Each household is supplied with sundry wooden vessels of various sizes
(Fig. 115) which serve for buckets for holding water and for drinking
cups. They are made of strips of thin boards cut from spruce or from
larch trees, the wider strips being as much as six inches wide and
one-third of an inch thick. They are steamed and bent into ovoid or
circular forms and the ends of the strip overlapping. Then they are
sewed with split roots from those trees. A groove is cut near the lower
edge and into it is placed a dish-shaped piece of wood for a bottom.
[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Wooden bucket, Nenenot.]
These vessels are identical in shape and function with those
manufactured by the Yukon river Indians of Alaska.
[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Birchbark basket, Nenenot.]
They also use berry-dishes or baskets like Fig. 116 made from the bark
of the spruce peeled in the spring of the year. At this time the bark is
quite flexible and may be bent into the desired shape. The corners are
sewed with coarse roots from the same tree and the rim is strengthened
by a strip of root sewed over and around it by means of a finer strand.
These baskets serve a good purpose when the women are picking berries,
of which they are inordinately fond; and during that season it is a
rarity to see a woman or man without a mouth stained the peculiar blue
color which these berries impart.
Baskets of this shape frequently have a top of buckskin sewed to them,
closed with a drawstring, as shown in Fig. 117 (No. 3485). Such things
serve to hold trinkets and other small articles.
[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Birchbark basket, Nenenot.]
Large objects are carried in bags, either long or basket-shaped, made of
the skins of deer legs. The leg skins are scraped and worked to a
moderate degree of pliability and their edges sewed together until a
sufficient number have been joined to make the bag of the required size.
This bag is used to hold the clothing, furs, and other valuables. When
on a trip they are invariably carried. If the journey be performed on
foot the two ends are tied with a thong and the bag thrown over the
shoulder.
In preparing food stone pestles of various sizes were formerly used of
the shape shown in Fig. 118. These pestles are now mostly out of date
and superseded by cast-iron ones with steel faces, procured from the
traders. The metal pounders, however, are so heavy that they are
objectionable to people who have to make their burdens on the portages
as light as possible.
[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Stone pestle, Nenenot.]
Spoons to lift pieces of floating meat from the hot liquor in which it
is cooked, are made of reindeer antler and of wood. The pattern of these
spoons is shown in the figures (Fig. 119). One shape (No. 3351, Figs.
120, 121, 122), was perhaps copied from a civilized ladle. Pots are
suspended over the fire with pothooks of reindeer antler hung up by a
loop of thong. These pothooks are also made of wood.
[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Wooden spoon or ladle, Nenenot.]
[Illustration: FIG. 120.--Wooden spoon or ladle, Nenenot.]
[Illustration: BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XXXVIII