NELSON) IMPLEMENTS OF VARIOUS KINDS () 
drift material from about the place where nets or fish traps are set in 
rivers or small streams. 
ROOT PICKS 
Small picks, made from bone or ivory, with wooden handles, are used 
by the women for digging the edible bulbous roots of a species of grass 
which grows on the plains from the Kuskokwim northward to Bering 
strait. ‘ 
Figure 3, plate xxx11rJ, illustrates one of three picks from Norton 
sound. It has a flat, wooden handle with two large scalloped incisions 
near the butt to aid in grasping with the hand; it is grooved and pierced 
by two holes. The pick is made from a long, pointed, slender rod of 
walrus ivory, held in position against a groove along the front of the 
handle by rawhide lashings which pass through the holes. 
Figure 1 of the same plate shows a pick obtained on Nunivak island 
by Doctor Dall. It has a rounded, wooden handle, with a knob-like 
head, flattened in front to receive the pick and pierced by two holes for 
lashings. The pick is half of a walrus tusk, and its flattened side is 
bound against the front of the handle by rawhide lashings passing 
through two holes in the handle and two corresponding holes in the pick. 
Figure 2, from Cape Nome, is a small ivory handle for a root pick, 
grooved along the front to receive the pick and pierced by two holes 
for binding it in position; a third hole, midway of the iower side of the 
handle, is intended for another lashing, to form a brace on the lower 
part of the pick. 
BONE BREAKERS 
For the purpose of breaking large bones in order to extract the 
marrow, stone implements are used. These in some cases are simply 
hammer-like stones, used without handles, but they are frequently 
of very hard stone, ground to a sinooth polish and fastened by thongs 
to a short handle of wood or other material. 
Plate XXXIX, 3, represents a small hammer-shape bone breaker of pec- 
tolite from Cape Nome. It is somewhat oblong in cross section, with 
rounded corners. The sides are smoothly polished, but the ends are 
battered and worn down by use. 
At Point Hope there was seen a handsome stone breaker of clear 
white quartz. It weighed about a pound and a half and was polished 
to four very regular surfaces, with the corners somewhat rounded, 
and was secured to a wooden handle by a rawhide lashing. 
FIRE-MAKING IMPLEMENTS 
The method of obtaining fire, common to so many savage races, 
from the heat developed by the friction of a stick worked with great 
rapidity on a piece of soft wood by means of a cord, was found in 
common use among the Eskimo throughout the region visited, and the 
