730 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



tang; and third, the true connective of packing, cement, lashing, rivets, 

 wedges or screws, some of which appear in the illustrations of this 

 paper. Where the tang is driven into the end of the grip the elasticity 

 or cohesion of the material forms the bond. In many examples the 

 principle of the ratchet and of the dovetail exist in the shaping of the 

 tang and its socket or in cutting notches on the tang. 



Before the introduction of the Iron Age into North America there 

 existed the same elements in the composition of a knife, to wit, a blade 

 of tooth, or shell, or stone; a handle of antler, bone, or wood; and a 

 connective of rawhide, sinew, yarn, or twine, of packing, of cement, and 

 possibly of rivets made of wood, bone, ivory, or antler. 



MODE OF CUTTING. 



All primitive men's knives with single edge, so far as the national 

 collections indicate, are made to cut toward the operator. Double- 

 edged knives, however, cut both ways. Among the American examples 

 all are for the right hand or for both hands. Lawson distinctly says 

 that "when the Carolina Indians cut with a knife, the edge is toward 

 them, whereas we always cut and whittle from ns; nor did I ever see 

 one of them left-handed." ' The farrier, as will be seen, also cuts toward 

 him, but by turning his hand under, in an awkward sort of way, 

 occasionally cuts from him. Two curved knives in the U. S. National 

 Museum from the Ainos of northern Japan, constructed exactly after 

 the manner of the American curved knives, are made to lit the left 

 hand, but they were received from the same person. It will be per- 

 fectly plain to one who has sharpened a quill pen oi" lead pencil that, 

 in the absence of spoke shaves and tine car\'er's tools, the Indian was 

 comi^elled to cut toward his body. 



SOURCE OF CURVED KNIFE. 



This manner of working is, doubtless, a survival of old processes of 

 hand work before the introduction of more modern tools. It may have 

 been overlooked by the student of technology that it was not until 

 recently that any care was bestowed upon fitting the handles of me- 

 chanics' tools to the hand itself. In the case of the woman's knife it 

 will be found that the farther away the Eskimo live from the white race 

 the more simple tlie handle of the scraper, while in those areas where 

 the contact has been most intimate the handle is more completely and 

 perfectly made to conform to the right hand. 



Jt is astonishing that until Perry's visit to Japan the handles of all 

 Japanese tools were extremely simple. There are some specimens of 

 bronze implements found in Europe in which the handle conforms to the 

 right hand of the worker. It is reasonably certain, therefore, that the 

 man's knife and the farrier's knife have come down from a remote past 

 in their present simple form. 



'The History of Carolina, Preface, p. v, Ralcigli, N. C, I860 [reprint], p. 330. 



