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crooked knife
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Known also by the French-Canadian name couteau croche, this tool was an important article of trading goods, although it was often homemade from old files or trap springs.
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
n.
a wood-working knife usually having a crooked handle and, often, a hook at one end of the blade, used widely in the north, especially by the Indians, for making snowshoes, fur stretchers, canoes, and all woodwork.
Quotations
1681
[Ordered that Rich. Mauhlin make ready . . . 500 of the large crooked steel blades. . . .]
1743
They make a board . . . which they cutt out of a large tree with only a Hatchet and crooked Knife.
1896
The crooked knife with the Eskimo, as with the Indian, is an important tool, which he uses with considerable skill in carving and wood-working.
1942
An Indian depends for almost all his accomplishments in manufacture upon the crooked knife.
1966
His most important implement is the "crooked knife"; this has a cutting blade about six inches long with an abrupt hook at the end. First made by a cutlery firm in Sheffield, England, and used as barter by the pioneering fur traders, this knife is still distributed in Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company.
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