(snowshoes, traps, scrapers)
The traditional tools the
Aboriginal and Métis used were pots of stone, arrow-points, spearheads,
hatchets, and other edged tools of flint, knives of buffalo rib,
fishhooks made out of sturgeon bones, and awls from bones of the moose.
The fibrous roots of the white pine were used as twine for sewing their
bark canoes, and a kind of thread from a weed for making nets. Spoons
and pans were fashioned front the horns of the moose. They sometimes
made fishhooks by inserting a piece of bone obliquely into a stick and
sharpening the point. Their lines were either thongs fastened together
or braided willow bark.
The Métis toolbox held an assortment of tools from both their
European and Aboriginal heritage. It also held some adaptations that
were specific to the Métis. The first tool adapted from the Aboriginals
was probably the snowshoe. They also learned quickly to make traps from
native materials, such as deadfalls, roots for snares, etc. They used
metal traps when they were available, but would have always chosen to
use the method that was most efficient. Along the way, they would have
learned to use the metal European traps in Aboriginals ways, such as
using a metal trap where they had previously used a snare.
In the area of knives and scrapers, they showed their skills at
adaptation. Fur trade posts generally had a resident blacksmith who was
responsible for making knives and other tools from scrap metal. Métis
fur trade employees learned to make their own tools as well. Barrel
staves were particularly prized for knife blades, complete with the
tang, and for scrapers or flesher. The scrapers were knives with two
handles and an arced blade with the inner edge sharpened. They were used
to clean the flesh and tissue off the hide before it was tanned. Next,
they stretched the hide. They stretched small animals’ skins without
slitting open the skin, by placing a shaped board inside the inside out
skin. Larger skins were stretched by lacing them to a wood frame. To
stretch a moose hide or buffalo hide, they made the frame from poles.
They made another tool out of barrel staves. They notched one edge of
half a barrel stave until it looked like a fine saw blade, and then
fastened it to the outside of a shed wall It was bowed out from the wall
and fastened again at the bottom. This tool was used to break up the
tissue in the dried hide, softening it after it was treated. The skin
was rubbed across the notches, in all directions, until the whole skin
had lost its stiffness. The skin was then smoked to complete the tanning
The Métis seemed to have continued using Aboriginal methods, only
substituting the materials of which the tools were constructed. The
Aboriginals had always fished, using gillnets in lakes through the ice
in winter, weirs in narrows or rivers, and with hook and line. Over
time, the materials used to make nets changed, but the use of gill nets
to catch lake fish is still a routine practice. While the Aboriginals
and Métis first used bone fish hooks, they began to use steel hooks.
However, the custom of fishing, and the importance of certain locations
as important fishing spots has persisted. Certain Provincial Campgrounds
in Alberta are traditional locations.
Specific tools were also used in Métis building construction. Tools
such as a scriber, drawknife, saws, offset broad axe, froe, chisels,
mallet, and adze are used in log construction, but it was said that a
good man with a broad axe could build the whole house.
The Red River Cart, hand hewn from native pine, aspen and cottonwood,
and lashed together with bison hide and sinew, was a vital tool of the
Métis. The cart, fabricated by hand and primitive metal tools using only
wood and buffalo hide as materials, was used to transport pemmican, furs
and other trade goods. It is a mixture of European design and Aboriginal
inventiveness. The coming of transcontinental railroads doomed the cart
as a functional cartage vehicle. But it remains a vital symbol of the
Dog sleds were another tool that neither the fur trade nor the Métis
could survive without. The dog sled was a vital form of winter
transportation for the fur traders of the Northwest, and was used by
both the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company. The dog sleds
used seem to have had two basic designs—the open 'sledge', and the
enclosed 'cariole'. Sledges were used routinely in the fur trade as
early as 1797, and possibly earlier. Some drawings from after 1821 show
sledges shaped very much like a toboggan, but with a higher front curl.
These sledges were pulled by one to four dogs harnessed in a line.
Carioles seem to have been less commonly used than sledges, but better
(snowshoes, traps, scrapers)
(rattles, dolls, games)