CHAPTER XII
AXE AND SAW

To all good, loyal Americans, the axe is almost a sacred tool, for our greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, was one of our greatest axemen. When he was President of the United States he used to exercise by chopping wood, then laughingly extended his arm holding the axe in a horizontal position by the extreme end of the handle. This he would do without a tremor of the muscle or movement of the axe—some stunt! Try it and see if you can do it!

The American Indians, and practically all savages, used stone and bone implements, and with such implements the Redmen were wont to build the most beautiful of all crafts, the birch bark canoe. If an American Indian produced such wonders with implements made of stones, flint and bones, a good red-blooded American boy should be able to do the same with a sharp axe; therefore it should not only be his pleasure but his duty to learn to be a skillful axeman.

Brother Jonathan, the imaginary character who represented the American people, was almost invariably pictured with a jack-knife whittling a stick, because all early Americans were skillful in the use of the jack-knife, but they were also skilled in the use of the axe, and every boy of twelve years of age knew how to handle an axe.

Importance of the Axe

While lecturing at the Teachers' College, Columbia University, I was asked to give a demonstration of the use of the axe. It then and there suddenly occurred to me that if these grown men needed and asked for instructions in the use of this typical American tool, a talk on the same subject would be welcomed by the American boys.

The axe is the one necessary tool of the woodsmen; the axe occupies the same position to the wilderness man that the chest of tools does to the carpenter; with the axe the woodsman cuts his firewood; with the axe he makes his traps; with the axe he splits the shakes, clapboards, slabs and shingles from the balsam tree, or other wood which splits readily, and with the shakes, clapboards, or slabs he shingles the roof of his hogan, his barabara, or makes the framework to his sod shack or his dugout, or with them builds the foundation of a bogken. With his axe he cuts the birch for his birch bark pontiac, for his lean-to or his log cabin. Without an axe it is most difficult for one to even build a raft or to fell a tree to get the birch bark for one's canoe, or to "fall" the tree to make a dugout canoe. A tree may be felled by fire, as the Indians of old used to "fall" them, but this takes a wearisome time.