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The blade would be almost round were not the upper part broken off as 
though for hafting. There is no evidence for the actual type of hafting. 
Hafted beaver teeth are said to have been used as adzes for smoothing 
wood. 
Knives of stone, bone, horn, or perhaps native copper may have been 
used as protective daggers. Their manufacture would have conformed to 
the methods commonly employed in making knife-like implements, 
namely, the simple hafting of the blade in horn or split wood and binding 
with sinew. 
Awls are of two distinct types, one for sewing, the other for boring 
wood. The sewing awls were formerly made from the leg bone of a 
loon hafted in a larger piece of bone. The awl was quite small, the blade 
being from 1 to 3 inches in length and the round straight handle the same. 
Some handles were curved. Boring awls used in making snow-shoes 
had a fox tooth for a point, and many of the handles were semi-lunar 
in shape to bear the pressure. Such awls are now made with a nail filed 
off to a flat, small edge which serves to clean the hole as well as to bore it. 
Skin scrapers were made from the leg bones of the moose cut off 
above the distil enlargement and sharpened at one end, the edge frequently 
being serrated. One specimen taken from a grave was about 10 inches 
long. Another type of scraper was made by splitting a large bone longi- 
tudinally and using the sharp edge. Sometimes stones with sharp edges 
were used for skin scrapers. 
Birch-Bark Basketry and Weaving. Birch-bark baskets were made 
of all sizes for collecting and storing food. The bark was folded in the 
usual Indian fashion and sewn with spruce roots. It seems certain that 
woven baskets were used in former times although they are now forgotten. 
The last one known was a large basket said to be in the possession of a 
Brother at the Roman Catholic Mission at Good Hope at the end of the 
last century. It is said to have held water, as it was smeared on the 
inside with a glue of spruce gum and fish oil. It was thought to be made 
of spruce roots. Keith confirms the use of this type of basketry, in a 
letter written from Great Bear lake in 1812 (Keith, 1890, II, page 120) : 
"Their boilers (their little exertion cannot procure them brass kettles) are made of 
wattap, interlaced with willow so closely and neatly that the least sediment, with the 
swelling of the wood, makes it very tight. Into this vessel, they put the quantity of 
water required, after which they heat this water almost to the boiling state with stones 
heated in the fire amongst ashes.” 
Rabbit-skin blankets and clothing were formerly woven of lines 
made from tanned rabbit skins with the hair on, cut spirally so that 
each line ended in an eye-hole by means of which one length was attached 
to the next. These lines were twisted with the hair outside and woven, 
starting with a series of loops on a stick the width of the piece to be made. 
The second row of loops was made through the first with the line passing 
around its own part with each loop. Such blankets though loosely woven 
were very warm. Rabbit-skin blankets made by actual weaving on a 
frame are reported for some of the Athapaskan tribes in British Columbia, 
but no use of a frame is remembered at Great Bear lake. 
Moose-skin Work. Moose skins or caribou skins are tanned by native 
women, who first remove with a bone scraper all the adhering traces of 
