420 ETHNOLOGY. 



IXDIAN MODE OF MiKING ARROW-HE\DS AXI) OBTAIXIXG FIRE. 



Extract of a letter from General George Crook, United States Army. 



A great portion of the couutry east of the Sierra Nevada and Cas- 

 cade ranges of monntains has quantities of small slivers of obsidian 

 scattered over its surface. The Indians collect these, aud by laying 

 their flat side on a blanket, or some other substance that will yield, 

 they will, with the point of a knife, nick off the edges of this to the 

 desired shape with remarkable facility and rapidity, making from fifty 

 to one hundred in an hour. In their primitive state they probably 

 used buckskin or very soft wood instead of the blanket, and a piece of 

 pointed horn or bone for the knife.* 



The fire-sticks consist of two pieces. The horizontal stick is generally 

 from one foot to a foot and a half long, a couple or three inches wide, 

 and about one inch thick, of some soft dry wood, frequently the sap of 

 juniper. The upright stick is usually some two feet long, and from a 

 quarter to half an inch in diameter, with the lower end round or ellipti- 

 cal, and of the hardest ma.terial they can find. In the sage-bush coun- 

 try it is made of " grease wood." 



When they make fire, they lay the first piece in a horizontal position, 

 with the flat side down, and place the round end of the upright near 

 the edge of the other stick ; then taking the upright between the hands 

 they give it a swift rotary motion, and as coniitant use wears a liole in 

 the lower stick, they cut a nick in its outer edge down to a level with 

 the bottom of the hole. The motion of the upright works the ignited 

 powder out of this nick, and it is there caught and applied to a piece 

 of spunk, or some other highly combustible substance, and from this 

 the fire is started. 



A\CIENT MOliXD, NEAR LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY. 



By Dr. Robert Peter. 



The little mound from which the accompanying si)ecimens were 

 taken by Mr. Fisher is on the southern bank of the North Elkhorn 

 Creek, in a bottom field, about 15 feet above the level of the creek at 

 low water. The field has been cleared of its timber, covered with blue- 

 grass, used as a pasture, trampled by cattle and rooted by hogs, as 

 long as can be recollected by the present owner and neighbors; conse- 

 quently the mound now presents only a gentle swelling on the level sur- 

 face of the ground. It is about 70 feet in diameter, and rises in 

 its center only to about 3i to 4 feet above the general level. It is situ- 

 ated about lialf a mile west of the small, ancient, circular ditch, on the 

 bluffs of the C. Shelton Moore place, described in Collins's History of 



* The Klamath River Intliaus often made arrow-bead^roin broken juuk-bottles.— G. 



