SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEKN UNITED STATES 565 



The canes or reeds of which I have spoken so often may be considered of two 

 kiuds. The one grows in moist places. . . . The otliers, whicli grow in dry 

 lands, are neither as tall nor as large, but they are so hard that these people 

 used split portions of these canes, which they call conshnc, with which to cut 

 their meat before the French brought them [metal] knives. (Le Page du Pratz, 

 1758, vol. 2, pp. 58-59; Swanton, 1911, p. 58.) 



The importance of this cane is indicated by the fact that the name 

 IS given to one great division of the Choctav/ and by the Choctaw 

 and Mobile Indians to the Creeks. The cane is said to have been split 

 into four pieces, each of which cut very satisfactorily for a time. 

 New ones were constantly needed but the cane was widely spread. 



Lawson (1860, p. 330) notes the customary Indian mode of han- 

 dling a knife, that of drawing it toward the user instead of whittling 

 outward. 



Aboriginal knives and axes were two of the implements replaced 

 most rapidly by iron and steel after contact had been established 

 with the whites. 



Knives and related implements were found in considerable quanti- 

 ties at Key Marco by Cushing : 



Cutting and carving knives of shark's teeth, varying in size from tiny straight 

 points to curved blades nearly an inch in length and in width of base, were found 

 by hundreds. Some were associated with their handles. These were of two 

 classes. The greater number of them consisted of shafts from five to seven 

 inches in length by not more than half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter 

 at their thickest portions. Some were slightly curved, others straight, some 

 pointed, others squared at the smaller ends. Ail were furnished with nocks at 

 the lower ends — which were also a little tapered — for the reception of the hollow 

 bases of the tooth-blades that had been lashed to them and cemented with black 

 gum. Not a few of these doubly-tapered little handles were marvels of finish, 

 highly polished, and some of them were carved or incised with involuted circlets 

 or kwa-like decorations, or else with straight or spiral-rayed rosettes and con- 

 centric circles, at the upper ends, as though these had been used as stamps in 

 the finishing of certain kinds of work. The other class of handles was much 

 more various, and was designed for receiving one or more of the shark-tooth 

 blades, not at the extremities, but at the sides of the ends, some transversely, 

 others laterally. They were nearly all carved ; a few of them most elaborately ; 

 and they ranged in length from the width of the palm of the hand to five or six 

 inches, being adapted for use not only as carvers, but also, probably — such as had 

 single crossblades — as finishing adzes. . . . There were also girdling tools or 

 saws — made from the sharp, flat-toothed lower jaws of king-fishes — into the 

 hollow ends of which curved jaw-bones, the crudest of little handles had been 

 thrust and tied through neat lateral perforations ; but these also had formed 

 admirable tools, and I found not a few examples of work done with them, in 

 the shape of round billets that had been severed by them and spirally haggled in 

 such a way as to plainly illustrate the origin of one of the most frequent decora- 

 tions we found on carved wood works, the spiral rosette just referred to. There 

 were minute little bodkin-shaped chisels of bone and shell, complete in them- 

 selves ; and there were, of course, numerous awls and the like, made from bone, 

 horn and fish spines. Rasps of very small, much worn and evidently most highly 

 prized fragments of coral sandstone, as well as a few strips of carefully rolled-up 



