218 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



the same color or an entirely different one. But tlie savage woman 

 had gone further, for they well knew that certain plants were useful 

 as d3'es. In point of fact, the l)est dycstuff's of each area had been 

 exhaustiyely exploited. A list of these for each area would include a 

 large number of useful plants. As in gathering materials the simplest 

 processes involye slight artiticialit}', so in this intermediar}' art the 

 most primitiye basket makers modified little their raw materials. They 

 did not store them away for the conyenient season, and, saye that they 

 soaked them before using, practiced none of the refining processes 

 necessary to the highest results. 



In each of the culture areas of America the methods of preparing 

 materials were peculiar. 



Dr. Walter J. Hoffman " described in 1895 the aboriginal process of 

 preparing material for wicker baskets among the Menomini Indians 

 (Algonquin Family) on Lake Michigan. See figures 110 to 111 of this 

 paper. 



A small log of wood, 3 or 4 inches in diameter and as long as it is 

 possible to procure one without knots, furnishes the splints. (Hoff- 

 man's fig. 37.) These logs are cut when the rings of annual growth 

 are most easily ruptured. The log is beaten with a wooden mallet. 

 The example shown in Hoffman's illustration (fig. 3S) is of modern 

 tjj'pe, made with steel tools, but the ancient Indian, no doubt, had a 

 much rougher ])ut c[uite as efficient implement. The strips thus loos- 

 ened are torn off' one by one as long as the material is sufficiently flex- 

 ible for basket making. The next process is the shaping of these 

 splints for the desired work — splitting them, shaying them down thin 

 and smooth, and finishing them for the hand of the weayer. 



The basket-maker's awl of bone, the old aboriginal implement, may 

 be seen at work in many camps; but the knife with which the pre- 

 Columbian woman cut her basket material has utterh^ disappeared 

 from use. Now, among the Algonkin, the knife of steel yastly 

 improved their art and it raises a question whether in the pristine 

 condition of savagery some forms of basketr}" were as good as they 

 are at present. This query applies only to work done in hard wood. 



The knife now in use among the Indians for this and other wood- 

 working purposes is an interesting survival from- the remote past in 

 Europe. It is now active in the farrier's shop for paring the frog of 

 the horse's foot, prior to putting on the shoe; but two or three centu- 

 ries ago, under name of man's knife,^ it found its way through the 

 entire English and French area of North America. 



A curved blade of steel is inserted or laid in a groove on the side of 



« Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of I'^thnology, Part I, figs. 37-41. 



& The man's Knife among the North American Indians: A study in the Collections 

 of the U. S. National Museum, by Otis Tufton INIason, Roijort of the U. S. National 

 Museum, 1897, pp. 725-745, 17 figs. 



