The photo at left and the text below are from Mocotaugan by Russell Jalbert and Ned Jalbert and available for free download.

John Wesley Powell, the noted explorer and curator of the American Bureau of
Ethnology, reported in 1898 that “no [Northeastern Woodlands] man ever goes off on a journey without this knife, however short may be the distance… [and he uses the knife] to make a thousand and one indispensable objects.”

Those thousand and one indispensable objects ranged from the most elemental (fire starter shavings and sliced rawhide thongs, for instance) to the most spiritual (carving ceremonial false face masks). Other objects included ax and adz handles, wigwams, moose hide and bark canoes and their paddles, harpoons for beaver and spears and weirs for fish, vessels for carrying and storing daily necessities, wheels for starting fires, cooking pots, food trays, bowls, ladles, spoons and drinking cups, bows for drills and bows and arrows for hunting, toboggans, snowshoes, snow snakes and snow goggles, tobacco pipes, drums and rattles, lacrosse sticks and dancing sticks, war clubs and cradle boards. The list could go on.

What makes the Woodlands mocotaugan so unusual to the Western eye at first glance is its form: the metal blade is typically set at an angle to the handle, something like a jackknife not quite fully opened. What is even more unusual is that the knife is used by pulling the blade toward the body with one hand. The knife is gripped palm upward with the thumb pressed against the handle’s underside. What makes the knife especially distinctive is that it carries on a drawknife culture that was created tens of thousands of years ago, a culture long abandoned in other parts of the world.

This design provides a user with an implement of superb ergonomic efficiency. In pulling the blade toward the body, palm up with the fist at a natural angle, the purchase force of the knife is remarkable. Equally remarkable is how this toward-the-body motion maximizes the small motor control of the thumb, wrist, elbow and upper arm to enable the user to produce work of extraordinary versatility, complexity and precision. Thus the crooked knife was an exceptional tool for the native North American man to use both to carry out many different daily chores and to create significant works of art.