NORTH AMERICAN BOWS, ARROWS, AND QUIVERS. 649 



to Apache arrows sunk up to the feathers in the giant cactus on the 

 side of the Santa Catalina Canyon in Arizona, 1870."* 



Marvellous stories are told of the i)recision with which the American 

 Indian could shoot. Cockburn said that the Indians of Darien could 

 strike down with arrows the smallest flying bird. By shooting upward 

 they were said to cause an arrow to pin a bird feeding on the ground. 

 Sticking a shaft in the ground, they would shoot upward and the 

 descending arrow would split the one sticking in the ground. t 



The use of the bow was a part of the education of a boy. Among 

 the many hundreds in the National Museum a great number are marked 

 "boy's bow." In handling them the student must often speculate on 

 the deferred breakfast that hung on the action of these miniature imple- 

 ments. We are told also that boys were frequently called out to shoot 

 for prizes. That was the predecessor of all manual training schools, 

 wherein skill and support went hand in hand with the Indian lad. 

 Indeed, their games and pastimes were spirited imitations of the suc- 

 cesses of their elders. 



The author is not able to obtain reliable information as to whether 

 the American tribes shot always "overhand" — that is, over the bow 

 hand, with the arrow drawn inside the bow. Dr. Shufeldt, in his prac- 

 tical experiments to ascertain the mode of arrow release among the 

 Navajos, incidentally remarks that the arrow was on the left side of 

 the bow and rested on the top of the hand. In many descriptions, 

 however, the forefinger is described as surrounding the arrow shaft. 



At present the bow and the arrow have well nigh disappeared from 

 the face of the earth as an active weai)on. Four hundred years ago it 

 stood in the forefront, where it had remained during thousands of years. 

 It might be properly questioned whether, in the long run, the arrow 

 had not destroyed more human lives than the bullet. In Canada, and 

 sparingly elsewhere, bow guns or rude arbalests are found in the hands 

 of Indians, but they are without doubt introduced. The arrow, having 

 reached its highest elaboration as such in America, was superseded by 

 the musket of the Aryan race. 



The Iroquois tribes were among the first to receive firearms from the 

 early settlers. On this account they soon abandoned the bow and the 

 arrow. Colden says that they had entirely laid them aside in his day 

 (1727). This abandonment of the bow for the gun has been spoken of 

 as showing the Iroquois to have been a progressive people. Certain it 

 is that this prompt adoption of the firearm put this confederacy at once 

 at the head of the eastern Indians and made them a terror to the Algon- 

 quian tribes. 



The almost entire absence of noise in the movement of the arrow and 

 the shooting of the bow is the greatest ditferentiation from the gun, 

 which alarmed the whole earth, man and beast. It may be said that 



Capt. J. G. Bourke, letter. t Hausard, p. 26. 



