NOKTH-AMERICAN IMPLEMENTS. 59 



or even (with the exception of the zigzag markings) identical form, used by the 

 Indians for splitting the cedar logs, of the boards from which their lodges 

 are made. They are used after the manner of a wedge, and are still used by 

 many of the tribes living on the borders of the great forest which covered the 

 western slope of the Cascade Mountains, and I have employed them for the 

 same purpose in splitting cedar logs to make rafts for crossing lakes, &c., during 

 my wanderings. The Cowichan Indians relate that once they used to live in 

 holes in the ground until Hoelse (a being who under various names appears in all 

 Indian traditions ; he is the Quatiahk of the Western Vancouver-Island tribes, 

 the Komikunx of the Klamaths in Southern Oregon ; and Longfellow has woven 

 this and other traditions together in his poem under the Chippeway name of 

 Hiawatha) taught them to make an axe out of the horns of the Elk which they 

 caught in pitfalls, and wedges out of the stone, and so they cut down the great 

 cedar-trees (Thuja gigantea, Nutt.) and made boards and canoes out of its trunk ; 

 and it was a sad thing for the poor Indian when he learned this fatal art, for then 

 he went to war and travelled from home on the great lakes and the fiords and bays 

 of the coast, and they have been decreasing ever since. Therefore on the whole I 

 am inclined to think that the use of your "British-Columbian" implement was 

 as a wedge for splitting trees, and that the portion of the "tine" was left 

 projecting, either to add to its force, to hold it by, as a surface to apply the 

 mallet against, or, just as likely as not, for no particular reason at all ; for, as 

 the Indian said of the white man, "he's very unsartain." The zigzag markings 

 I cannot account for, unless they were formed when dressing the horn, the 

 better to penetrate the wood. 



Regarding the analogy of the implements figured in ' Reliquiae Aquitanicae,' 

 such as B. Plate III. & IV. fig. 3, I cannot say much, the mishaps they may 

 have undergone during the long period they have lain exposed having no doubt 

 materially altered their original finish ; and they may possibly have been used for 

 the same purpose, notwithstanding the slight dissimilarity between them and the 

 " British-Columbian " tool, savages not being very particular to have a rude im- 

 plement, such as a wedge, always of one arbitrary form. I do not, however, doubt 

 that the implement figured in Plate III. & IV. fig. 2 was of that nature, the con- 

 ditions of life among the ancient savage coast-tribes of Europe and the present 

 fishing- and coast-tribes of the shores of North America, particularly on the 

 seaboard of the North Pacific, having, no doubt, been very similar, even to the 

 Avooded character of the country and many of the common animals of the chase ; 

 and it will be found that savages or men (such as explorers having to depend on 



