Vessels and Implements
The Arikara and Gros Ventres, who raise corn, have other vessels as alluded to, but not the roving tribes, except the utensils furnished by whites. None of these things denote anything more than a people in the rudest state of nature, whose only boiling pot was once a hollow stone, or the paunch of a buffalo in which meat can be boiled and still is on occasions, by filling the paunch with water and casting therein red-hot stones until the water attains a boiling point, after which the stones are taken out, and one added occasionally to continue the heat, or the paunch suspended above a blaze at such a distance that the fire, though heating, does not touch it. Their spoons are yet made of the horns of the bighorn and buffalo, wrought into a good shape, some of which will hold half a gallon with ease. These are dippers. Others for eating are made smaller of horn and wood, yet large enough to suit their capacious mouths. (Pl. 65.) In all this and in everything they do, but one idea presents itself—that of crude, untutored children of nature, who have never been anything else.
The only ancient stone implements we have ever seen are the hatchet, stone war club, arrow point, buffalo shoulder-blade ax, hump-rib knife, and elk-horn bow, the shapes of which we have endeavored to draw in [Plate 66], and all of which, except the knife, can yet occasionally be seen among them.
There is a total absence of anything antique, any shell, metal, wampum, or other thing formerly possessed by inhabitants supposed to have occupied this country. Neither are there any hieroglyphics or traditions to denote anything of the kind.