THE man's knife. 731 



It is not disputed that amoug American Indians all of the iron-bladed 

 knives for men are exotics, at least in the working part or blade. Eth- 

 nographers will notice also that in the accnlturation of savages it is 

 always the working part that they are willing to improve without 

 prejudice. The manual part holds its own longer, and it will be seen 

 that the grip and connective of men's knives are often "old school" 

 while the blade is ''new school.*' 



An important cpiestion arises as to the date of introduction and the 

 exact European source of some of the forms of blades. The only sur- 

 vival in tlie United States of the curved blade is in the farrier's knife, 

 with which he pares the hoof of the horse prior to laying on the shoe. 



After a diligent search among cutlers it is dififlcult to ascertain how 

 long this form of knife has been in use among farriers, and what its 

 l)recise relation is to the Xorth American curved knife. 



Murdoch draws attention to the fact that the Eskimo of Point Barrow 

 call all knives savik, meaning also iron, the identical word used in 

 Greenland for the same objects.' From this he argues that the first iron 

 was obtained from the East, along with the soapstone lam])s instead 

 of from Siberia, as was tobacco. It is true, however, that whittling 

 with a curved knife having a thumb cavity prevails all over eastern 

 Asia. The white migrants to Greenland antedated those to Alaska, 

 nevertheless, by several centuries. It will be found, also, by examin- 

 ing the Eskimo knives of Murdoch and Nelson, that they often differ 

 radically from the Indian types here especially noted. Seldom does an 

 Indian knife show the presence of the blacksmith, while the whale- 

 shijj's blacksmith seems to have been a successful schoolmaster to the 

 Eskimo. jMoreover, ivory, antler, and bone are far less tractable than 

 birch saplings for whittling, or cedar for sha])ing, excavating, or 

 carving. The Eskimo blade is shorter, straighter and never used with 

 two hands, while the Indian knife is used for grooving and reducing 

 large surfaces in the absence of the plane. 



Among North American aborigines the iron-bladed knife is restricted 

 in its area to the Eskimo and the Indian tribes southward in Alaska, 

 the Dominion of Canada, and the splint basket, snowshoe, the self-bow, 

 and the birch-bark canoe area of the United States. Tlie last-named 

 implements are jackknives par excellence. They are designed for whit 

 tlingand i^roducing shavings, and not for chopping or scraping — that is, 

 the formation of chips across the grain or of sawdust and scraps. These 

 lines must not be too sharply drawn, however, inasmuch as this i^aper 

 is restricted to materials furnished by the collections in Washington. 

 It is wonderful how adept primitive artisans are in getting a variety of 

 work out of one im])lement. In the absence of spokeshaves, planes, 

 chisels, gouges, groove planes, small adzes, and a host of others, the 

 Pacific coast Indians do the work of all with a double edged curved 

 blade h inch wide and 3 inches long. 



'John Murdocli, Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 157. 



