Page:The American Indian.djvu/163

Rh grooved ax to be rare in South America, so far having been reported only for Ecuador. In North America the grooved ax is not found on the Pacific side, but is first met with among the Pueblos and bison-hunting tribes, though with the latter it is usually a hammer that is grooved. In the eastern maize area it is frequently met with. In Mexico and Central America it is relatively infrequent, and in the Greater Antilles is not found at all. On the other hand, neither the Eskimo nor the Siberians seem to make use of this principle of hafting.



The highly developed tribes of the North Pacific Coast use a grooved hammer, but in some cases a transverse hole is made, through which the binding is run. The important principle in hafting here is the holding of the flat face of the tool against a similar surface on the end of the handle, as in the adze. Curiously enough, this method has a distribution not quite the same as that of grooved tools. In Siberia, Alaska, and on the North Pacific Coast, where the adze is common, hammers are hafted in this same way, but in the Pueblo and Plains regions the tendency is to twine the handle around the entire tool. Then, in the eastern maize area the grooved ax again bears the hafting shoulder, as also seems to be the case in Ecuador. That east of the Mississippi, celts were hafted and used as axes is clear from a few specimens found in swamps. In these cases, the wedge-shaped top of the celt is put in a hole through the wooden handle.