ARROWPOINTS, SPEARHEADS, AND KNIVES. 1)47 



ami the small "•Jewel points'' are found in California and Orejion as 

 well as in Italy, with a spriukling of each scattered over western 

 Europe. 



The handle or shaft to which these implements were fastened and 

 with which they were used may assist us in their classilication. Imajiine 

 a hickory sapling 10 or 12 feet long, which can best be understood by 

 the average American boy when described as a "hoop-pole," cut, 

 smoothed, seasoned, toughened, or hardened by tire, li inches in diam- 

 eter at the butt and tapering to a half or three quarters of an inch at 

 the top, into whi(;h one of the small Jewel })oints had been inserted. 

 This implement, held in the hands and used for thrusting, would 

 undoubtedly be called a spear or lance. If the length of the handle 

 was reduced to i or 6 feet, it would be a javelin suitable for throwing; 

 with a light reed or cane shaft 2 or 3 feet in length it would be an 

 arrow; and with a handle, however large, if but 3 or 4 inches in length, 

 the implement would become a knife (Plates 41-43). The same (^assi- 

 fication ai)plies to a larger implement attached to a larger or longer 

 shaft equally well as to the smaller implement with the shorter shaft. 



The foregoing in its application to i)rehistoric implements is, to a 

 certain extent, theoretical, for their shalts or handles were of wood 

 and by lapse of time have decayed and are lost. We know this as 

 a matter of fact. Among the hundreds of collectors throughout the 

 United States, where tens of thousands of ancient arrowpoints and 

 spearheads have been collected, we have no record of any of them hav- 

 ing beeu found with handle or shaft attached. This is not strange nor 

 is it peculiar to these implements. The polished stone hatchets doubt- 

 less had wooden handles, yet of all of the thousands found, there have 

 been less than a dozen reported in tlie United States with their wooden 

 handles.' Like the arrowpoint or spearhead, it is usual to find them 

 without any trace of a handle. Objects of wood used in i)rehistoric 

 times have rarely beeu found, and the instances tliereof are usually con- 

 fined to those either protected by water ^ or those in the sandy desert, 

 where there was no moisture to cause decay.^ 



There are some of these implements with their luuKHes which, being 

 fonnd under these favorable conditions, or belonging to modern sav- 

 ages, have been preserved for inspection. Col. P. 11. Kay, in his 

 investigations and collections among the Hupa Indians,^ reported a 

 number of leaf-shaped implements, which, if found alone, would have 

 passed for spearheads, as have thonsands of others of similar form 

 collected throughout all that portion of the world occupied by pre- 

 historic man. The implements fonml by Colonel Kay are now in the 

 U. S. National Museum under Professor Mason's (duirge (Plate 41). 



'Thomas Wilson, Prehistoric Art, frontispiece and pi. .31. 



-Page it It;, lig. 1<)2. 



■''Tho Coptic tapestries were l)nrio(l in the I'^gyptian sands in the lirst to seventh 

 centuries A. D. They have been found in this century in fairly yood condition. 

 ■•Smithsonian Report, 188(5, p, 222. 



