280 



EEPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



count of its softness. Chief reliance was placed in jade, flint, oi other 

 stone, and upon shells and bone. In the Emmons Collection in the 

 Museum of Natural History in New York are two primitive Tlingit 

 stone knives, with horn handles, and illustrated in 1. s. 99 a and 99 h. 

 The handles are of deer horn, the blades of jade, ana .1^ lashing of 

 buckskin. Marchand (1791) expressed his astonishment at che elab- 

 orately^ carved posts in front of the 

 Haida houses of Queen Charlotte Isl- 

 ands, which, he says, were fashioned 

 out with " a sharp stone, hafted on a 

 branch of a tree, the bone of a quadru- 

 ped, the bone of one fish and the rough 

 skin of another."* On the introduction 

 of iron, which both Cook and Dixon 

 attribute to the Eussians, the Indians 

 were not slow to adapt it to their pur- 

 poses. Dixon says that in Captain 

 Cook's time "iron implements were 

 then also in use" among the Tlingit 

 ' " and Haida, while, in 1787, their knives 



were "so very thin that they bend them 

 into a variety of forms, which answer 

 their every purpose nearly as well as 

 if they had recourse to a carpenter's 

 tool chest." t This applies, however, 

 equally well to-day, as Plate xxiv will 

 show. Figs. 97 to 103, inclusive, illus- 

 trate a variety of knives from the north- 

 west coast, all of similar design or pat- 

 tern, those from the north, however, 

 having their handles carved with totemic designs after the usual custom 

 of this region. Figs. 95 and 96 represent fish knives of a simple pattern, 

 which replaced those of shell formerly used. Fig. 103 represents a pat- 

 tern not uncommon in the north, being, besides a dagger, an all around 

 knife for carving, cleaning fish, cutting up game, etc., much as a bowie 

 knife is used by the trapper of the interior. 



Scrapers. — Two varieties of stone scrapers are shown in Plate xx,Fig. 

 79« and h. The former is a very primitive instrument used for scraping 

 off" the inner bark of the spruce and hemlock for food. The latter is a 

 stone skin scraper used in cleaning hides in the process of tanning. These 

 are also of bone, as shown in Fig. 79Jc from the Emmons collection, 

 and are often ornamented with totemic designs, as in the specimen 

 shown. 

 Mortars and pestles. — Stowed away in the older houses of the different 



* Quoted by J. G. Swau, iu Smithson. Cont. to Knowledge, 267, p. 12. 

 t Dixon, Voyage, p. 243. 



Figa. 99a and 99&. 

 Stone Bladed Knives. 



(Haida. Emmons Collection.) 



