What Is It?

What is it? Here is some background info to help you figure it out. We found something in eastern Arizona on a ranch that was homesteaded by a man who claimed ownership of over 660 sections of land. Just one section of land is 660 acres.
So that is a lot of land! We got to meet and know the daughter of this Arizona rancher when we were searching for cactus to landscape our home in Sierra Vista, Arizona. This woman who was then in her lat 60's told us that she would ride a horse around the ranch and find these Native American artifacts. She had over 150 of these lining the fence around her ranch house. These were probably used by the Apache Indians. Women would have used these artifacts for cooking. Now can you guess what it is?

Correct Answer: Abraham Lincoln's wife, Patty, guessed correctly. It is Native American grinding stone for grinding corn into corn meal.

The reason we had to go to this homestead for cactus is that Arizona has very stringent laws on moving cactus. No native Arizona cactus can by moved without applying to the state for permission slips that states that someone who has cactus is allowing you to transport them to your home. If you are found moving cactus without these permits you get fined big time for each and every cactus, so we followed the rules and got the permits. The day we got this grinding stone we had an encounter with a rattlesnake on the homesteaded ranch. Let me rephrase that. Jack had an encounter with a rattlesnake. Joann was down the hill tying on the permit slips to the cactus. Anyway Jack was climbing up this cliff where he had parked a couple of barrel cactus when a rattlesnake came slithering to the edge of this very same cliff. Jack and the rattlesnake met eyeball to eyeball. At that point Jack left out a bloodcurdling scream and started falling backwards down the cliff. Joann looked up and watched him fall and wondered what had happened. Did he have a heart attack? When Jack explained the situation they decided to wait a bit to go back for the remaining cactus to allow the rattlesnake time to retreat from that area. Later they very very carefully approached the barrel cactus and claimed the barrel cactus. End of story.

Later this week I will share another snake story.