North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler.

  • Clark Wissler
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/160 (page 74)
    where. On the other hand, the Indian did not so readily change his art, religion, and social customs. Perhaps the best early observer of primitive tools was Captain Lewis who writes of the Northern Sho¬ shone in the Original Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. 3, p. 19, as follows:—- “The metal which we found in possession of these people consisted of a few indifferent knives, a few brass kettles some arm bands of iron and brass, a few buttons, woarn as ornaments in their hair, a spear or two of a foot in length and some iron and brass arrow points which they informed me they obtained in exchange for horses from the Crow or Rocky Mountain Indians on the yellowstone River, the bridiebits and stirreps they obtained from the Spaniards, tho these were but few. many of them made use of flint for knives, and with this instrument, skined the animals they killed, dressed their fish and made their arrows; in short they used it for every purpose to which the knife is applyed. this flint is of no regular form, and if they can only obtain a part of it, an inch or two in length that will cut they are satisfyed. they renew the edge by flecking off the flint by means of the point of an Elk’s or deer’s horn, with the point of a deer or Elk’s horn they also form their arrow points of the flint, with a quickness and neatness that is really astonishing, we found no axes nor hatchets among them; what wood they cut was done either with stone or Elk’s horn, the latter they use always to rive or split their wood.” Among the collections from the Blackfoot and Gros Ventre, we find models of bone knives made by old people who claimed to have used such (Fig. 28). There are also a few flakes of stone said to have been so used when metal knives were not at hand. No aboriginal axes have been preserved but they are said to have been made of stone and bone. The hafted stone maul (Fig. 4) is everywhere present and we are told that the ax was hafted in a similar manner. Drill¬ ing was performed with arrow points and wood was dressed by stone scrapers.