986 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1^97. 



To Catlin's description Mr. Stevens' makes the following approving 



criticism : 



What Catlin has said witli regard to a rebounding blow is perfectly true; it is 

 impossible to flake Hint with a dull, heavy, smashing blow; it is the measured and 

 rebounding blow— a shock rather than a blow— which, given witli Judgment, 

 enables the material to take its own line of cleavage, and produces what is so well 

 known as the conclioidal fracture, resulting from human skill, that distinguishes 

 the mere splinter of Hint from the Hint Hake; and it is the repetition of this opera- 

 tion twenty or thirty times around the edges of those flint implements found in the 

 di-ift that stamps them as proofs of hnman handiwork. 



Admiral Sir E. Belcher ' gives an account of the manufacture of flint 

 arrowpoints by the western Eskimo tribes at and north of Icy Cape, 

 as follows: 



But to the process which they pursue in eflccting the line, regular, serrated edges 

 of their flint arrowheads. 



Possibly, had I not witnessed the operation and had been at the time one of the 

 first Europeans with whom they ever had communication, the idea would have 

 remained undisputed that they owed their formation to the stroke of the hammer, 

 r.eing a Avorking amateur mechanic myself, and having practiced in a very similar 

 manner on glass with a penny piece in 1815, I was not at all surprised at witnessing 

 the modus operandi. .Selecting a log of wood iii which a spoon-shaped cavity was 

 cut, they placed the splinter to be worked over it, and by pressing gently along the 

 margin vertically, first on one side an;l then on the other, as one would set a saw, 

 they splintered olf alternate fragments until the object thus properly outlined pre- 

 sented the spear or arrowhead form, with two cutting serrated edges. 



But let us revert to this instrument for the use of which the untaught would never 

 imagine a purpose, and which, I suspect, was not witnessed or deemed worthy of 

 notice by any other individual of the exj)edition. 



First, this instrument has a graceful outline. The handle is of fine fossil ivory. 

 That would be too soft to deal with the flint or chert in the manner required. But 

 they discovered that the point of the deer horn is harder and also more stubborn; 

 therefore, in a slit, like lead in our pencils, they introduced a slip of this sub- 

 stance and secured it by a strong thong, put on wet, but which on drying became 

 very rigid. Here we can not fail to trace ingenuity, ability, and a view to orna- 

 ment. It is the jioint of the deer horn which, refusing to yield, drives olf the fine 

 conclioidal splinters from the chert. [See figs. 68-74]. 



I can not here omit remarking that the very same ])rocess is pursued by the Indians 

 of Mexican origin in California with the obsidian points for their arrows; and also 

 in the North and South Pacific— at Sandwich Islands (21^ north), and Tahiti (18^ 

 south) — 39 degrees or 2,340 miles asunder— similar indentations or chippings are 

 carried out in forming their axes from basaltic lava, but probably performed in the 

 latter instances with stone hammers. I myself Avitnessed at the convent of Monterey 

 the captured Indians forming their arrowheads out of obsidian similarly to the 

 mode practiced by the Eskimos. 



Schoolcraft ■* thus describes the mode of making Hint arrowpoints by 

 the North American Indians: 



The skill displayed in this art, as it is by the tribes of the entire continent, has 

 excited admiration. The material employed is generally some form of hornstone, 



I Flint Chips, pp. 83, 84. 



-Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, new ser., I, Ft. 2, 18(!1, p. 138. 



■'North American Indian Tribes, III, ]>. 4(57. 



