The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
“_Metal-craft._—This includes mining, grinding of ores and paint,
rubbing, cold-hammering, engraving, embossing, and overlaying with
plates. The metals were copper, hematite and meteoric iron, lead in the
form of galena, and nugget gold and mica. No smelting was done.
[Illustration:
FIG. 15. Flaking-tool—being a shaft or stick, thirty inches to four
feet. These were pointed with bone or buck-horn.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 16. Flaking-tool—lower branch utilized to form a crotch in which
blow was struck. Upper opposite branch used to secure a heavy stone
to give weight and increase the pressure.
(From George Sellars’s article in the
_Smithsonian Report_, 1885, pt. 1, reprinted
in Chapter IV.)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 17. A plan view of the outer or high side of an ordinary flake.
]
“_Wood-craft._—Here belongs the felling of trees with stone axes and
fire. The softest woods, such as pine, cedar, poplar, and cypress, were
chosen for canoes, house-frames, totem-poles, and other large objects.
The stems of smaller trees were used also for many purposes. Driftwood
was wrought into bows by the Eskimo. As there were no saws, trunks were
split and hewn into single planks on the North Pacific Coast. Immense
communal dwellings of cedar were there erected, the timbers being moved
by rude mechanical appliances and set in place with ropes and skids. The
carving on house-posts, totem-poles, and household furniture was often
admirable. In the Southwest underground stems were carved into objects
of use and ceremony.
“_Root-craft._—Practiced for food, basketry, textiles, dyes,
fish-poisoning, medicine, etc. Serving the purposes of wood, the roots
of plants developed a number of special arts and industries.
“_Fibre-craft._—Far more important than for textile purposes, the stems,
leaves, and inner and outer bark of plants and the tissues of animals
having each its special qualities, engendered a whole series of arts.
Some of these materials were used for siding and roofing houses; others
yielded shredded fibre, yarn, string, and rope; and some were employed
in furniture, clothing, food receptacles and utensils. Cotton was
extensively cultivated in the Southwest.
“_Seed-craft._—The harvesting of berries, acorns, and other nuts, and
grain and other seeds, developed primitive methods of gathering,
carrying, milling, storing, cooking, and serving, with innumerable
observances of days and seasons, and multifarious ceremony and lore.
“Not content with merely taking from the hand of nature, the Indians
were primitive agriculturalists. In gathering roots they first
unconsciously stirred the soil and stimulated better growth. They
planted gourds in favored places, and returned in autumn to harvest the
crops. Maize was regularly planted on ground cleared with the help of
fire, and was cultivated with sharpened sticks and hoes of bone, shell,
and stone. Tobacco was cultivated by many tribes, some of which planted
nothing else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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