554 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



peoples working at this series of trades in order to know the life-history 

 of a great human occupation. 



The first artisans of this craft were, for the most part, women, who, 

 indeed, were the inventors and fostering patrons of all these simple 

 arts which lay at the foundation of most of our modern peaceful indus- 

 tries. 



Let us follow the savage woman through her daily cares in order that 

 we may comprehend the significance of her part in the play. The slain 

 deer lying before her cave or brush shelter, or wigwam, shall be the 

 point of departure in the inquiry. . She strikes off a sharp flint flake 

 for a knife. By that act she becomes the first cutler, the real founder 

 of Sheffield. With this knife she carefully removes the skin, little 

 dreaming that she is thereby making herself the patron saint of all sub- 

 sequent butchers. She rolls up the hide, then dresses it with brains, 

 smokes it, curries it, breaks it with implements of stone and bone, with 

 much toil and sweat, until she establishes her reputation as the first 

 currier and tanner. With fingers weary and worn, with needle of bone 

 and thread of sinew, and scissors of flint, she cuts and makes the cloth- 

 ing for her lord and her family ; no sign is over the door, but within 

 dwells the first tailor and dress-maker. From leather especially pre- 

 pared she manufactures moccasins for her husband, which to his speed 

 adds wings. Compared with the tardy progress of her barefooted man 

 in the chase, they are indeed the winged sandals of Hermes, and she is the 

 aboriginal St. Crispin. Out of little scraps of fur and feathers, supple- 

 mented with bits of colored shell or stone or seeds, she dresses dolls for 

 her children, makes head-dresses and toggery for the coming dance, 

 adorns the walls of her squalid dwelling, creating at a single pass half 

 a dozen modern industries— at once, toy-maker, milliner, modiste, 

 hatter, upholsterer, and wall-decker. 



In order to comprehend the steps in the processes of the aboriginal 

 tanner it may be serviceable to take a hurried glance through a mod- 

 ern tannery. The methods of procedure are somewhat as follows : 



(1) Salted or dried hides are soaked to make them pliable, washed, 

 and the extraneous flesh taken off with a flesher, an instrument like a 

 drawiug knife, sharp on one edge and dull and smooth on the other. 

 Market hides are soaked in fresh water to remove blood and dirt. 



(2) The cleaned hides are then placed for a few days in a vat of lime 

 water, which opens the pores, loosens the hair and combines with the 

 oily matter in the hide to form a soap. Putrefaction softening is also 

 resorted to for removal of the hair. 



(3) The hides are then rubbed down with the smooth side of the 

 flesher, the hair removed, and the skin made as pure and clean as it can 

 be. They are at the same time rendered porous for the reception of the 

 tannin. 



(4) They are then hung in a series of tan-pits, in which the water is 

 more and more charged with tannic acid until the hide is converted 

 into leather. 



