Your comment brought back memories of when you used to see a lot of rawhide tools, and rawhide _in_ tools. Rawhide was a staple of the life on the frontier and one of the handiest things to have around. It was used to write on, as seats and backs for chairs, as "windows", as shopping bags, as lariats and whips, as bridles, as glue when ground into a powder ... and, because of its ability to stretch when wet and seriously contract when dry, was used universally to fasten things together, much like nails today. The plains Indians often wrapped prisoners in a fresh buffalo hide and left them out in the sun for a few days ... constricted their options considerably. :) Stranded folks were even know to survive by chewing on it.
I have a collection of J. Frank Dobie works, a Texas historian, folklorist, and professor of English at the University of Texas in the early 1900's who wrote extensively about rawhide and its uses in some of his early pieces. Dobie was raised on a Texas cattle ranch and is well known for having interviewed old timers about such things.
Fascinating, useful material.