Sketches From Oldest America 



boring tools of flint; the adze o/ jade; hammers 

 were made mostly from jade and wedges of bone; 

 while flint was used to saw the jade, and the brown 

 variety was employed for tools. The women s 

 knives were largely of slate, but sometimes of jade, 

 and their needles of ivory or bone. 



Pots were crudely manufactured by mixing clay 

 with heavy-spar that had been roasted and 

 powdered fine, called &quot;ketik,&quot; blood from a seal 

 being added and sometimes the pin-feathers from a 

 bird. Utensils thus made were less liable to frac 

 ture than those formed simply from clay. Occa 

 sionally a flat stone was hollowed out to about the 

 depth of a frying-pan, and used for a cooking 

 utensil, it having the advantage of boiling more 

 quickly than the clay vessel over the seal-oil lamp. 

 These lamps were simply flat stones, hollowed out 

 with the flint instruments so as to hold oil. A few 

 copper kettles of Russian make found their way 

 into Tigara from the Diomedes about sixty years 

 back; they were very expensive and could be 

 afforded by but few. The &quot; Ongootkoots &quot; fre 

 quently broke up these kettles and pounded the 

 copper into knives, these being the first metal blades 

 known among the Inupash. 

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