Fire Tools

• Native Americans used fire for many more reasons than warmth or cooking, such as signaling during warfare and keeping trails open for travel. Some of the main tools used to make fire were fire drills.
  
  The two drills used by Native Americans were the bow and drill and the fire drill. The fire drill was made up of two parts: a flat piece of wood carved with small depressions and a wooden stick. The operator had to place the stick into one of the depressions and rotate it quickly, causing friction to build and produce a spark. This was often done near some form of kindling. The bow and drill has the same two basic components as the fire drill, but it had two extra components for ease of use: a small bow and a socket that was held on top of the stick to keep it steady.
  
  

Cooking Tools

• Since Native Americans did not have metallurgy, their cooking tools were largely made of stone, clay, and bone. Ceramic cooking pots were often used to hold the food over the fire and were commonly rounded with pointed bottoms and open mouths. Some cooking pots even had narrowed necks to slow evaporation.
  
  Stone tools included grinding stones, which were used for nut grinding, root pulverizing, and the powdering of dried meats. However, some tools were also improvised from items that were easy to find, such as bone. For instance, deer jawbones were often used to separate corn from the cob and some husking pins were made of bone as well.
  
  

Farming Tools

• Native Americans used hoes and shovels as some of their most common farming tools. Hoes broke up the soil to make sowing it with seeds easier and more effective. Hoe blades were connected to long shafts using bark or leather, and they could be made out of shoulder bones of grazing animals, stone, or mussel shells. Shovels were also made of bone and were used for more heavy-duty work than hoes, such as digging irrigation trenches.
  
  

Hunting Tools

• Hunting tools differed depending on the size of the game being hunted. For larger animals, spears or the bow and arrow were used. However, the concern of keeping the feathers or pelts of smaller game intact led Native Americans to use traps, snares, or rabbit sticks.
  
  Snares and traps were made out of wood, stone, or fibers, and the rabbit stick (hurled at a rabbit to kill it) was often made of curved wood. Bows and arrows and spears were constructed from wood and chipped stone, with the stone sharpened enough to pierce the hide of larger animals at a distance.