The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 2 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
It is not difficult to explain the preponderance of harpoons in the
North and the scarcity of them in the South. They are essentially a
cold-climate implement. In the St. Lawrence region, where they abound,
nets and traps cannot be used save during summer and fall. The winter
sets in early, and the spring is late. While fish were harpooned when on
the spawning-beds, yet most of the harpooning was done in the winter.
Even to this late date the Ojibwa Indians spear great quantities of fish
in the winter season. Pickerel, pike, muscalonge are attracted by a
moving bait. The Indian cuts a hole through the ice, and erects a small
structure to shield himself from the wind. An effigy of a fish made of
wood or bone, or in these modern times of tin, is dangled about four or
five feet beneath the ice. Large fish approach this decoy, and as they
are more sluggish in their movements in the winter, the Indian has no
difficulty in driving the spear into such one as he wishes, before it is
able to draw out of range. I suppose that the method did not vary in
ancient times. Naturally, where possible, the Indians preferred to set
nets or build fish-weirs. But practically all the nets and weirs of
ancient times have long since disappeared.
[Illustration:
FIG. 545. (S. 3–4.) This is a long spoon, badly decayed, but
sufficiently preserved for us to determine its character. It is
about six inches in length. It was found under an old building in
Salem, Massachusetts, and is in the Peabody Museum. Very few bone or
horn spoons, ladles, and dishes of the Indians remain, and yet we
know that a great many were made and used by primitive man in the
United States.
]
Fig. 541 illustrates a large, strong harpoon of bone. This spear has
several prominent barbs. The muscalonge and sturgeon of the far North
were large, strong fish and required a heavy spear to hold them. Whether
the Indians of the Lake Superior region in ancient times made use of the
spear with a detachable point, to which was attached a cord and float, I
am unable to state. Possibly they made use of devices of that sort.
In the East and the North the harder and heavier bones, such as the
horns of elk, deer, and moose, were made use of as gouges, celts, and
scrapers. Numbers of these have been found at Madisonville cemetery, in
the Little Miami Valley, ten miles north of Cincinnati, and also in the
Iroquois sites along the Mohawk River in western New York. Mr. David
Boyle, Curator of the Provincial Museum, Toronto, presents descriptions
of a number of horn implements in his publications.[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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