Maine Memory Network

Tools

Maine's forests provided a wide range of raw materials that were used for shelter, transportation and medicine, and for carving household utensils, tools and weapons.

As Gluskabe taught them, Maine Indians used all parts of what they took from the forest -- wood, bark, leaves and roots.

This simple hoop was used to make flats, which required hundreds of yards of sweetgrass braid and were often used to store sewing notions.

This block was used to make baskets designed to hold handkerchiefs.

It has the following inscription: "Mrs. Peter Ranco, Castine, Me, July 23, 1907, Made by Peter Ranco."

Carvers selected specific woods to meet their needs: flexible white ash for snowshoe frames, basket handles and rims; hard maple for canoe thwarts and paddles, and tool handles; rot-resistant cedar for canoe linings; resilient hornbeam for bows; easily carved pine for basket gauges; and straight-stocked gray birch and poplar for rootclubs and walking sticks.

This block produced a variety of tatting basket forms, such as acorn-shaped and strawberry-shaped tatting baskets, which have a loop handle to hang from the arm and a hole in the top for the tatting ball's thread to come out.

Each artistic tradition utilized a specific woodworking tool kit.

Makers of fancy baskets used split gauges and wooden blocks or molds to ensure that the baskets they produced were a uniform size and shape.

Fancy basket makers keep a variety of gauges to divide strips of ash into uniform widths for weavers (horizontal splints) and standards (vertical splints).

When basketmakers pick up a strip of ash, they can tell from its thickness, flexibility and texture how it will be used in a basket.

Thicker material is turned into standards (vertical splints), which are commonly 1/4", 3/8" or 1/2" wide.

Some gauges split thinner pieces of ash, used for weavers (horizontal splints) into strips that range from 1/16" to 1/2" or larger.

While gauges are functional tools for the basketmaker, they also are works of art in themselves.

Many feature carved designs that are particular to the artist who made the gauge.

Each basket splint gauge was made to fit the hand of the basketmaker who used it, accounting for the variety of sizes and shapes of handles and forms of the gauges.

Sweetgrass is harvested by pulling the grass one strand at a time from the marsh.

The grass is bundled and hung out to dry.

A comb is used to remove the chaff; the grass polishes the comb.

The carver's tool kit included crooked knives -- one-handed knives that were pulled toward the user -- gouges, and even penknives, all of which were used to shape objects and decorate them with relief carving or chip-carved designs.

Crooked knives are indigenous to the Northeast. They were essential tools for Native People of this region.

The ability to make and use one was a necessary life skill.

After contact with the Europeans and the arrival of metal technology, Native People began attaching metal blades to wooden handles.

Crooked knife handles were made from a variety of hardwoods and antler and were carved to fit the hand of the user.

They often were decorated with chip carving and relief-carved designs.

Users grasp the knife fingers up, with the cutting edge held toward them.

The crooked knife is used to shape objects -- sticks of brown ash for baskets, ax handles, canoe ribs, gunwales and thwarts, and snowshoe frames -- by slicing and shaving.

Crooked knives also were used to hollow out wooden bowls and dishes.

Woodworking Traditions

A long time ago, a giant frog monster deprived the people of fresh, clean water. Gluskabe was summoned by the people to make the frog give back the water.

Using a giant pine tree as a club, Gluskabe killed the frog and the indentations that the tree and its roots and branches made created the Penobscot River.

-- Gluskabe legend

Carvers who made rootclubs often also carved walking sticks, which were ornamented with chip carving and relief-carved designs.

Each carver developed a distinctive style.

Rootclubs evolved from weapons to emblems of power and authority, then to artforms.

This piece features a "spirit face," suggesting that it was intended for spiritual or ceremonial purposes.

Carvers create rootclubs from saplings, using the roots and the stock that grows out of them.

Gray birch and poplar generally are used for rootclubs.

Carvers remove or trim the bark and shape the roots to enhance the spiritual, human or animal forms they see in the wood.

A carver creates this form of rootclub out of a sapling with two stocks growing out of one root system.

The carver turns one stock into a snouted animal and retains the other for the club stock.

Found under the floorboards in a structure connecting a barn to a house in the town of Penobscot, this may have been a shaman's ceremonial club.

It is an early style in which the wood was stained, not painted.

This club is attributed to Penobscot carver Russell Joe (Granton Russell Joseph), who lived from the early 1900s to the mid 1960s on Indian Island.

He carved rootclubs, walking sticks and tomahawks for sale to visitors.

This club, made for the novelty goods trade, is inscribed with the names of M.R. Sabatis and J. Susep, its carvers, and where it was carved, Port Clyde, Maine.

This bowl and dice game was played throughout the Northeast.

Two players took turns throwing the dice into the bowl and received counting sticks for each die that landed decorated side up.

The rules vary, but the general goal was for one person to win all the counting sticks.

Carvers created leisters for catching salmon, eels and other migratory fish species.

This example originally had a 12- to 18-foot spruce shaft for a handle.

Fishermen, using torches, attracted fish to the surface, then used leisters to spear them. The outside wooden prongs grasped the fish and the center prong pierced its back.

In 1912, salmon spearing was prohibited by state law and leisters fell out of use.

Maine Indians used birchbark or wooden bowls to eat out of and to mix cornbread in.

Some of the bowls were 18" in diameter or larger.

This bowl has Pauline Shay's name written in it. In 1913, Shay married Andrew Sockalexis, the marathon runner, and after his death she operated a basket and novelty shop on Indian Island.

In regions where winter snows were not hard packed by wind or extreme cold, snowshoes allowed the wearer to walk on the surface of the snow.

Snowshoes distribute the wearer's weight over a large surface, allowing them to walk on soft snow.

This 12" by 42" snowshoe was made for someone weighing about 120 pounds.