HOLMES.] SCRAPERS — FISHING APPLIANCES. 207 



AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 



The first explorers of the Atlantic seaboard fouud many of the tribes 

 cultivating the soil to a limited extent, corn being the chief product. 

 Tha methods and appliances were exceedingly primitive, and the im- 

 plements employed, whether wood, bone, stone, or shell, possess but little 

 interest to art. 



Unworked shells, lashed to rude handles, served all the purposes as 

 well as if wrought out in the most fanciful manner. The large, firm 

 valves of clam-shells were most frequently used, as the following ex- 

 tracts will show. 



" Before the Indians learned of the English the use of a more convenient 

 instrument, they tilled their corn with hoes made of these shells, to 

 which purpose they are well adapted by their size."' 



A further reference to this shell is found in Wood's New England Pros- 

 pect: "The first plowman was counted little better than a Juggler: 

 the Indians seeing the plow teare up more ground iu a day, than their 

 Clamme shels could scrape up in a month, desired to see the workeman- 

 ship of it, and viewing well the coulter and share, perceiving it to be 

 iron, told the plowman, hee was almost Abamocho, almost as cunning as 

 the Devill."^ And again the same author says : "An other work is their 

 planting of corne, wherein they exceede our English husbandmen, keep- 

 ing it so cleare with their Clamme shell-hooes, as if it were a garden rather 

 than a corne-field, not suffering a choking weede to advance his auda- 

 cious head above their infant corne, or an undermining worme to spoile 

 his spurnes."' 



Other writers make but the most casual mention of this subject. De 

 Bry gives, in Plate XXI, Vol. II, a picture in which a number of natives 

 are engaged in cultivating their fields. In Fig. 3, Plate XXVII, I give 

 an enlarged cut of one of the implements employed; the original draw- 

 ing has probably been made from memory by the artist, and the cut 

 serv( s no purpose except to give an idea of the general shape of the 

 implement and to suggest the manner of hatting, if indeed the implement 

 is not made wholly from a crooked stick. 



FISHING APPLIANCES. 



The use of shell in the manufacture of fishing implements seems to 

 have been almost unknown among the tribes of the Atlantic coast, and 

 with the exception of a few pendant-like objects, resembling ijlummets 



' Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. VII, p. 193. 

 * Wood : New England Prospect, p. 87. 

 'Wood: New England Prospect, p. 106. 



