Precontact Implements

by James Blackhawk

"This man says that he saw his grandfather who lived to be very old and he use to tell him the different things that were used before they saw the whites.

Pots use to be made out of clay mixed with broken or pounded oyster shells to strengthen it and baked.

And oyster shells were used as spoons.

	Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
	The Front Limb Bones of the Raccoon

Bows were made by burning and rubbing against the sharp edges of rocks to work them down. Arrow points were made from the claws of birds and hoofs of different animals.

Awls were made from the bone of a racoon's front leg, sharpened on rocks.

The Indians did not use to carry pipes as they had none but they would carry their pipe stems and tobacco and when they wanted to smoke, they would make a hole in the ground and another on the side of it and in the side hole they would stack their pipe stems and fill the hole with tobacco and then they would lay on their sides and smoke.

Commentary. "this man" — James Blackhawk, whose Hōcąk name was Wągᵋnaroskaga, "Man of Distinction."¹ As the name "Blackhawk" suggests, he was a member of the Bird "Clan" (the Upper Moiety).

"his grandfather" — the grandfather of James Blackhawk was Naxiga Kerejų́sepka. The name Naxiga is a birth order name for the fourth son, and Kerejų́sepka means "Blackhawk."

	Siok’ųruspįga (Thomas Blackhawk)

The lineage of the Blackhawk family, as given by John Blackhawk, is as follows: First, Chiakamanika (He who goes on the village), wife unknown. Second, his son, Naxi-karajusaip-ka (Fourth son, Blackhawk). Third, his son, Sayokoruspinki (Acceptance of sacrificial moccasins), Thomas Blackhawk, who died in 1899 aged ninety-five (near Black River Falls). His daughter, Henuka (First girl) married Kaxinopaka or Two Crow, and she lived to the age of one hundered. She died in Winona, Minnesota in 1904.²

According to his son Walking Cloud, in 1832 Kerejų́sepka presided over a village near LaCrosse.³ Kerejų́sepka was distinguished by his ownership of a Warbundle, which he passed down to his descendants:

An Indian Chief's war bundle — one of the few owned by museums in the country — was recently given to the Wisconsin State Historical museum, by John Blackhawk, of Greenwood, Wisconsin, great grandson of "Winnebago Blackhawk," an Indian chief of the Mississippi River Valley tribes. Most of these bundles are kept in the possession of the family and are handed down from generation to generation. The entire bundle is wrapped first in matting and then in skin and is worth about $200. It contains several ermine, the sacred animal of that tribe, medicine, herbs of various kinds, charcoal tied in a skin bag, three war clubs, several flutes, fire-hearths and dagger sheath. The only other bundle of this kind that is in the Wisconsin Museum at the present time belongs to the same tribe but to a different clan.⁴

This will have been a Thunderbird Warbundle, for which see this. The reason that Kerejų́sepka was called the "Winnebago Blackhawk" was to distinguish him from the more famous Sauk Black Hawk. He was the first to make his name into the family's Anglo surname. James’ father, Siok’ųruspįga (Thomas Blackhawk), was born in 1804, which makes it likely that his father Kerejų́sepka was born around 1774.

"oyster shells" — the process of using crushed oyster shells with clay to make pottery, and theoretically even glass,⁵ is still in use today.⁶ This table shows the chemical composition of oyster shells:⁷

As can be seen, the principle active ingredient is calcium oxide.

"spoons" — once a more common practice. We find grave goods as far away as California where an oyster spoon was found in a Chumash burial.⁸

Oleksandr P		Dakota L.
Oyster Shells		Snapping Turtle Claws

"claws" — it is well known that the heads of certain kinds of arrows were tipped with snapping turtle claws. The use of other claws has hitherto gone unmentioned, as has the use of hooves to make arrow points. Given that Turtle is the god of war, there may have been some prejudice in favor of using turtle claws for a lethal weapon.

"they had none" — this is patently false. However, the technique for smoking if one had only a stem certainly seems plausible.

Notes to the Commentary

¹ Norton William Jipson, Story of the Winnebagoes (Chicago: The Chicago Historical Society, 1923) 241.
² Jipson, 241.
³ "Narrative of Walking Cloud," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII (1895): 463-467 [463-464].
⁴ Owen Enterprise (Newspaper), January 6, 1921.
⁵ Bianca G. de Oliveira Maia, Sabrina Arcaroa, Marcelo T. Souzaa, Antonio P. Novaes de Oliveira, T.M. Novais de Oliveira, João B. Rodrigues Neto, "Characterisation of Sand Casting and Oyster Shells as Potential Sources of Raw Material for the Production of Soda-Lime Glasses," Chemical Engineering Transactions, Vol. 43, 2015): 1795-1800.
⁶ Park Young Ryul and Park Yong Gyu, "Ceramic containing oystershell powder and method thereof," Patent, 2015.
⁷ Bianca G. de Oliveira Maia, et alia, "Characterisation of Sand Casting and Oyster Shells as Potential Sources of Raw Material for the Production of Soda-Lime Glasses," 1797, Table 1.
⁸ "Notice of Intent To Repatriate Cultural Items: Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA," Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Document Citation: 88 FR 60236; Document Number: 2023-18818; (08/31/2023): 60236-60237 (2 pages).

Source

Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, n.d.) Notebook 61: 2-3.