One specimen is four and a half inches in length, one fourth of an inch in thickness, with one extremity pointed and the other enlarged and blunted to form a head. Another is seven inches in length and tapers gradually downward from the head, where it is three fourths of an inch in diameter, to the point.
A few specimens are decidedly square in section.
An examination of the heads indicates that they are not the result of pounding while in use, but constitute an intentional feature of these implements. No suggestion has been offered as to their function. They may be simply perforators or drills. Some of the stouter implements, with broad, flattish points, may have been employed as chisels.
Needles
These are obtained from the same sites as the foregoing and are frequently associated with them, though not nearly as numerous. All are provided with eyes, and except in their somewhat ruder fashioning do not differ from the needles in ordinary domestic use at the present day. Their purpose requires no explanation.
These implements range in size from less than two to as much as eight and an eighth inches. The average size appears to be between two and three inches. Such implements are to be seen in many of the eastern Wisconsin collections. In the Milwaukee Public Museum is a small series of copper needles from Mexico.
Fish-Hooks. (See Fig. 603.)
Hundreds of these and fragments of many others have been collected from the aboriginal village- and camp-sites on the west shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. They have also been obtained in numbers from the village-sites at Green Lake and at various other localities along the upper Wisconsin, Fox, Wolf, and Little Wolf rivers, and elsewhere in this part of the state where good fishing was to be had. Some have also been found far to the north along the Lake Superior shore.
Most specimens are of small size, from less than an inch up to two inches in length. The largest known example is four inches in length. They are generally circular, though sometimes decidedly square in section. The points curve and slant outward and inward at all angles and degrees of curvature. None possess any indication of a barb.
The shank at the point of attachment to the line is most frequently straight. Sometimes, however, it is notched, flattened, bent over and flattened, or bent over to form an eye. A few specimens have been collected which have bits of sinew or twisted fibre still attached to the shank. Fine series of these useful articles are to be seen in many local collections.