51 
natural cutting end, probably to facilitate lashing to some sort of handle. 
Similar tools made from beaver incisors by cutting off the root have been 
found at other Iroquoian sites in Ontario and New York, and at sites of 
other cultures in the United States, in Nova Scotia, and among the Eskimo. 1 
These slightly modified beaver teeth were probably all set in handles 
and may have been used in carving and in fine woodwork. According to 
Sagard the Hurons used beaver teeth to smooth their bowls made from knots 
of wood (1:227). Hennepin says: “When they would make Platters, or 
wooden Spoons, or Porringers, they drill their Wood with their stone 
Hatchets, and hollow it with Fire, and do after scrape it, and polish it with 
a Bever's Tooth ” (II, page 527). 
WHETSTONES OR GRINDING STONES 
Thirty-seven smoothed pieces of stone, consisting mostly of thin slabs, 
may have been used as whetstones, grinding stones, and polishers. They are 
made of limestone, slate, claystone, and sandstone, most of them being of 
the last-mentioned material. Some of them seem to have been flattened 
and smoothed by constant usage, and others appear to have been purposely 
prepared for use. Two of them are v r orn on two narrow edges only; seven- 
teen were used on one side only; eight on twm sides, one of them being 
deeply hollowed; three on three sides; and six on four sides. The one in 
Plate XIV, figure 18, has a number of grooves on one side that may be the 
result of sharpening the points of bone awls and other pointed bone and 
antler objects. One of the slate specimens has the edges chipped and then 
smoothed. Smoothed areas on the sides of the large, engraved stone object 
in text Figure 3 probably also resulted from use as a whetstone. The 
sandstone object in Plate I, figure 34, may have been used as a grinding 
stone. 
KNIVES MADE OF BEAR TEETH 
Twelve wdiole and tw r o broken objects are made from canine teeth of 
the bear (See Plate XIV, figures 2 and 3). The grinding of two of them 
seems to have been only commenced; three are rubbed dowm at a slant at 
the enamelled end; and eight are ground down to about half the original 
thickness, and flattened from end to end, exposing the neural cavity of 
the tooth (figure 3). The enamelled end of one of these flattened specimens 
has been ground to a sharp edge on each side; one has the enamelled part 
opposite the flattened side ground; another has the front part of the 
enamelled end of the tooth ground off at a slant and part of the root has 
been removed by scoring and breaking. Both edges of these blades are 
fairly sharp. The cutting edge on the object seen in figure 2 is of an 
unusual shape. One of the specimens looks as if it had often been 
re-sharpened, as only a small part of the enamelled end of the tooth 
remains. These objects were probably used as knives; they may also 
have been arrow-shaft smoothers; Skinner (4:131) suggests that they may 
have been used for smoothing pottery. 
These bear tooth knives seem to be peculiar to the Eastern or Mohawk- 
Onondaga group of Iroquois, for none has been found at Neutral, Erie, or 
1 A specimen from Norton sound, Alaska, is seen in Hawkes, Plate XXIII, fig. A, b. 
