732 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



Witliiu the regions mentioned there is for the student an excellent 

 opi)ortunity to study the effect, materials, and their environmental 

 forces upon the construction of the knife. Two varieties of the man's 

 knife are steadily used by the Eskimo — the carver's knife and the etching 

 knife or burin; but, all other shapes are employed by them, so that one 

 finds the curved knife for whittling, the straight blade for carving, and 

 the pointed blade for etching. The blades are short and firmly attached 

 to the handles by rivets or by lashing. The handles are usually of 

 bone, antler, or ivory, some of them being curved to fit the forearm 

 and give great purchase in cutting hard material; others are short and 

 adapted to be grasped in the hand for the purpose of making small 

 chips and even for scraping. 



The Canadian Indians and thoseof the northern United States, having 

 only soft material and bark to work upon, restrict themselves mostly 

 to the long-bladed curved knife. On the Pacific coast, among Indian 

 tribes from Mount St. Elias and southward, there is a mixture of hard 

 material and soft wood, so that there is a great variety in the form of the 

 whittler's knife. Furthermore, these tribes have been in contact with 

 sailors for more than a century and use any i)iece of steel or iron they 

 can secure in trade. The Canadian Indians were stimulated by the 

 fur-trading companies to travel more rapidly and to make longer jour- 

 neys; hence, in furnishing them with the curved knife, they made it 

 possible for these Indians to work out the frame of the l)irch-bark canoe, 

 the bows of the snowshoes, splints for basketry, and a thousand and 

 one objects made of birch bark, with this simple but most efficient 

 device. It has become the traveling tool of the Canadian Indians and 

 has done more than aught else to imj)rove their mechanical skill. An 

 examination of old patterns of snowshoes, in comparison with the latest 

 patterns, reveals an astonishing improvement. The versatile curved 

 knife is just as useful in the making of fine babiche or rawhide string 

 for the webbing of the snowshoe as in whittling down the frame. In 

 the old-fashioned snowshoes the rawhide footing is nearly one-fourth 

 inch wide, while in the best and latest the strands are as fine as thread. 



EXAMPLES. 



Example Cat. ^o. 17G434, in the U. S. National Museum, is a far- 

 rier's knife (fig. 1), made and used by M. E. Horigan, horseshoer in 

 Washington, D. C. The blade is a wedge-shape piece of steel, flat on 

 the lower side and beveled on the upper side, and bent to a hook 

 at the other end. The tang is in form of a rectangle 2 inches long. 

 The handle is a piece of a rib from an ox; the natural curve is taken 

 advantage of in the manufacture; a slight notch is cut on the upper 

 end for the thumb, and depressions have been worn on the upper face 

 by the fingers of the operator. In order to combine the blade with the 

 handle, a saw cut is made on the inner end of the latter for 2 inches. 

 The tang is slipped into the saw cut and is held firmly in i)lace by 



