Fig. 54.—Texas Flint Implement. (1/1).
All alike show a wooden haft pierced so as to admit of the insertion of the stone blade, which must have been secured by a withe or thong tightly bound round it, according to a fashion still practised in America, and among the islands of the Pacific. But in spite of this ligature, the wedge-like form of the axe must have had a tendency to cleave the haft, and so to loosen its hold. The experience of the ancient Lake-dwellers led them to counteract this by inserting the stone blade in a socket of deer’s-horn, the end of which is usually cut into a squared tenon designed to fit into a mortice in the handle. This must have accomplished the desired purpose, as examples of such deer’s-horn sockets are common on the sites of lake-dwellings. During the last visit of Professor Agassiz to his native Swiss Canton, and the village parsonage of Concise where his early years were passed, he obtained from Lake Neuchâtel a valuable collection of stone implements, along with pottery and other illustrations of the arts and habits of the Lake-dwellers, already referred to. Some of those are specially interesting as examples of the mode of hafting implements of flint and stone.
Fig. 55.—Chisel and deer’s-horn socket, Concise.
Fig. 55 shows a perforated deer’s-horn socket with a chisel of greenstone inserted in it. The exposed part of the blade measures nearly two inches in length. It must have been secured in its haft by a strong cement, such as some of the Pacific Islanders employ at the present day in fastening their axe-heads to bone and wooden handles. In some cases a tine of the deer’s antler has been left so as to form the handle of the hammer or hatchet. A rare example of this type is described by Dr. Clement, among numerous varieties recovered from different localities on Lake Neuchâtel. The horn of the stag was also at times converted into a formidable weapon by retaining the brow-antler as the offensive weapon, and detaching the rest, so as to leave only the main portion of the horn as a handle. Fig. 56, also from Lake Neuchâtel, may be described as a stone knife. The blade, which is of polished serpentine, measures 3½ inches in the exposed part, and is still secure in its horn haft. In the collection of Mr. J. H. Blake of Boston are flint implements recovered from an ancient Peruvian tomb on the Bay of Chacota, attached to their hafts by a tough green cement.
Fig. 56.—Stone Knife, Concise.
It is remarkable to notice how rarely the simple process of perforating the blade for the reception of the handle was resorted to, even where the workmen were in the habit of perforating both bone and stone implements for other purposes. This was no doubt partly due to the frangible character of much of the material in which they wrought; but even after the primitive metallurgist had mastered the art of alloying and casting his bronze, it seems to have been long before he learned to fit a handle to his axe or hammer by perforating the blade or hammer-head. Some of the most usual modes of attaching the axe or hatchet to a haft of wood or bone, in use among the islanders of the Pacific, are shown in a group of implements from the collection of the Scottish Antiquaries, Fig. 57. They bear a close resemblance to others described by Mr. William H. Dall as pertaining to the Thlinkets, a coast tribe of Alaska, not far to the south of Behring’s Strait.[[70]] But tools and weapons of stone, as well as of native copper, are already becoming rare among the tribes of the North Pacific Coast, owing to the introduction of iron by the Russian and Hudson’s Bay traders. Previous to this change, the Alaskans knew metal only in the form of cold-wrought native copper, as among all the native tribes north of the Mexican Gulf. Such a recognition of some convenient uses to which the malleable native metals could be applied as substitutes for stone, can scarcely be regarded as even an initial step in the transition towards the first true metallurgic period. This cannot be considered to have been introduced until the native copper-worker had perceived the wonderful transformations which could be wrought by fire, and had learned at least to melt the pure metal, and to mould the weapons and implements he required; if not to harden it with alloys, and to quarry and smelt the unfamiliar ores. To this stage the savage tribes of the New World have not even now attained, after intercourse with Europeans for more than three centuries and a half. There, on the contrary, the Indians, who originally possessed only weapons, implements, and personal ornaments of bone, shell, flint, and stone, or at most of native copper rudely hammered into shape, are still seen after an interval of upwards of three centuries of European colonisation and traffic, without the slightest acquired knowledge of working in metals. They do, indeed, possess numerous metal implements and weapons, which, as their greatest treasures, they freely lavish on the loved or honoured dead; but such traces of metallurgy afford no proof of acquired native art. The copper kettles of the ancient Huron graves on the Georgian Bay, or the Chinook coffin-biers on the Columbia river, were brought, not from the copper regions of Lake Superior, but from France, London, or Liverpool, along with the beads, knives, hatchets, and other objects of barter, by means of which the fur-traders still carry on their traffic with the Indian hunter. At most this only proves that a race, still in its stone-period, and possessing no greater skill than is required to grind an iron hoop into lance or arrow-heads, has been brought into contact with a civilised people, familiar with metallurgy and many acquired arts, such as the musket and the rifle may most aptly symbolise.
