Metallurgy of the Tlingit, Dene and Eskimo
I ran across a bulletin fro the University of Pennsylvania Vol 11, Number 3 Spring of 1969. Dealer who sold it may have more but is gone until October. The bulletin has a variety of information by John Witthoft and His wife Francis Eyman. They talked about sources of meteorite for steel. Also from ship wrecks. They felt strongly that metallurgy was going on in the interior of Alaska before contact with outsiders. They identified Three sources of copper.
The Tlingits' were used to working with stone tools and sawed their copper with stone Their blades had an applied ridge. The Athabaskans Dene were actually forging and tempering copper blades in their fires. Dene type blades are voluted handled blades by 1850 steel had replaced copper blades. Back to reading some more. i was a bunch taken back by the price this fantastic knife brought, but, had to laugh at the string holding the hide on the hilt.
I got lucky enough to repatriate one from new york back to Alaska it's now about 150 miles North of where it came from originally. The Copper river where all the tasty Red Salmon come from.
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