Ancient North American Indian Hand Tools
- With no metallurgy, native Americans made cooking implements from clay or wood. They used clay pots for cooking and often tapered them to a point at the bottom or rounded them. They created these forms because they usually wedged the implements between some rocks in the fire. They also created flat base containers that made it easier for them to stand without snuffing out the fire. The native craftsmen carved wooden bowls laboriously from pieces of felled trees, according to the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Wooden implements were rarer because the lack of metalwork made woodworking quite difficult
- Grasses that grew across the continent provided materials for native peoples to manufacture lightweight baskets that allowed for portability and storage. Sometimes collapsible, these baskets were often richly designed with dues and beads, according to the Idaho Museum of Natural History, and the Native Americans often handed them down as heirlooms because of their beauty and utility.
- Arrowheads and tomahawks are iconic images of Native Americans. They created arrowheads by using a stone to flake of pieces of a smaller stone until they made it sharp and pointed. They crafted the tomahawk blade in much the same way as the arrowhead -- using a bigger stone to chip off flakes until they had it at the desired size and sharpness.
- According to the Idaho Museum of Natural History, Native Americans would sometimes boil the hooves, horns and hides of animals to create a kind of natural adhesive they used to attach arrowheads to their shafts or affix sinew to bows.