1. Utility and domestic purposes.
(a) Bone awls. (Figs. 538–39.) (b) Harpoons. (Figs. 541–42.) (c) Ladles, spoons, etc. (Figs. 544–45.) (d) Bone fish-hooks. (Figs. 546–48.) (e) Tool-handles. (Figs. 549–50.) (f) Bone scrapers and celts. (Fig. 551.) (g) Arrow-shaft reducers. (Fig. 554.) (h) Bone chipping-tools. (Fig. 41.)
(a) Bone beads. (Fig. 546.) (b) Bone pendants. (Fig. 556.) (c) Bones used in head-dresses. (Figs. 552–53.) (d) Tracings on bone. (Figs. 564–65.) (e) Bone effigies. (Figs. 557, 567.)
Bone objects in the United States were in widespread use, and they served many purposes. In the Mississippi Valley more of them were worked into beads and awls than into anything else, but on the Great Plains they were made use of for many purposes. The tips of antlers were sharpened and fastened on arrows. In the Mandan country, North Dakota, and elsewhere in the West where stone was scarce, the bones of the buffalo served as clubs, the shoulder blades as digging-tools, and the ribs were polished and ground to an edge and used as knives and scraping-tools. The teeth of carnivorous animals were mounted as ornaments, and long slender bones of the smaller animals were cut into beads. Bone and horn spoons were doubtless common in all parts of the United States.
Fig. 538. (S. 1–1.) Typical bone awls from the collection of S. D. Mitchell, Ripon, Wisconsin.
Fig. 539. (S. 2–3.) Blunt-pointed awls found with burials. Baum Village-Site, Ohio. William C. Mills’s collection.
Fig. 540. (S. about 3–4.) To the left, bone awls made from the tarsometatarsus of the wild turkey. To the right, bone needles. All from the Harness Mound, Scioto Valley, Ohio.