NDUSTRIES AND ITS. front his foodproeuring oecupations, the Indian had quite a number of industries and arts. both economic and icsthetie. flaying only accidental knowledge of any metal but native copper, his tools were made of stone, bone, shell, or wood.
From stone he fashioned his knife, hammer, axe, spear-head. and arrow-point. as well as his pipe and gaining disk. Flint was the material commonly used for cutting tools in the East and obsidian in the West. Pipes were of great variety and sometimes of great beauty. being one of the most important ad junets of ceremonial functions. The Navaho Pueblos were expert in drilling turquoise for necklace: and ear-pendants. The black :late carving of the Haida and other north west coast tribes is probably not excelled by any primitive people. Pots. bowls, mortars, and pestles were also fashioned from stone. Arrow heads, knives, skin-dressers, sewing-awls. and fishing-hooks were frequently made from bone. Shells were also shaped into cutting tools. hut were in more constant demand for gorgets and for the celebrated wampum heads. which were in universal use in the East for dress ornamen tation and for weaving into record belts. The Eskimo and Aleut were expert carvers in walrus ivory, depicting whole hunting scenes upon a single tusk. with great heauty of execution. Mortars, bowls. clubs, masks, and sacred images for ceremonial occasions were made of wood.
The Pueblos carved wooden figurines to represent their traditional mythologic characters, and dis tributed them to the children as dolls at their symbolic dances. ISesides the immense carved totem-poles, the north Wt•St coast tribes hewed great canoes from cedar-trunks, always painted and •arved in characteristie style. The wooden dugout canoe of the Atlantic- tribes was a shill lar affair.
The Indian woman was a capable skin-dresser. Sinew was used for thread, and certain women were professionals in the work of cutting and fit ting. Among the Pueblos and Navaho weaving had reached a high state of development, the material used having been originally a native cotton, and later wool. The art of feath er-weaving was found with the Gulf tribes, while every‘%liere east of the Mississippi beautiful mats were woven from grass and rushes and stained in bright colors from native dyes. Set' BLANKET.)
Basketry was found almost everywhere exeept upon the plains, where rawhide boxes formed a substitute. The materials used were wood or cane splits. rushes, maguey fibre, and grass. The art readied its highest development in California, the Pomo baskets being unrivaled in any part of the world for closeness of weaving, intricacy of design, and beauty of shape and decoration. (See BAsKrri Akin to weaving and basketry was the art of decoration with beads and porcupine-quills, the most beautiful specimens being the cradles and colored sashes, on some of which months of labor were expended. Pottery was made by all the sedentary and semi-sedentary tribes of the Eastern timber region and the Southwest. the coil process being everywhere used. In the East the vessel was usually decorated with stamped pat terns. Among the Pueblos and adjacent tribes figures in various colors were painted upon the smooth exterior and afterwards fixed in the fir ing process. Almost without exception the pot ter. basket-maker, weaver. and skin-dresser was a woman. The only metal really in use north of Mexico at the time of the discovery appears to. have been copper. which was obtained native in small quantities in the Southern Alleglianies and in greater quantities from mines along the shores of Lake Superior. It was not smelted, but ham mered into a great variety of useful and orna mental objects which passed from tribe to tribe in regular trade. Mica was quarried in western North Carolina for use in mirrors and gorgets, and beads and other small objects hammered out from gold nuggets or meteoric iron have been found in some of the Southern mounds. in the Southwest the Navaho have learned the smelting and forging ails from the Mexicans. and have now many expert silver-workers and blaeksmiths, snaking beads, buttons, wrist-guards, rings. and belts from silver coins which they melt and shape in forges and molds of their own construction.