Their household furniture consists of bowls, spoons, buckets, piggins or cans, matted-baskets, and perhaps a Russian kettle or pot.  All these utensils are very neatly made, and well formed; and yet we saw no other tools among them but the knife and the hatchet, that is, a small flat piece of iron, made like an adze, by fitting it into a crooked wooden handle.  These were the only instruments we met with there made of iron.  For although the Russians live amongst them, we found much less of this metal in their possession, than we had met with in the possession of other tribes on the American continent, who had never seen, nor perhaps had any intercourse with, the Russians.  Probably a few beads, a little tobacco, and snuff, purchase all they have to spare.  There are few, if any of them, that do not both smoke and chew tobacco, and take snuff; a luxury that bids fair to keep them always poor.

They did not seem to wish for more iron, or to want any other instruments, except sewing-needles, their own being made of bone.  With these they not only sew their canoes, and make their clothes, but also very curious embroidery.  Instead of thread they use the fibres of sinews, which they split to the thickness which each sort of work requires.  All sewing is performed by the women.  They are the tailors, shoe-makers, and boat-builders, or boat-coverers; for the men, most probably, construct the frame of wood over which the skins are sewed.  They make mats and baskets of grass, that are both beautiful and strong.  Indeed, there is a neatness and perfection in most of their work, that shews they neither want ingenuity nor perseverance.

I saw not a fire-place in any one of their houses; they are lighted as well as heated, by lamps, which are simple, and yet answer the purpose very well.  They are made of a flat stone, hollowed on one side like a plate, and about the same size, or rather larger.  In the hollow part they put the oil, mixed with a little dry grass, which serves the purpose of a wick.  Both men and women frequently warm their bodies over one of these lamps, by placing it between their legs, under their garments, and sitting thus over it for a few minutes.

They produce fire both by collision and by attrition; the former by striking two stones one against another, on one of which a good deal of brimstone is first rubbed.  The latter method is with two pieces of wood; one of which is a stick of about eighteen inches in length, and the other a flat piece.  The pointed end of the slick they press upon the other, whirling it nimbly round as a drill; thus producing fire in a few minutes.  This method is common in many parts of the world.  It is practised by the Kamtschadales, by these people, by the Greenlanders, by the Brazilians, by the Otaheiteans, by the New Hollanders, and probably by many other nations.  Yet some learned and ingenious men have founded an argument on this custom to prove, that this and that nation are of the same extraction.  But accidental agreements, in a few particular instances, will not authorise such a conclusion; nor will a disagreement, either in manners or customs, between two different nations, of course, prove that they are of different extraction.  I could support this opinion by many instances besides the one just mentioned.[18]