The discussions of food, shelter, transportation, and clothing have shown the wide range of Algonquian technology. The Algonquians, like other Native Americans, ingeniously used the materials at hand to shape tools, weapons, and ceremonial objects. They used wood and bark, other plant materials, stone, clay, hide, bone, antler, shells, quills, and feathers for their artifacts. And some Great Lakes Algonquians used copper to make metal objects. After the arrival of Europeans, the Indians adapted their crafts to new materials, using metals, glass beads, and strips of cloth in original ways.
The Algonquian use of a variety of materials to make containers shows the extent of their ingenuity. Some Algonquians favored birch bark. Some of these birch-bark containers, like the mocuck, were watertight, their seams smeared with pitch, and were used for carrying and storing water. Others were used as bowls, dishes, and trays, or for winnowing (separating chaff from grain) wild rice.
Algonquians also carved containers out of wood. The burls or knots of birch, elm, and maple, or some other hardwood, were charred in a fire to soften for scraping
Algonquian birch-bark mocuck (modern)
With stone or bone tools. Wood was also used to make the mortars and pestles needed for grinding corn.
Wood splints and sweet grass were utilized in basketry, the wood splints to make plaited baskets and the sweet grass to make coiled baskets.
Pottery was also used to make containers for cooking, carrying, and storing. Although Algonquians in the Northeast did not develop techniques in ceramics to the extent that Indians of the Southeast and Southwest did, some tribes crafted pottery containers for cooking, carrying, and storing. Algonquians had one main practical design: elongated clay pots for cooking with rounded or pointed bottoms and a neck at the top. They shaped the clay into pots without a potter’s wheel, then smoothed the outside with a cord-wrapped paddle before firing. The pots were unpainted but had geometric designs from tapping, pressing, or scratching objects into the clay either before or after firing.
Algonquians applied this same sort of ingenuity to the making of weapons for hunting and warfare. They used wood, stone, bone, and, after non-Indians began to trade with them, metal, to make spears, clubs, and bows and arrows. Some among them also used wood for armor and shields.
Both the eastern Algonquians and neighboring Iroquois used wampum for ceremonial purposes. They made
Algonquian wampum
Wampum from seashells, especially of the quahog clam, grinding the raw material into purple and white beads, then stringing the beads on a belt. They used wampum belts as tribal records and to commemorate special events, such as a peace treaty or a festival. They also exchanged wampum belts as gifts or as trade goods. In later years, the Indians used European glass beads to make wampum. Dutch and English settlers also began manufacturing wampum from glass beads in order to trade with the Indians. Wampum thus became a form of money.
An item common to the western Algonquians was the peace pipe. Because these pipes were used for other types of ceremonies as well, such as councils of war, ceremonial pipes, sacred pipes, and calumet, a French word referring to the long stems of the pipes, are more fitting terms.
Algonquian sacred pipe
Indians of the Great Lakes and the nearby prairies originally used calumets. In later years, the practice spread onto the Great Plains. A particular pipe passed down through the generations often was a tribe’s most valued object. A pipe might also serve as a passport through hostile territory. Sometimes non-Indian explorers and traders carried them to show their peaceful intentions.
The bowl of the calumet was carved from pipestone. This kind of stone is also known as catlinite after 19th-century frontier painter George Catlin, who lived among a number of tribes and created many images of individuals and daily life. The red, pink, or gray stone is found in Great Lakes country. It can be carved with a knife when first quarried, but then it turns hard after being exposed to the air. The pipestems were made from light wood or reeds and were often carved with intricate designs. The pipes were usually decorated with feathers. White feathers meant peace; red feathers meant war. Quillwork or beadwork might be wrapped around the stem.
Algonquians grew tobacco to smoke in their pipes. They also smoked a concoction called kinnikinnik, or “mixture,” consisting of dried plant matter, such as willow bark, mixed with tobacco leaves.
World History
