Bison Scapula Hoe

A bison scapula hoe is a garden hoe made from a bison shoulder blade. The broad flat part of the bone forms the blade and the joint end is worked to take a wooden handle; at the Harrell site, Texas, scapulae were trimmed into a flat triangular blade (Bell 1980; Texas Beyond History).

Makers knocked the spine and rough parts of one face off with a hammerstone, smoothed and flattened the bone with a sandstone abrader and ground the end to an edge (Bell 1980). Bell describes two hafting styles: a half socket, a deep groove from the joint toward the blade that seats a lashed L-shaped handle (southern Plains), and a full socket, a large hole cut into the joint end (central Plains and eastern Oklahoma). Kansas hoes were notched and tied to the handle with sinew (Kansas Historical Society).

Hoes cultivated maize, beans and squash and also served for general digging (Bell 1980; Kansas Historical Society). The edge was resharpened again and again, so hoes grew shorter with use, and soil wore the blade to a high polish that identifies even small fragments (Bell 1980). The key trait is a bison shoulder blade with the spine removed, a ground working edge, soil polish and a groove or socket at the joint for a handle.

Unworn examples reach 400 mm long; heavily worn ones are as short as 150 mm (Bell 1980; sample size not given). Most excavated specimens are broken or worn out; the Harrell site, Texas, yielded 14 fragments from at least four or five tools (Texas Beyond History).

Plains Village sites of the central Plains (Nebraska and Kansas), the Middle Missouri (Hidatsa and Mandan) and the southern Plains of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle (Bell 1980; Kansas Historical Society; Wilson 1917; Texas Beyond History). Edges: eastern Oklahoma (Fort Coffee focus) and the Grand Kaskaskia village, La Salle County, Illinois (Bell 1980; Illinois State Museum).

Look for soil polish on the blade, a ground edge, the spine removed and a groove or socket at the joint end; an unmodified scapula has none of these (Bell 1980). Chipped stone hoes and spades are flaked stone (Hodge 1907); mussel-shell hoes are shell (Bell 1980). A bison tibia digging-stick tip or toothed flesher is a long bone, not a flat blade (Bell 1980). At Buried City, Texas, scapulae may also have been used to move loose dirt and smooth plaster (Texas Beyond History). Wilson (1917) records the Hidatsa account of a shoulder-blade hoe lashed to a wooden handle; the replica Buffalobird-woman made has a blade about 216 mm long on a handle about 889 mm long (converted from inches).