SPOON

1900

Unknown

X1982.44.23

Indigenous women utilized a variety of natural materials to make utensils for harvesting, preserving, and preparing food. Hard sandstone and granite were used for grinding slabs (metates) and steatite or soapstone to make bowls, while quartzite rocks made fine berry pounders. Bison shoulder blades served as plates, bison bladders as water bags, and sheep horns as ladles or cups. Antlers could be fashioned into handles for knives with chert or obsidian blades. This spoon, carved from cow horn in 1900, measures less than nine inches in length. By the turn of the century, Montana's indigenous people had long had access to metal kitchen utensils, but many preferred to create the types of tools they were accustomed to using. Women often had to substitute new materials - like cattle horns - for those that were no longer available, such as bison horns, during the early reservation years.

Plains