Sketches From Oldest America 



boring tools of flint; the adze of 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 "ketik," 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 " Ongootkoots " 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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