Abstract

Crooked knives or mocotagans have been important articles in the Algonkian tool kit since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century and probably earlier. Today, the manufacturing technique employed by the Native artisan is quite similar to the Puropean method of softening the metal by heating it to red hot, shaping, reheating and then quenching to harden the metal. However, in former times the temperatures and speeds of the heating and cooling processes were varied so as to circumvent the need for high temperatures while still producing metals whose properties suited the intended tasks. Such detailed technical knowledge may find some parallels in the prehistoric working of native copper, but more likely it was a method learned from Europeans and modified to suit the new and varied conditions of adaptation to the boreal forest. Although precursors have been proposed (especially modified rodent incisors), functional parallels are lacking. Rather, it would appear that it was the coalescing of the native technical knowledge and adaptive skills essential to life in the boreal forest, and the metallurgical knowledge of the Europeans trading into eastern North America which likely led to the innovation of the mocotagan.