ARROWPOINTS, SPEARHEADS, AXD KNIVE!<. 987 



sometimes passiug into flint. This mineral is often called chert by the English 

 mineralogists. No specimens have, however, been observed where the substance 

 is gnnflint. This hornstone is less hard than common quartz, and can readily be 

 broken by contact with the latter. Experience has taught the Indian that some 

 varieties of hornstone are less easily and regularly fractured than others, and that 

 the tendency to a conchoidal fracture is to be relied on in the softer varieties. It 

 has also shown him that the weathered or surface fragments are harder and less 

 manageable than those quarried from the rocks and mountains. 



To break them, he seats himself on the ground, and holds the lump on one <>f his 

 thighs, interposing some hard substance below it. When the blow is given, there is 

 a sulticient yielding in the piece to be fractured not to endanger its being siiivered 

 into fragments. Many are, however, lost. After the lump has been broken trans- 

 versely it re(iuires great skill and i)atience to chip the edges. Such is the art required 

 in this business, both in selecting and fracturing the stones, that it is found to be 

 the employment of particular men, generally old men, who are laid aside from hunt- 

 ing, to make arrow and spear heads. 



The iiuHleni inanufacture of obsidian arrowpoints by the Indians of 

 California is thus described by an eyewitness: ' 



The Indian seated himself on the floor and. laying the stone anvil upon his knee, 

 with one blow of his agate chisel ho separated iho obsidian ])ebl)le into two parts; 

 then giving a blow to the fractured side he split off a slab a ijuarter of an inch in 

 thickness. Holding the piece against his anvil with the thumb and finger of his left 

 hand, he connnenced a series of continuous blows, every one of which chipped ofl' 

 fragments of the l)rittle substance. It gradually seemed to ac(|uire shape. After 

 finishing the base of the arrowhead (the whole being little over an inch in length; 

 he began by striking gentle blows, everyone of which I expected would lireak it 

 into pieces. Yet such was his adroit application, his skill, and dexterity, that in 

 little over an hour he produced a perfect obsidian arrowhead. 



I then requested him to carve one from the remains of a broken botth^, which, 

 after two failures, he succeeded in df)ing. He gave as a reason for his ill success 

 that he did not understand the grain of the glass. No sculptor ever handled a chisel 

 with greater precision, or more carefully measured the weight and effect of every 

 blow, than did this ingenious Indian ; for even among them arrow making is a dis- 

 tinct i>rofession, in which lew attain excellence. In a moment all I had read of the 

 hardening of cojiper for the working of flint axes, etc., vanished before the simplest 

 mechanical process. 



]\Ir. T. 11. Peale of the scientific corps of the United States Exploring? 

 Expedition, witnessed the makinfj of arrowpoints among the Shasta and 

 northern California Indians. He says that the Hakes were struck oft' 

 from the mass of jas])er, agate, or chalcedony, by a Wow with a round- 

 faced stone, and that the edges were chipped by the application of a 

 notch in a piece of horn, as a glazier chips glass. The notches in the 

 horn tool were of different size and depths, in order to suit the Avork to 

 be done.'^ 



Every American collector, as well as archfeologist, has read -lohn 

 Smith's description of the making of arrowpoints l)y the \"irginia Indians.' 



His arrowhead he quickly maketh witli a little bone, which he ever weareth at his 

 bracer, of a splint of a stone or glasse in tlie form of a heart, and these they glew to 

 the end of their arrowes. 



Stevens, Flint Chips, pp. 77, 78. Idem., p. 78. =' Sixth Voyage, KiOtJ. 



