Crooked Knife 101 | The Story And Art Of

Crooked Knife 101
The who, what, when, where and why of the Crooked Knife

A close up of a typical crooked knife showing the wooden haft lashed to the metal blade at an oblique , or " crooked " angle

What is a Crooked Knife? A Mocotaugan ?

The Mocotaugan (Algonquian language ), or Crooked Knife, is a simple multi-purpose tool.

It is primarily known for its use as a carver’s draw knife, whose pre-historic ancestor was a beaver incisor lashed to a handle. It is used to create and embellish the multitude of objects used by the Woodlands Indians - these objects included the most elemental ( fire starter shavings, basket splints, canoe staves for instance ) to the most revered and sacred ( implements of war, Ceremonial bowls, Pipes, Masks and Shaman figures).

The crooked knife has long been well known as an essential tool of the Woodlands Indian, John Wesley Powell, the great American explorer and curator, explained it this way ...." No ( EasternWoodlands ) man goes off on journey without this knife, no matter how short the distance ....and ( he uses the knife ) to make one thousand and one indispensable objects."

The term "Crooked Knife " originated amongst the early French Voyageurs who referred to the knife as the "Cocteau Croche" or Crooked Knife. What makes the knife "crooked " is not the curve of the blade or its often upturned end; it is the angular relation of the handle to the blade. A typical Crooked Knife handle is "crooked" from the blade at an angle of about 30-40 degrees, sometimes noticeably more or noticeably less ( Standards). It would be made for a left or right hand, and engineered in a variety of nuanced ways so as to be ergonomically appropriate for its user. The vast majority of crooked knives are simple un-embellished affairs, the handles carry no ornamentation at all. But when present, designs range from minimal to intricately ornamented and with considerable sophistication. The designs themselves ranged from ancient patterns traditional in Woodlands culture to images clearly derivative from the various newly imported European cultures.

The Anatomy of the Crooked Knife

Anatomy of a Crooked Knife

The anatomy of the crooked knife is comprised of three parts 1) the handle or haft 2) the blade 3) a binding used to secure the blade to the handle. Knife-makers, to individual taste, often add other elements ; nails, wooden wedges, decorative materials, finishes, etc.

Author's Note: In the above drawing, a cross section reveal a cylindrical haft. Some knife makers believe, and this author agrees, that the haft should not be round but rather be of a softened pyramidal shape to minimize hand fatigue and to maximize the strength of the user's grip.

* Part One: The Haft of the Crooked Knife

Although Crooked knives occasionally have hafts ( handles) made of antler, metal, bone or soft wood, the vast majority of handles are made of Eastern Woodlands hardwoods. The haft is where the carver sizes the knife to his hand, and it is here that personal ergonomics play an important role in the development of the handle; left or right handed, thumb grip size and shape, and the geometry of the haft. The handle is also the place the craftsman may choose to embellish his knife thus adding his own unique " signature."

* Part Two: Binding the Crooked Knife blade to the Haft

In order to secure the blade to the handle any number of binding materials are used. The most common is brass or copper wire, however leather, metal ferrules, lead inlay, rawhide, twine, string, and tape are all used, often in combination with one another.

* Part Three: The Crooked Knife Blade

The blade is the heart and meaning of the crooked knife. Coveted by its owner, the blade was most costly to obtain ( according to Hudson Bay Company archives from 1748, a " Mocotaugan" trade blade, imported from Sheffield, England, cost 2 beaver pelts a hefty price at the time) and the most difficult to replace.

Each blade is uniquely shaped to match the tasks to which it is assigned; the most common tasks being planing, shaping, hollowing out, scraping, shaping, trimming, making splints, and chip carving.

An assembly of cooked knife blades, illustrating the wide variety of shapes and sizes used.

Each blade tooled to perform the specific task. it was assigned

The Origin of the Crooked Knife

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3

About 1400 B.C., sub-groups of Paleo-Indians began to form a definable Eastern Woodlands culture. As migration progressed, they stopped and settled into areas of forest and stream that could provide them with food, clothing and shelter year-round. Eventually these sub-groups formed some sixty Eastern Woodlands Indian tribes, and for untold thousands of years the men of these tribes knapped stone to create a single-handed Stone Age " knife." As centuries passed, prehistoric people began to utilize a better material for their needs- the beaver tooth. These early beaver-tooth knives, as Karan Bjorklund points out in The Indians of Northeastern America ..." were used just as the beaver naturally did - by pulling it towards the user." ( Figure 1 ).

Remarkably, the use of a beaver-tooth draw knife was observed amongst the Native tribes of Virginia as early as 1624. Captain John Smith (1580-1631) wrote in The Generall History of Virginia -1624 ......." To make the notch of his arrow he hath the tooth of a beaver, set in a stick, wherewith he grateth by degrees"

The Woodland Native, ever adaptive, quickly took advantage of the revolutionary metal blade introduced by Europeans. The knife shown here (Figure 2) is typical of the majority of early knives made with these new metals - a blade forged from discarded pieces of steel, lashed to a hardwood handle with Native materials. Later, if affordable, a Native might use a coveted imported steel " Mocotaugan" blade provided by the various Trading companies of the time. Despite all the forms of knives offered by Europeans, the early crooked knife was the preferred indispensable survival tool retaining the millennia old technique of palm-up, toward-the-body motion with a working surface for the thumb.

The crooked knife ( Figure 3 ) ultimately rose to the level of high art in the hand of some Woodlands Indian carvers, taking the indispensable tool to the level of masterpieces of small-scale Woodlands sculpture. Such embellished knives were put together with great care, not only ensuring that form followed function, but to detailing every decorative element. Such knives borrowed generously from both European materials and European design motifs. Fine embellished crooked knives were, and still are, passed down from one generation to another and highly sought after by collectors and institutions ( Figure 4 )

Figure 4

Figure 4 : An Eastern Woodlands Crooked Knife of the highest artistic order.

Please see: The Art of the Mocotaugan for details

The Bending Figure Crooked Knife
Iroquois , Circa 1800-1825

How to use a Crooked Knife - Form follows Function

Figure 5

The crooked knife is a draw-knife designated by pulling the knife towards the body ( Figure 5 ). No two knives are exactly alike as the man who made the knife was typically the man who used it. He shaped both the handle and the blade to meet his own special needs, to make the most of his own skills , and in some cases, to express his own artistic urgings. As one observer has noted the Indians were " master recyclers". Blades, originally fashioned from discarded files, saws, scissors, razors, skillets, trap springs, barrel hoops, were all reworked into crooked knives, later replaced by European Mocotaugan blades. But by far the most desirable discard were worn out-files: their exceptional high-quality malleable steel made for excellent repurposed blades.

Drawing the knife towards the user seems somewhat counter intuitive to today's teaching as well as contradictory to human physiology. We know that contracting muscles (concentric contraction) generally uses more energy than lengthening a muscle (eccentric contraction),however drawing the knife towards the body permits very fine control particularly when used in the seated fashion of the Eastern Woodlands Natives. Drawing the knife towards oneself while seated allows the carver great agency to simultaneously manipulate the object being made and the knife being used.

Author's Note: Today, many fine woodsman offer instruction on how to make, craft, hold and use the crooked knife.

Please see our Resources page with links to some of the world's best instructional videos.

From Asia to the New World: The Distribution of Draw Knife Culture

Figure 6

Crooked knife users, by drawing the knife towards the body are part of a larger group of draw-knife users categorized by Clark Wissler, the renowned 20th century Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, as members of a "Drawknife Culture" (Wissler, 1923). The geographic distribution of the Drawknife Culture was historically limited to the areas seen on the map above ( Figure 6 ) and encompassed a multitude of Native Peoples some of which used the Eastern Woodlands style crooked knife, while others, such as the Inuit of Alaska, Ainu of Japan, Siberian Inuit, and the tribes of the Northwest coast used other forms of draw. (Please see: Mocotaugan Musings: "Just because they call it a crooked knife doesn't mean it is" ).

Authors Note: Wissler's map is in need of some updating and will benefit from additional research into the distribution of draw-knife cultures. As explained in Mocotaugan Musings;" In search of a Plains Indian Crooked Knife ", Wissler incorrectly plotted some of the western boundaries of distribution, despite being a place where many crooked knives are well known to have originated.

Today the crooked knife enjoys worldwide appreciation and international renown. Because of the crooked knife renaissance; blade-smiths, bush-crafters, woodsmen, collectors and scholars the world over are extolling the virtues of the "Woodlands Indian's indispensable survival tool", ever pushing its distribution to far flung corners of the globe.