This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
of containing a fluid. Watape fibre was also used to sew together
different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this watape not only
contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
Their great club, the _pogamagan_, was made of a reindeer's antler.
Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
eight inches long and two inches thick.
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