S. 1–4.) Cast of a steatite bowl. Found near Lynn. Collection of Salem Museum. Salem, Massachusetts. ] Wooden mortars, as well as wooden bowls, existed in many portions of the country. There are abundant historical references to these, and readers are referred to the Bibliography in this instance as in others. The natives smoothed the surface of a fallen tree-trunk, or the top of a stump, and, by constant friction of either stone or wooden pestle, soon wore out a mortar cavity. They also selected glacial boulders, convenient points of bluffs, ledges, etc., in various parts of the country, and worked out stationary mortars. These have been found in at least a hundred places in the United States. Aside from the stationary mortars, there were many small flat stones, and some large stones of convenient size on which grinding is evident for a considerable length of time, and as a result a depression varying from a few inches to a foot or more in depth occurs.