town[1] in the county of Tyrone. What may be the haft of a stone hatchet was found in another Irish crannog.[2] Another is in the collection of General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S. Some of the hatchets from the Swiss Lake-dwellings were hafted in a similar manner. In one such haft, formed of ash, from Robenhausen,[3] the blade is inclined towards the hand; in another, also of ash, the blade is at right angles to the shaft.[4] Some of these club-like hafts resemble in character those in use for iron blades in Southern and Central Africa.[5] The copper or bronze axes of the Mexicans[6] were hafted in the same manner.
A method of hafting, which implies fixity of residence, is said to have been in use among the Caribs[7] of Guadaloupe. The blade of the axe had a groove round it at the butt-end, and a deep hole having been cut in the branch of a growing tree, this end of the blade was placed in it, and as the branch grew became firmly embedded in it, the wood which grasped it having formed a collar that filled the groove. The Hurons[8] are said to have adopted the same plan.
I have engraved in Fig. 94, an extremely rude example of hafting by fitting the blade into a socket, from an original kindly lent
Fig. 94.—Axe from the Rio Frio. 16
me by the late Mr. Thomas Belt, F.G.S., who procured it among the Indians of the Rio Frio, a tributary of the San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua. The blade is of trachyte entirely unground and most rudely chipped. The club-like haft is formed of some endogenous wood, and has evidently been chopped into shape by means of stone tools.
In these instances Clavigero's[9] remark with regard to the copper
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. iv. p. 3.
- ↑ Wood Martin's "Lake-dw. of Irel.," 1886, p. 59, pl. vi. 7.
- ↑ Keller's "Lake-Dwellings," Eng. ed., pl. x. 14.
- ↑ Ibid., pl. xi. 1.
- ↑ Wood, "Nat. Hist. of Man," vol. i. pp. 321, 404.
- ↑ Squier, "Abor. Mon. of New York," p. 180.
- ↑ Mitth. d. Ant. Ges. in Wien, vol. ix., 1880, p. 135, pl. i.
- ↑ "Aventures du Sieur C. le Beau," Amsterdam, 1738, p. 235. Quoted in Arch. per l'Ant. e la Et., vol. xiv. p. 372.
- ↑ Quoted in "Anc. Mon. of Miss. Valley," p. 198.
