Featured in this lot is this Blackfoot Bear Cult jaw miniature representation dag knife. The dag knife features a wonderfully and professionally crafted steel and jaw and bone construction that is held together with Parfleche rawhide wrapping that shows tooled punches in the blade and the jaw is painted an off red coloration with sharp teeth shown in the jaw. The bear knife was used by the members of the Bear Cult among the Assiniboine, Eastern Dakota, Blackfoot and Sarsi tribes. These knives were sacred and used during hand to hand combat in battle. Obtaining a Bear-Cult dag knife was difficult. The knife was transferred in a ritual ceremony, per Harold Peterson’s report, and as the ceremony was coming to a close the owner of the knife, after imitating the antics of a bear, would suddenly hurl the knife at the candidate. If he failed to catch the knife, he was not worthy of the knife, but if he caught it he was thrown naked upon a bed of thorns and beaten thoroughly with the flat of the blade while the ceremonial Bear-Cult paint was applied to his aching body (openly quoted from “American Knives”). The condition of this miniature dag knife is well preserved with no obvious signs of damage and shows good overall condition. The measurements of this miniature dag knife is 3" x 1" x 1/4". The collective weight of this dag knife is 8.1g.