MURDOCH. | KNIVES. 151 
tling at Winter Island, says: ‘As is customary with negroes, he cut to- 
ward the left hand and never used the thumb of the right, as we do, for 
a check to the knife.”! This apparently refers to a similar manner of 
holding the knife. Before the introduction of iron, knives appear to 
have been always made of slate, worked by grinding. We obtained 
twenty-six more or less complete knives, most of which are genuine old 
implements, which have been preserved as heirlooms or amulets. These 
knives are either single or double edged, and the double-edged knives 
may be divided into four classes, according to their shape. The first class 
consists of rather small knives with ; 
the edges straight or only slightly L 
curved, tapering to a sharp or trun- 
cated point, with the butt termina- 
ting in a short broad tang slightly 
narrower than the blade, which is 
inserted in the end of a straight 
wooden haft, at least as long as 
the blade. The commonest mate- 
rial is a hard, dark purple slate, 
though some are of black or dark 
gray slate. Of this class we have 
three complete knives and _ five 
blades without the haft. 
No. 89584 [1107] (figured in Point 
Barrow Rept., Ethnology, Pl. 111, 
Fig. 5), will represent this class. 
It is a blade of dark purple slate, 
ground smooth, 3:5 inches long, 
tapering from a width of 1:5 inches 
at the butt, with curved edges to 
a sharp point, and beveled on both 
faces from the middle line to the 
edges, and the flat tang is inserted 
into a cleft in the end of a straight 
haft of spruce. The blade is se- 
cured by awhipping of about fifteen 
turns of sinew braid lodged in a 
broad shallow groove round the end of the haft. In ahole in the other end 
of the haft is looped a short lanyard of seal thong. Fig. 99a, No. 89581 
[1011], is a knife of the same class and about the same size, having a haft 4 
inches and a blade 3 inches long. The blade is secured by two lashings, 
of which the first is a narrow strip of whalebone, and the other of sinew 
braid. The materials of blade and haft are the same as before. No. 
89585 [1710] (Fig. 99d), has a blade of dark gray slate, and the haft, 
which appears to be of cottonwood, is in two longitudinal sections. The 
éb 
Fic. 99.—Slate knives. 
' Journal, p. 92. 
