Chaw'se

Chaw'se, the Miwok word for a mortar hole, refers to the cup-shaped depressions in grinding rocks that were used to process acorns and other seeds into food with cobblestone pestles. A hole began as a slight natural depression in the rock and grew deeper through years of use. Deep mortar holes were used to crack seed shells without crushing the meats, while shallow depressions were used for acorn grinding; when one became too deep, a new one was started nearby. A great outcropping of marbleized limestone containing some 1,185 grinding pits is the largest occurrence of bedrock mortars in North America. Large grinding rocks were used by all the women of a village as a community milling place or outdoor kitchen, where they worked, socialized, and told stories together. In Miwok tradition, a long time ago Oo-soo'ma-te the Grizzly Bear and Hoi-yah'ko the first people made the chaw'se mortar holes in the big flat-topped rocks, and Nek-na-ka'tah the rock maiden helped make the stone pestles for grinding acorns.

California · United States