WASHINGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1890.




I.--THROWING-STICKS IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.

By Otis T. Mason.


Col. Lane Fox tells us there are three areas of the throwing-stick:
Australia, where it is simply an elongated spindle with a hook at the
end; the country of the Conibos and the Purus, on the Upper Amazon,
where the implement resembles that of the Australians, and the
hyperborean regions of North America.

It is of this last group that we shall now speak, since the National
Museum possesses only two specimens from the first-named area and none
whatever from the second.

The researches and collections of Bessels, Turner, Boas, Hall, Mintzner,
Kennicott, Ray, Murdoch, Nelson, Herendeen, and Dall, to all of whom I
acknowledge my obligations, enable me to compare widely separated
regions of the hyperborean area, and to distinguish these regions by the
details in the structure of the throwing-stick.

The method of holding the throwing-stick is indicated in Fig. 1 by a
drawing of H.W. Elliott. The Eskimo is just in the act of launching the