154 



PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Fig. 251 (on page 153). Another single-barbed specimen, eight inches and 

 one-half in length. Found in the neighborhood of Fond du Lac, and presented 

 to the Society in 1876 by M. de Neveu. 



* 



FIG. 252. Copper harpoon-head. Alaska. 



Until comparatively recent times harpoon-heads were hammered out of 

 native copper by certain Indians of Alaska. There are several specimens in the 

 United States National Museum, contributed by Mr. Dall and Dr. T. T. Minor, 

 and one of them, obtained by the last-named gentleman from the Thlinkets on 

 Baranoff Island (Sitka), is represented in Fig. 252. It is a well-worked flattish 

 harpoon-head, three-sixteenths of an inch thick, with five sharp unilateral barbs 

 and an eye in the expanding lower part, and strikingly similar in shape to some 

 of the specimens of bone heretofore described. 



I am indebted to Mr. Dall for the following details concerning the use of 

 native copper in Alaska : 



" The earliest ethnological fact recorded by Steller, the first white man who 

 set foot on these coasts, at Kayak Island, near the mouth of the Atna or Copper 

 River, July 20, 1741, was the discovery (among other things) of a whetstone 

 on which copper knives had been sharpened. The Atna River contains in the 

 gravels of its bed waterworn masses of native copper, of which I purchased one 

 (now in the National Museum) from the natives living near this river during 

 their annual visit to Port Etches, in 1874. They have been from time imme- 

 morial in the habit of bringing down the pieces of copper to trade to the coast- 

 natives, who made of them knives, arrow and harpoon-points, shields, and 

 amulets, specimens of which are in the collection of the National Museum, or 

 have been seen by me in use. The Indians about Sitka, after the Russians 

 became established there, discarded copper for iron, which they bought from 

 the Russians and from English and American traders. Occasionally they 

 obtained pieces of yellow sheathing-metal, which is harder than copper. But 

 the old implements were preserved with veneration or because they were ' lucky ' ; 

 yet they have now mostly passed into the hands of collectors. 



" It would be absurd for people who can buy iron to continue the manufac- 

 ture of implements of soft copper. As a matter of fact, its use was given up 

 very soon, wherever intercourse with the whites became habitual. In unfre- 

 quented localities near the source of the copper its use continued until lately. 

 It is now nearly or quite obsolete." 



