МАЭ № 337-23

Battle knife

Tlingit

Before 1852

metal, sinew, abalone shell, leather (?)

Length - 49 cm; width - 6 cm

Even before they made the direct contacts with the Europeans, the Tlingit people made tools of metal. They adopted copper processing methods from the Athabaskans who heated it and then forges with the help of stone hammers. The Tlingit people began to use the same method for treating iron that they found on the sea cost in shipwreck fragments or exchanged it with southern tribes. Such iron was used to make daggers, In the Tlingit language the dagger means “always ready for fight”. Even when sleeping, the Tlingit men kept their daggers close at hand. The handle of a dagger was wrapped with a suede strap with a cut at its end. The loose end of the strap was turned twice around one’s wrist, and the middle finger was put into the cut. Thus, the dagger was strongly attached to a man’s hand, and it was difficult to snatch it out even from killed warrior.

Ethnography of America