Archaeology Magazine - June 1970 - 31

and went on to write the most accurate account of the
Cherokee, Creek and Choctaw we possess. The only
trouble is that Adair had a thesis. He was so impressed
with the Southeastern Indians that he eventually convinced himself they were descendants of the lost tribes
of Israel, and the purpose of his book was to prove it.
The thesis colors his thinking somewhat and makes
for strange reading, but when he is being objective
and describing what he actually observed during his
years as an Indian trader, his account has the massiveness of detail and the natural ease of truth. His description of chunky is graphic enough to quote in
full: "The warriors have another favourite game,
called Chungke; which, with propriety of language,
may be called 'Running hard labour.' They have near
their statehouse, a square piece of ground well cleaned,
and fine sand is carefully strewed over it, when requisite, to promote a swifter motion to what they
throw along the surface. They have a stone about two
fingers broad at the edge, and two spans round; each
party has a pole of about eight feet long, smooth, and
tapering at each end, the points flat. They set off
a-breast of each other at six yards from the end of the
playground; then one of them hurls the stone on its
edge, in as direct a line as he can, a considerable distance toward the middle of the other end af the
square: when they have run a few yards, each darts
his pole anointed with bear's oil, with a proper force,
as near as he can guess in proportion to the motion of
the stone, that the end may lie close to the stonewhen this is the case, the person counts two of the
game, and, in proportion to the nearness of the poles
to the mark, one as counted, unless by measuring, both
are found to be at an equal distance from the stone. In
this manner, the players will keep running most part
of the day, at half speed, under the violent heat of
the sun, staking their silver ornaments, their nose,
finger and ear rings ; their breast, arm and wristplates,
and even all their wearing apparel, except that which
barely covers their middle. All the American Indians
are much addicted to this game, which to us appears
to be a task of stupid drudgery: it seems however to
be of early origin, when their forefathers used diversions as simple as their manners. The hurling stones
they use at present, were time immemorial rubbed
smooth on the rocks, and with prodigious labour;
they are kept with the strictest religious care, from
Chunky was played in a great variety of ways de- one generation to another, and are exempted from bepending on local custom and tradition. The best gen- ing buried with the dead. They belong to the town
eral description of the game was written by James where they are used, and are carefully preserved."
Adair in his History of the American Indians (1775),
edited by S. W. Williams (Johnson City, Tennessee In another variety of the game recorded by J. R.
1930) pages 430-431. Adair was a Scotch trader out Swanton in his massive study of the Southeastern Inof Charleston who married into the Choctaw tribe dians ( The Indians of the Southeastern United States,

veered off toward it automatically and was still about
ten feet away before I realized what it was- not a
salt lick, but a highly polished chunky stone, a true
work of functional art rarely seen nowadays outside
museums. Discoidals are common enough; some of
them are even found by surface hunters like myself.
But well-wrought chunky stones, polished to a gleaming smoothness and symmetrical as a piece of modern
sculpture, are extremely rare.
The stone is a flat disk perfectly round, so perfect, in fact, and so symmetrical, it seems as though
it must have been made with the help of some sort of
compass. On each face is a sloping shallow concavity
9.4 cm. in diameter and about 1.8 cm. deep. The symmetry of the sphere as a whole is repeated in the circularity of these concave surfaces, and these in turn
are repeated by small interior circles with raised edges
tapering to a depression .1 cm. deep at the very center
of the stone. These smallest circles are usually thought
to have been designed as a grip for the thumb and
index finger, but I discovered that mine are just not
long enough to fit, and even if they were, the engineering would be all wrong. Gripped in that position,
the stone would have been thrown with reverse English on it and instead of going down the alley would
either stop or roll slowly backwards towards its point
of origin. I am not certain, therefore, what they were
used for- perhaps simply to complete the symmetry
of the concentric circles, perhaps as a vestigial form of
its method of manufacture, or perhaps as a gauge of
some sort to measure the accuracy of the throwing
sticks. At any rate, two small nicks on one side and a
few shallow scratcheson the edge were probably caused
by a plow or harrow. The material is yellow quartzite,
extremelytough and difficultto work, but for the same
reason able to bear up under a great deal of punishment. The surface is polished, as cold and mellow as
winter sunlight, and the interior is drawn so dangerously thin as to be translucent. Small pits no larger
than pin points reveal the pecking operation that
carved out the sides and molded and hollowed the
stone. These pecking scars remain, however, only in
the concavities,where polishing would have been more
difficult. The outer edges are perfectly smooth, worn
by generations of sweaty hands and hard runways of
baked clay.

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Archaeology Magazine - June 1970

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - June 1970