5G6 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



equally couvex, oue being considerably curved and the other curved 

 but little from a straight line, giving them an ungainly and lop-sided 

 form. Their broad ends, originally rounded, i)robably, like the first 

 fourteen, have been chipped away on each side for half or three-fourths 

 of an inch from the extremity, forming abroad rudimentary shank. At 

 first glance these objects would readily be mistaken for unfinished awk- 

 wardly shaped spear-heads; but slight examination proves them to be 

 completed implements, all fashionedafterexactly the same pattern, with 

 one end pointed, a greater convexity of one side than the other, and the 

 base which in the first fourteen is regularly rounded, in these has been 

 slightly cut away on each side, perhaps to facilitate their insertion in 

 some sort of handle. The greater rounding out of one side than the 

 other in all cannot be accidental, or due to want of skill in the workmen 

 who made them; and this odd design is not easily reconciled with the 

 ordinary forms and uses of spear points. Occasionally flint arrow-points 

 are found approximating this shape, one side from 

 point to shank describing a slightly curved or 

 straight line with the other side regularly barbed, 

 or curved, as in the common types. In our collec- 

 tion are two specimens somewhat concavo-convex, 

 or sickle-shaped. It has been gravely suggested 

 that implements of this form were so made, and in- 

 tended for use, exclusively for spearing and shoot- 

 ing fish, on the hypothesis that the greater weight 

 of one side of the flint, or its irregular form, would 

 give the shaft to which it was attached, when 

 launched, a curved direction, thereby overcoming 

 the water's refraction of the solar rays, and cause 

 the weapon to strike the real and not the appar- Fig. 3. 



ent position of the fish aimed at. In order to test this idea I made sev- 

 eral experiments with the abnormally shaped flints. Securely fasten- 

 ing the one-barbed arrow-heads in straight, perfectly made arrows, I 

 shot them with a strong sinew-backed Indian bow, at marks in the 

 water and in the air, and found in every instance that the deformed 

 flint had not the least tendency to deflect the shaft from its direct 

 course. I then inserted some of the lop-sided implements from this 

 Clear Creek deposit in light javelin shafts 5 feet or more long, and failed 

 to discover the slightest deviation of flight when thrown either with 

 much or little force in the air or in the water. The result of these ex- 

 I)erimeuts led me to conclude that the one-barbed arrow-points are 

 merely weapons accidentally mutilated ; and the most reasonable view 

 of all the flints in the deposit now under consideration, save the intru- 

 sive white spear-point, places them in the general class of common cut- 

 ting tools. 



The second deposit of flints to which I have alluded was also turned 

 up by the plow, on the 28th of March of the present year (1882), on the 



