ongst these
agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwes manufactured chisels
out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone--simply great blocks
of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
Greenland; see p. 18.)

The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (_Juniper_) wood;
east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
"kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
fire away from home.

In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
eating of which he might conceivably die.

It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
(potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
(as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
description might be given here of the "wild oats" (_Avena fatua_) and
the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
Indians did.

This wild rice (_Zizania aquatica_) grew naturally in small rivers and
swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
they had grown two feet above the su