36 
bled adze and ax blades; and there were combination tools, an adze 
or ax at one end and a gouge at the other. Any rounded stone served 
on occasion as a hammer, but the aborigines often expended much 
time and energy in making carefully-shaped pestles, hammers, and 
maceheads, from basalt and other hard rocks. They had special 
stone implements, also, for scraping skins, and for smoothing the 
wooden shafts of arrows and spears. 
In manufacturing these tools and weapons, with others of less 
importance which it is unnecessary to enumerate, the Indians em- 
ployed many different varieties of stone, and made use of several 
distinct processes. Hard, igneous rocks like granite and diorite, which 
had a rather loose, crystalline texture and made convenient hammers, 
adzes, and chisels, they generally pounded and pecked into shape 
with other stones; but nephrite, which was most valuable for adzes 
and drills, and slate, which served for arrow and spear-points and for 
knives, they sawed with a thin stone blade, often of shale, sometimes 
adding water and sand to the slowly forming groove. Glassy stones, 
such as flint, quartz, jasper, and obsidian, they chipped into form 
with bone or antler mallets, and produced a keen, saw-like edge by 
breaking off tiny flakes with bone pencils. These glassy stones were 
seldom polished, but others were ground and sharpened on gritty 
sandstones, and in the Eskimo area their edges were rendered keener 
by means of whetstones derived from hard nephrite. To perforate 
their stone implements the Indians employed two methods; large holes 
they pecked out with a pointed stone, small ones they drilled, using 
for the purpose a point of flint or nephrite set in a stem of wood or 
bone. A few minerals w^ere so soft that they could be quarried and 
shaped with the ordinary hammer, adze, and knife. It w^as thus that 
the Indians fashioned their copper, which replaced stone in many 
tools among the Ontario Indians and among the Indians and Eskimo 
east and northeast of Great Bear lake. Thus, too, they fashioned argil- 
lite and soapstone, which served for pipes, lamps, vessels, and mis- 
cellaneous implements and ornaments, although useless for tools or 
weapons. 
Stone tools, particularly the ax, adze, knife, and drill, gave the 
Indians a mastery over animal and vegetable products. They carved 
from bone, or from the similar substances, ivory, horn, and antler, 
numerous implements of everyday use, as mattocks, spearheads. 
