412 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



and every girl among the American aborigines bad one or more of tbese 

 indispensable implements. To conceive of a savage without a knife is 

 to conceive of man before be beld the simplest invention in his hand 

 with which to help himself. 



The simplest form of knife is a flake or spall of flinty or glassy ma- 

 terial knocked from a stone or a core so as to preserve a cutting edge. 

 A few knives from Point Barrow are of this very primitive character, 

 but these really are not within the clasa here described ; the ulu as it 

 nowadays exists is a complex affair, consisting of a blade and a handle 

 or grip with or without some form of lashing. The blade is either a 

 thin piece of slate ground to an edge, a bit of cherty or flinty rock chipped 

 to an edge, a scrap of steel or iron from wrecks of whaliug vessels, or 

 good blades made and sold to the Eskimo by traders who visit their 

 country (PI. lii to lxxii). 



The handle of this common implement varies greatly in material, 

 form, and finish. In form alone the specimens from each typical area 

 are unique. So much so that one who has handled a great many of them 

 finds no difficulty in relegating a stray example to its proper compan- 

 ionships. 



In the matter of attaching the blade to the handle or grip the Eski- 

 mo's mother wit has not deserted her. Many of the blades are tightly 

 fitted into a socket or groove of the handle. Boas, who lived among 

 the Cumberland Gulf Eskimo, tells us that glue is made of a mixture 

 of seal's blood, a kind of clay, and dog's hair (Rep. Bur. Ethnol., vi, 

 520). 



Among the western Eskimo it is quite common to cut a hole through 

 the blade and the handle and to fasten the two together by a sewing or 

 lashing of rawhide, whalebone, pine root, or sinew cord. There is one 

 specimen with a grip of a still more primitive character. The solid han- 

 dle is replaced by a basketwork of spruce root woven around the tliick 

 upper portion of the blade (PI. lxi, fig. 1.) Archaeologists are especially 

 asked to note this device, explaining how a grip may be provided by 

 ingenious savages even when a mortise is impracticable. 



In this chapter, as in others devoted to the Eskimo, it is found con- 

 venient to divide the American Hyperborean region into the following 

 culture areas: Labrador and Ungava (PI. lv, Fig. 3) ; Greenland (PI. 

 lii, liii, liv, Fig. 1) ; Baffin Land (PI. liv, Figs. 2 and 3, PI. LV, Figs. 

 1 and 2); Mackenzie River District (PI. lvi and PI. lvii, Fig. 1); 

 Point Barrow (PI. lvii, Figs. 2 and 3, PI. lviii, PI. lix) ; Kotzebue 

 Sound (PI. lx and lxi, Figs. 1 and 2); Sledge Island, St. Lawrence 

 Island, and Asiatic side (PI. lxi, Fig. 3, PI. lxii, Figs. 1 and 2; Nor- 

 ton Sound and Yukon District (PI. lxii, Fig. 3, PI. lxiii, lxiv, lxv, 

 lxvi) ; Nunivak Island and mainland, and Kuskokvim mouth (PI. lxvii 

 Figs. 2 and 3) ; Bristol Bay, Peninsula of Alaska, Kadiak and vicinity 

 (PI. lxviii to lxxi, Figs. 1 and 2) ; Indians of Southeast Alaska (PI. 

 lxxi, Fig. 3, PI. lxxii.) Some of these are further divided by types 

 and forms of objects. 



