Short Sketches from Oldest America (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...with the "natkenn" so that small slivers would be detached from the under surface. The operation would be continued until the flint had assumed the proper shape, and then the "kigleen" was employed to drive and make the edge even. For the horn arrow-heads, deer horns were immersed in hot water, then straightened and shaped with stone knives. Two pieces of feather, properly bound at the lower end of the shaft, gave the arrow a rotary motion as it passed through the air, and insured a greater accuracy. It is a principle that has been adopted by manufacturers of modern rifle guns to impart to the projectile a spinning motion in its flight. The first guns introduced among the Inupash were the old flintlocks, although this was probably not over thirty-five or forty years ago; they must have been the flintlocks left over with some trading company, after the introduction of the percussion caps, that had found their way this long distance across the country. "Koonooya" is the name of the villager who was the first to own a double-barreled shotgun; previous to that he had killed fourteen white, and two brown bears with his bow and arrow. The older people laugh as they relate how those standing near the man firing would place their hands over their ears to deaden the sound, while the little girls cried, declaring the big noise hurt their ears. The first knives were of flint, jade and slate; the boring tools of flint; the adze of jade; hammers were made mostly from jade and wedges of bone; while flint was used to saw the jade, and the brown variety was employed for tools. The women's knives were largely of slate, but sometimes of jade, and their needles of ivory or bone. Pots were crudely manufactured by mixing clay with heavy-spar that had been roasted and powdered fine, --called "k tik," blood from a seal being added and sometimes the pin-feathers from a bird. Utensils thus made were less liable to fracture than those...