MA IKKIAI. I I LTURE 79 



the women, and said to them: 'Throw aside your 

 bone bodkins; these French awls will be much easier 

 to use. These knives will he more useful to you in 

 killing beavers and in cutting your meat than are the 

 pieces of stone that you use.' Then, throwing to them 

 some 1 rassade (beads): 'See; these will better adorn 

 your children and girls than do their usual ornaments.' ' 

 (p. 330). This is a fair sample of what occurred every- 

 where. On the other hand, the Indian did not so 

 readily change his art, religion, and social customs. 



Perhaps the best early observer of primitive tools 

 was Captain Lewis who writes of the Northern Sh<>- 

 shoni in the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark 

 Expedition, Vol. 3, p. 19, as follows: 



The metal which we found in possession of these people consisted 

 of a few indifferent knives, a few brass kettles some arm bands of iron 

 and brass, a few buttons, woarn as ornaments in their hair, a spear or 

 t\\<» of a foot in length and some iron and brass arrow points which 

 they informed me they obtained in exchange for horses from the Crow 

 or Rocky Mountain Indians on the yellowstone River, the bridlebits 

 and stirreps they obtained from the Spaniards, tho these were but few. 

 many of them made use of flint for knives, and with this instrument, 

 skined the animals they killed, dressed their fish and made their arrows; 

 this flint is of no regular form, and if they can only obtain a part of it, 

 an inch or two in length that will cut they are satisfyed. they renew 

 the edge by flecking off the flint by means of the point of an Elk's or 

 deer's horn, with the point of a deer or Elk's horn they also form their 

 arrow points of the flint, with a quickness and neatness that is really 

 astonishing, we found no axes nor hatchets among them; what wood 

 they cut was done either with stone or Elk's horn, the latter they use 

 always to rive or split their wood. 



Among the collections from the Blackfoot and Gros 

 Ventre, we find models of bone knives made by old 

 people who claimed to have used such (Fig. 32). There 

 are also a few flakes of stone said to have been so used 

 when metal knives were not at hand. 



