A Woman's Tools

I have been fascinated at the last two historical sites we’ve visited with the tools and crafts of women.  From food preparation to decorative beading, it is interesting to see the feminine influence within these pages of history.

Presuming that women were involved with food preparation and crafting while men hunted (as we’ve been told and without doing further research right now) I want to share some tools that I saw at Pictograph State Park and what the experts shared of their knowledge about them: 

The mano and the matate were a two-piece tool set (shown above) used for grinding seeds, nuts and roots to produce a flour or meal used in cooking.  The mano was rolling pin shaped and held in one hand and rolled against the food to be ground on the flat matate.  Pestles were used to pound and pulverize meat, which could be mixed with berries and animal fat to make a sun-dried, nutritious food called pemmican. 

Sticks with fire-hardened ends were used to dig roots.  Bone and chipped stone scrapers were used to remove hair and flesh from deer, elk and buffalo hides.  Knives were fashioned for cutting by attaching chipped stone to sticks called hafting which creates leverage to make the cutting of meat, antler or wood easier.

Bone beads, pendants, and pierced animal teeth were used as bracelets, necklaces or clothing decoration.

Awls were made of bone for stitching hides and clothing.

Remember, this is 9,000-year old technology created from the natural elements found in their environment.  They already knew what types of stone worked for making these tools, what berries and grains they could safely eat, how to preserve meat and other foodstuffs and most important of all how to make fire.

Jumping ahead 8,000 years we come to the culture of Native Americans who defeated Custer in 1876.  Add all of the above skills to these below:

They knew gray thistle could be used as a diuretic, tonic and astringent.  Hairy golden aster tops were used to make a tea that helped with sleeping.

Plains prickly pear was used to make candies, jelly or a refreshing drink.

Yucca (soap weed) flowers and pods were added to salads and other dishes.  The petals are a little sweet and nutty tasting.

Elaborate beading work was used to decorate belts, leggings (first photo below) and other clothing items along with moccasins, pouches, jewelry or pendants they hung over teepee entry doors.

If you suddenly found yourself “beamed up" into this same environment, could you survive?  And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what they knew about their natural world and what it could provide for them.  These two sites are fascinating to me because of a culture that is revealed not because of a battle that was fought.  I am glad I spent time at both.

  

Pictograph Cave

Pictograph Cave State Park is a short drive from Billings, Montana- the town where we have elected to spend three nights.  Today we visited this park and viewed living quarters of prehistoric hunters and gatherers from 9,000 years ago.  In the first excavation on the Northern Plains beginning here in 1937 over 30,000 artifacts were found.  The site suggests long distance travel and trade occurred here at the time.  Southwestern style basket fragments were found as well as Pacific Northwest harpoon points made of Caribou horns.  Seashells and soapstone carvings were also found here-neither being indigenous to the site. 

The cliffs at this site are made of sandstone and were not suitable for making stone tools.  Rocks such as chert, flint and obsidian known to be easy to shape into tools and arrowheads as sharp as surgical steel were sought after over long distances by traveling tribes.  This area also offered medicinal plants like mint, sunflower seeds, wild rose, rose hips, white sage and juniper to name just a few.  A lodge uncovered here may have been used for rituals such as the “bear dance” and for fasting to purify the body and prepare the mind for spiritual dreaming.

 Pictographs are painted onto the rock in this cave as opposed to petroglyphs, which are carved into the rock found in other locations.  The Crow word for this place was “Alahpalaaxawaalaatuua” which translates as “where there is spirit writing”-the Crow people believed the souls of deceased humans produced the pictographs along with living people.  Some of the images are visible only during periods of heavy moisture or rapid snow melt particularly charcoal paintings as water percolates through out the cave lifting a “veil” of calcium that has formed over the pictographs for generations.  The red pigment was made from a mineral called hematite (a concentrated iron ore) ground up and mixed with animal fat, blood, berries, water or urine.  This mixture was then heated to a common consistency before being applied with fingers or a stick to the rock.  Charcoal pigment from the pictographs has been carbon dated to 250 B.C. or the time of the Roman Empire and when Cleopatra reigned in Egypt.  The surrounding marine sandstone cliffs containing seashells were created during a time when most of the central U.S. was covered by an inland sea.  During periods of heavy rainfall massive waterfalls pour down off the cliffs and create black streaks in the sandstone.

 This awesome trek through ancient history was incredibly interesting and we are pleased with what we have learned at another stop along the road.  Inspiration to study more is a constant influence when we are able to see history first hand.