PRIMITIVE MANUFACTURE OF SPEAR AND ARROW POINTS. 381 



remark that almost every kuown type here finds rich expression. The 

 triangular, the leaf-shaped, the shark-tooth form, the spike-shaped, the 

 one-winged, the chisel-ended, those with bifurcated tang, the repointed, 

 and many other forms are here seen. As we write, no less than twenty- 

 three varieties lie before us, all indicating the skill, the taste, and the 

 fancy of the aboriginal workmen. 



In his "Last Rambles amongst the Indians," Catlin furnishes us with 

 the following account of the manner in which arrow-points were made 

 among the Apaches. We presume the method adopted among the 

 Southern Indians was not dissimilar: 



"Every tribe has its factory in which these arrow-heads are made, 

 and in those only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them for 

 the use of the tribe. Erratic bowlders of Hint are collected (and some- 

 times brought an immense distance), and broken with a sort of sledge- 

 hammer made of a rounded pebble of hornstone set in a twisted withe, 

 holding the stone and forming a handle. The flint, at the indiscrimi- 

 nate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such 

 flakes selected as, from the angles of their fracture and thickness, will 

 answer as the basis of an arrow-head. 



"The muster workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes 

 on the palm of his left hand, holding it firmly down with two or more 

 fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb 

 and two forefiugers, places his chisel (or punch) on the point that is to 

 be broken off, and a co-operator (a striker), sitting in front of him, with 

 a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel (or punch) on the upper 

 end, flaking the flint off on the under side below each projecting point 

 that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner 

 from the opposite side, and so turned and chipped until the required 

 shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the 

 palm of the hand. 



" In selecting a flake for the arrow-head a nice judgment must be used 

 or the attempt will fail; a flake with two opposite parallel or nearly 

 parallel planes is found, and of the thickness required for the center of 

 the arrow point. The first chipping reaches near to the center of these 

 planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each chipping is shorter 

 'and shorter until the shape and the edge of the arrow-head are formed. 



" The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to 

 come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the 

 case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no 

 metallic instruments to work with, and the instrument (punch) which 

 they use, I was told, was a piece of bone, but on examining it I found 

 it to be a substance much harder, made of the tooth (incisor) of the 

 sperm whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the 

 Pacific. This punch is about six or seven inches in length and one, inch in 

 diameter, with one rounded side and two plane sides; therefore present- 



