846 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



Some of the Hakes were inserted in a wooden sickle and made the cut- 

 ting; edge of the implement, while the flakes were many of them 

 wrought (all done by chipping) into spear or lance heads. The author 

 purchased a number of both kinds, and they are now exhibited in the 

 U. S. National INfuseum (plate 4). 



Sir John Evans' reports a chipi>ed-flint arrowpoint fastened to its 

 shaft witli bitumen, displayed in the British Museum, found in an 

 ICgyptian tomb. The dynasty and consetjuently the date is not .niven; 

 it may not be known. 



This extended and universal superstitious regard for these imple- 

 ments as a class is incompatible with their use as "wea])ons by the same 

 l)eople, and the antiquity of the superstition demonstrates the autujuity 

 of their desuetiule. 



This superstition never attached to these objects in America, for 

 Avifch its discovery came also the discovery that the objects heretofore 

 regarded as supernatural and of heavenly origin were naught but the 

 tools and weapons of savage man. Following this discovery by the 

 white man, came the other discovery by the Indian — that his imple 

 ments and Aveai)ous could be made more easily and (juickly of metal 

 than of stone, and straightway the use of stone for this purpose was 

 superseded by metal. 



Lieutenant Niblack, LI. S. N., in his "Indians of the Northwest 

 Coast," ^ remarks: 



Ou the iutrodaction of iron, which l)oth Cook and Dixon uttribntu to the Russians, 

 the Indians were not slow to adapt it to their purpose. Dixon saj'S that in Captain 

 Cook's time iron implements were then also in use among the Tlingit and Haida. 



And on page 200: "For salmon spears * * * steel is now gen- 

 erally used." 



On the advent of the white man, the making of arrowpoints or spear- 

 heads of stone i^ractically came to an end among our North American 

 Iiulians, even though they remained savages. They soon found that a 

 rejected and broken barrel hoop or other piece of strap iron would make 

 more arrowheads than w'ould a hundred times its weight in flint, with 

 less labor and in shorter frime. Not only were they more easily made, 

 but were lighter; as ammunition they could be carried in greater number, 

 and were in every way more etfective as a weapon. Neither the epoch 

 of transition from stone arrowpoints to those of iron, nor the length of 

 time in making it, by the North American Indian, can be told Avith 

 accuracy, but wc may be reasonably certain that he would not long 

 continue to make them of stone after he had the material and the tools — 

 that is, the strap iron and a flle or chisel — and the knowledge to use 

 them. The Indian traders soon discovered the Indian needs, and after 

 beads, glass, and tomahawks, the cargoes contained iron and some- 

 times flies and chisels by which the arrowpoints and knives could be 

 made, if they did not carry the arrowpoints and knives already made. 



' Ancient Stone Implements, ji. 329. 



•^ Report U. S. National ISIuseunj, 1888, p. 280. 



