DCHP-1 Online

crooked knife 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.

• 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.

  See also: canoe knife  couteau croche  mocotaugan  

  • 1681  (1945)  [Ordered that Rich. Mauhlin make ready . . . 500 of the large crooked steel blades. . . .]
  • 1743  (1949)  They make a board . . . which they cutt out of a large tree with only a Hatchet and crooked Knife.
  • 1896  (1898)  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.