BULL. 30] 



BONES BONE-WORK 



159 



Chelmsford, Sudbury, and other towns in 

 Massachusetts in 1706, and Saco, Me., 

 in 1710. A treaty of peace to which 

 his name was signed was made at Ports- 

 mouth, N. H., July 13, 1713. He was 

 killed by a party under Capt. Moulton 

 near Taconnet, Me., in 172-1; about the 

 same time his family at Norridgewock 

 was fired upon, his daughter being killed 

 and his mother taken prisoner, (c. t. ) 



Bones. See Anatomy. 



Bone-work. The use> of bone and re- 

 lated materials, including antler, ivory, 

 horn, whalebone, turtle-shell, and the 

 teeth, hoofs, beaks, and'clawsof manycrea- 

 tures, was almost universal among Indian 

 tribes. The hardness and toughness of 

 these materials made them desirable for 

 many kinds of implements and utensils, 

 and their pleasing color and capacity for 

 high polish caused them to be valued for 

 personal ornaments. Since both man 

 and beasts of various kinds have an im- 

 portant place in aboriginal mythology, it 

 is to be expected that in numerous in- 

 stances their bones had a special sacred 

 significance and use, as when, for example, 

 the skulls and paws of small animals were 

 used for mixing medicine. 



Not uncommonly the small bones, 

 teeth, and claws of various animals, the 

 beaks of birds, etc., were strung as beads, 

 were perforated or grooved to be hung as 

 pendant ornaments or rattles, or were 

 sewed on garments or other objects of 

 use. These uses are illustrated in the 

 necklaces of crab claws and the puffin 

 beak ceremonial armlets of the P^skimo, 

 by the bear-tooth necklaces of many of 

 the tribes, by the elk tusk embellish- 

 ments of the buckskin costumes of the 

 women among the Plains Indians, and 

 by the small carved bone pendants at- 

 tached to the edge of the garments of 

 the ancient Beothuk (see Adornment). 

 Teeth and small bones, such as the meta- 

 carpals of the deer, as well as worked bone 

 disks and lozenges, were used as dice in 

 playing games of chance, and gaming 

 sticks of many varieties were made of 

 bone. In precolonial times Ijone had to 

 be cut, carved, and engraved with imple- 

 ments of stone, such as knives, scrapers, 

 saws, gravers, drills, and grinding stones, 

 and with some of the tribes the primitive 

 methods still prevail. Although indis- 

 pensable to primitive tribes everywhere, 

 this material occupies a place of excep- 

 tional importance in the far N. beyond 

 the limits of forest growth, where the only 

 availaljle wood is brought oversea from 

 distant shores by winds and currents. 

 The Eskimo have the bones of the whale, 

 seal, walrus, bear, wolf, moose, reindeer, 

 muskox, and a wild sheep, and the antlers 

 of the moose and deer, the horns of the 

 sheep and ox, the teeth of the bear, wolf. 



and reindeer, the ivory of the walrus 

 and narwhal, fossil ivory, the whalebone 

 of the right-whale, and the bones of the 

 smaller quadrupeds and various birds, 

 and their skill in shaping them and adapt- 

 ing them to their needs in the rigorous 

 arctic environment is truly remarkable. 

 The larger bones, as the ribs of the whale, 

 are employed in constructing houses, 

 caches, and shelters; for ribs of boats, 

 runners for sleds, and plates for armor 

 (Nelson). Bone, ivory, and antler were 

 utilized for bows, arrows, spears, har- 

 poons, knives, scrapers, picks, flint-flak- 

 ing implements, clubs, boxes, and a 

 great variety of appliances and tackle 

 employed in rigging boats, in fishing, 

 in hunting, in transportation, in pre- 

 paring the product of the chase for 

 consumption; for weaving, netting, and 

 sewing implements, household utensils, 

 tobacco pipes, gaming implements, toys, 

 dolls, fetishes, amulets, and artistic 

 carvings of many kinds. Personal orna- 

 ments and toilet articles of bone and 

 kindred materials are more numerous in 

 Alaska, where beads, pendants, hair- 

 pins, combs, labrets, belt clasps, belt 

 ornaments of reindeer teeth, etc., are 

 largely made and ingeniously applied. 

 The artistic work of these northern 

 peoples is shown in their extremely 

 clever carvings in ivory and their engrav- 

 ings of various ornamental and jiictorial 

 designs upon objects of use and ornament, 

 ])ut there seems to be sufficient ground 

 for the opinion that these particular 

 phases of their art are largely of recent 

 development and are due to association 

 with white men and as a result of the 

 acquisition of metal tools and perhaps 

 also to some extent to contact with Indian 

 tribes which in their turn have been 

 influenced by the whites. The wide 

 range and vast numbers of the objects of 

 art shaped from these materials by the 

 arctic peoples of the present periocl will 

 be more fully appreciated by reference 

 to the works of Boas, Murdoch, Nelson, 

 and Turner, in the annual reports of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, and by 

 a visit to the ethnologic museums. 



Bone and the allied substances have 

 been and are favorite materials with the 

 tribes of the Pacific coast. The uten- 

 sils, implements, ornaments, and to- 

 temic and symbolic carvings of the N. W. 

 coast tribes are often admirable and dis- 

 play esthetic appreciation of a high order 

 (Niblack, Boas). Their carvings in bone, 

 ivory, and antler, often inlaid with aba- 

 lone, and the graceful and elaborately 

 carved cups, ladles, and spoons of horn, 

 are especially noteworthy. The art of 

 the tribes of the Frazer basin and the 

 Pacific slope s. of Puget sd. is much 

 more primitive, though bone was in 



