38 RELICS OF THE STONE AGE IN NOVA SCOTIA PIERS. 



has been recently observed," he writes, " that when European 

 hatchets have been given to these people, they invariably take 

 out the handle and attach another sidewise, by binding it with 

 thongs or sinews through and around the eye." 



Murdoch also says that the Indians of the north-west coast 

 of America always re-haft as adzes any steel hatchets which 

 they obtain by trade. In some cases they even go to the great 

 trouble of cutting away parts of the implement in order to 

 better adapt it to the new method of use.* 



Lieut. T. Dix Bolles in his catalogue of Eskimo articles 

 collected along the north and north-west coast of America, men- 

 tions no axes among the many thousands of objects noted. 

 There were, however, twenty adzes, eighty-seven adze-blades, 

 and eleven adze-heads. Dr. Wilson, of the IT. S. National 

 Museum, says that the same condition exists all down the 

 coast to Lower California, no stone tools save in one instance 

 having been found which undoubtedly had been used axe-wise.'f 



Among certain tribes, I understand a grooved implement is 

 found which is used as an axe, but among the Eskimo it is 

 replaced by the grooved adze. The line between these two 

 implements is now being investigated, Does the prevalence of 

 the adze-form in Nova Scotia indicate in any way ike, influence 

 or presence of the more northern race ?+ There is evidence to 

 show that the latter people once inhabited the country much to 

 the south of the region in which they now dwell, and the Micmacs 

 at one time waged war upon them, as described by Charlevoix. 

 .To return once more to the form and use of the so-called 

 celts found in Nova Scotia, it may be said that the few speci- 



*See John Murdoch in Ninth Annual Report U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 165- 

 166, and figs. 128-129. 



t See Lieut. T. Dix Bolles, " Preliminary Catalogue of Eskimo Collection in U. S. 

 Nat. Museum," in Report of Nat, Miis. for 1887; also Dr. Thomas Wilson, ''Stone 

 Cutting Implements," 4th paper, in The Archaeologist for June, 1895, (vol. iii, p. 179.) 



J I would like to draw particular attention to the possibility of many of our pre- 

 historic remains being relics of the occupation of the country by Eskimo, previous to 

 their having been driven northward by the Micmacs. The latter belong to the Algon- 

 quin family, and doubtless pressed to the north in accordance with the general direc- 

 tion of migration in the east. The significance of the form of Nova Scotian stone 

 implements as bearing upon the question of the occupation of the land by a northern 

 race, has not, I think, before been noted by writers. 



