ARROWPOINTB, SPEARHEADS, AND KNIVES. 849 



iamaTis, and wt>re worn attached to his belt, bow, or hat. Two or three arrowlieads 

 were appended to the necklace of human fingers, whicli I secured in a fight with the 

 Cheyennes of northern Wyoming during the Avinter of 1876, and now deposited in 

 the National ilnaeum. The information obtained in regard to these was alwaj^s 

 vague and far from satisfactory. 



With the wonderful penchant of the North American Indians for 

 mystery, and their delight in superstition; with their belief in "medi- 

 cine,''' the power and influence of their shamans and medicine men, 

 and the necessity of the latter to successfully impose on their follow- 

 ers, it would be curious if the shamans had not attributed magic 

 power to some of these objects. With all his experience, Captain 

 Bourke is able to give but two instances where anything supernatural 

 has been attributed to the arrowpoint, and these were, as he said, 

 vague and unsatisfactory. 



An Apache squaw who claimed great skill as a midwife was in the 

 habit of administering a pinch of powdered arrow in water in cases of 

 painful gestation or protracted labor. She explained to him that 

 whenever lightning hap])ened to fell a pine tree on the top of a high 

 mountain, the medicine man would hunt for any rock at the foot of the 

 blasted trunk which would yield lire when struck. He saw one of 

 these medicine arrows in the possession of an Indian woman in the 

 pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico, in 1880, and the owner acknowledged 

 its uses to be identical with the same amulet of the Apaches, but 

 refused absolutely to dispose of it.' 



The manufacture and use of stone arrowpoints undoubtedly continued 

 much later in the western countries of the United States than it did in 

 the eastern, because that country was discovered later. It is not 

 unlikely that there may have been Indians in the wilder countries who, 

 in cases of stress, continued to make and use these implements into 

 comparatively modern times. But ''comparatively modern" is only a 

 relative term. All our knowledge relating to modern savagery in 

 America dates from contact with the white man. This contact is the 

 line between the historic and the prehistoric. Prior to that period of 

 contact the white man, who was the historian, had no knowledge of the 

 Indian or his history or customs, and from that moment both his history 

 and customs began to change. 



It would follow that, unless falling within the exceptions mentioned, 

 the common arrowpoints and spearheads in the Museum and other col- 

 lections in the United States are practically prehistoric. Those from 

 the East are admitted without question to be so, but they are no more 

 so than those from the West. The discoveries and conquests of the 

 Indians in the West by the whites are nearer our own times, and this 

 accounts for the principal differences in our oiiinions. Contact between 

 the Indian and the white man was the first step; the second was the 

 obtaining of Indian lands by purchase or war, and the third was sub- 

 jugation. This process jiroceeded faster in the West than it did in the 



' American Anthropologist, III, p. 62. 

 NAT MUS 97 54 



