This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... laid upon a hard stone, and struck with another stone or finished with a deer or elk horn. The points were about three-quarters of an inch long, half an inch wide and rather thin. According to Wyeth, those intended for hunting were widened, so that the head might be withdrawn with the shaft, while arrows for war ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... laid upon a hard stone, and struck with another stone or finished with a deer or elk horn. The points were about three-quarters of an inch long, half an inch wide and rather thin. According to Wyeth, those intended for hunting were widened, so that the head might be withdrawn with the shaft, while arrows for war lacked this feature.1 The Shoshone had no axes; smaller branches were seized and broken with the hands, for larger trunks they had to depend on windfalls. Wood was split by means of a sharpened antler.2 i Schoolcraft, VI. 697. Ibid., VI, 118-119. - Ross, I, 251: II, 150. Mooney, (a) 1043. Kroeber, (d) 111. = Brinton, 121. 6 Kroeber, (d) 165. 7 Obsidian (du'pl) is still fuvorably'compared with iron, because it is na'rOyunt (powerful, strong), which iron is not. s Lewis and Clark, III, 19; Wyeth, 213. Lewis noted pots of white soft stone which became black and very hard by burning.3 According to information obtained by the writer, the stone formerly employed by the Shoshone was called to'sa-tak (white +?) or ba'mu-tak (tobacco +?). As it is known that the Shoshone made steatite pipe-bowls,4 there can be little doubt that the vessels seen by Lewis were of the same material. Wyeth pictures a "stone cooking pot and mortar" of pure lava, truncate, but curved at the bottom, widening towards the opening and recurved at the top. In his text, he states that these pots, which had a capacity of about two quarts, were very rare, and that he never saw them used either as mortars or pots, though he believes they could have stood fire as a boiling-vessel.5 The Museum contains a (probably unfinished) flat-bottomed steatite cup with handle from Wind River; the outside bears the marks of a picking instrument (Fig. 1). Stone mortars and pestles were see...
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