ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. J 81) 



holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and 

 \vith his right hand, between the thnmb and two forefingers 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 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 fractures being made on the palm of the hand, whose 

 yielding elasticity 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. This operation is very curious, both the holder and the 

 striker singing, and the strokes of the mallet given exactly in time with 

 the music, and with a sharp and rebounding blow, in which, the Indians 

 tell us, is the great medicine (or mystery) of the operation. Every tribe 

 has its factory in which these arrowheads are made, and in those onhj 

 certain adepts are able or alloived to malce them for the use of the trihe.''^] 



Thus tradition as well as modern experience justify the belief that 

 the manufacture of arrow and spearheads was formerly carried on as a 

 craft by certain individuals of the Xorth American tribes, and Longfel- 

 low's "Ancient Arrow-maker," therefore, is not a mythical person, but 

 the ideal type of a class of men whose art flourished in by-gone times. 



The skilfully executed agricultural flint implements of East St. 

 Louis, described by me in the Smithsonian Eeport for 1868, have alto- 

 gether the ai)pearance as if one hand had fashioned them. Is it not 

 probable that they formed the magazine of an aboriginal artisan, who 

 devoted his time chiefly to the manufacture of such tools f The making 

 of wampum and of shell-beads in general may have formed a trade 

 among the tribes inhabiting the sea-board ; for this labor required much 

 time and promised success only to those who, b}- long practice, had 

 attained skill in the operation. The supposition gains some ground by 

 an observation of Roger Williams, who states that " most on the Sea 

 side make Monej'and Store up shells in Summer against Winter whereof 

 to make their money." He further observes on the same page : " They 

 have some who follow onely makingof Bowes, some Arrowes, some Dishes 

 (and the women make all their Earthen Vessells,) some follow fishing, 

 some hunting."! 



The most remarkable productions of ancient aboriginal industry are 

 the carved stone pipes of peculiar shape exhumed by Messrs. Squier 

 and Davis from the mounds of Ohio, and minutely described and fig- 

 ured by them in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Yalley.§" 



* Six or seveu incbes in length, and made of an incisor of the sperm-whale, often 

 stranded on the coast of the Pacific. 

 t Catlin, Last Rambles amongst the Indians, New York, 1867, p. 167, &c. 

 \ Roger Williams, A Key, &c., p. 133. 

 $ Chapter XV, Sculptures from the Mounds, pp. 242-278. 



