Manos and pestles from Los Adaes. The Spanish borrowed the technology for grinding corn from the local Indians in central Mexico, and used the local Nahua word metate for the lower part, but used their own wordãmanoãto refer to the part that you held in your hand. Mano fragments made of basalt are shown here. Basalt is not native to the province of Tejas and these hefty artifacts must have been brought from hundreds of miles away. The mano fragment in the front row, second from the left, appears to have been re-used as a pestle.