Pestle

Description:

Cone shaped pestile carved from wood with broadened flat top.

References:

Peter Armitage diary notes. October 2002. William Brooks Cabot. 1920. Labrador. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company. James W. VanStone. 1985. Material Culture of the Davis Inlet and Barren Ground Naskapi: the William Duncan Strong Collection. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History. Fieldiana, Anthropology New Series No.7. MacKenzie Shoebox dictionary 2003. Naskapi dictionary.

Innu Narrative:

“This is mitunishan (pestle). This mitunishan has been carved. It is used for crushing bones.”  Matinen (Rich) Katshinak

“Mitunishan – pounding tool.”  Pinashue Benuen

“Mitunishan – bone/meat crusher [pestle]. This tool was for grinding caribou dried meat and crushing bones from a caribou. The tool was modeled with wood and then sent away to be made just like it, but it was made out of rock. All the old people had a pestle. They were usually made out of stone. More recently they asked a man in Happy Valley to make one out of metal; without a hole in the bottom in which meat gets stuck.” Shimun Michel and Manian (Ashini) Michel

Other Info:

Pestles can still be found in the collections of some Labrador Innu, although, nowadays, axes are frequently used in their place. Pestles were used primarily to crush caribou bones to extract the special atiku-pimi for the makushan feast or to pound caribou meat into a powder called niueikan (niuanikan). When William Brooks Cabot visited the Barren Ground Innu at Mishta-nipi in 1906, the women were hard at work processing caribou hides and making niueikan, what Cabot called “pemmican” (see photos pp.172, 240). “The older women did various operations on the skins with their different tools, made pemmican, went through many acts of their routine.” Cabot (1920:241)

“In preparing food stone pestles of various size were formerly used of the shape shown in Fig. 98. These pestles are now mostly out of date and superseded by cast-iron ones with steel faces, procured from the traders. The metal pounders, however, are so heavy that they are objectionable to people who have to make their burdens on the portages as light as possible.” Turner (1979[1894]:138)

“During the construction of a katshishtashkuatet (canoe made with nails) during the summer-fall of 2002, Pien Penashue and his apprentices used a stainless steel pestle to ‘rivet’ the small nails used to attach the canoe planks to the ribbing. The pestle had been purchased from Mr. Felzberg of Goose Bay, Labrador. Often, one person would hold the pestle while hammering the nail from the outside of the canoe. More frequently, however, one person would hold the pestle while the other hammered.” Peter Armitage (diary notes, 21 March 2004)

“Pien said in former times, women would help in the canoe (ishetsheu) construction by holding the pestle against the ribs so Pien could nail from the other side. His wife, Nishet, had done this. The word for this is ishetsheu.” Peter Armitage (diary notes, October 2002)

Naskapi dictionary lists “mituunisaan.”