PALAEOLITHIC DEXTEEITY. 125 



B. Eedding, in the American JVahfralist, from his own personal observation. The material, as 

 among the Shasta Indians, was obsidian ; but the process is equally applicable to flint, 

 the cleavage of which is nearly similar. 



The artificer was Cousolulu, the aged chief of the "Wintoon Indians. His implements 

 consisted of a deer-horn prong split lengthwise, four inches long, and half an inch 

 thick, with the semicircular ends at right angles ; two deer-horn prongs, one smaller than 

 the other, with the ends ground down nearly to the shape of a square sharp-pointed file ; 

 and a piece of well-tanned buckskin, thick, soft, and pliable. Laying, as we are told, a lump 

 of obsidian, about a pound in weight, in the palm of the left hand, he placed between the 

 first and second fingers of the same hand, the semi-cylindrical deer-horn implement so 

 that the straight side of one of the ends rested about a cjuarter of an inch from the edge of 

 the block of obsidian. With a small waterworn stone in his right hand, he struck the 

 other end of the prong, and a Hake of obsidian was severed well adapted for the 

 arrow-head. On the buckskin, in the palm of his left hand, he laid the obsidian flake, 

 which he held in place by the first three fingers of that hand, and then took such a 

 position on the ground that the left elbow could rest on the left knee and obtain a firm 

 support. Holding in his right hand the larger of the two pointed prongs, and resting his 

 thumb on the side of his left hand to serve as a fulcrum, he brought the point of the prong 

 about one eighth of an inch within the edge of the flake ; and then, exerting a firm down- 

 ward pressure, fragment after fragment was broken off" until the edge of the arrow was 

 made straight. As all the chips came oif the lower edge, the cutting edge was not yet in 

 the centre of the side. But the Wintoon arrow-maker rubbed the side of the prong 

 repeatedly over the sharp edge, turned over the flake, and, resuming the chipping as 

 before, brought the cutting edge to the centre. In a similar manner, the other side and 

 the concave base of the arrow-head were finished. The formation of indentations in 

 the sides near the base for the retention of the tendons to bind the arrow-head 

 securely to the shaft, apparently the most diificult process, was in reality the easiest. The 

 point of the arrow-head was held between the thumb and finger of the left hand, while 

 the base rested on the biickskin cushion in the palm. The point of the smaller deerhorn 

 prong, not exceeding one sixteenth of an inch square, was bronght to bear on the part of 

 the side where the Indian arrow-maker considered the notch shovild be. A sawing 

 motion made the chips fly to right and left, and in less than a minute it was cut to the 

 necessary depth. The other side was then completed in like manner. The entire process 

 was accomplished, and the arrow-head finished, in about forty minutes. 



This account of the process of the Wintoon arrow-maker refers, it will be seen, 

 with a marked though probably undesigned emphasis, to the use of the right hand in all 

 his active manipulations. Its minute details are in other respects full of interest from the 

 light we may assume them to throw on the method pursued by the primitive implement 

 makers of the earliest Stone Age. Dr. Evans describes and figures a class of flint tools 

 recovered from time to time, the edges of which, blunted and worn at both ends, suggest 

 to his experienced eye their probable use for chipping out arrow-heads and other small 

 implements of flint, somewhat in the fashion detailed above, with the tool of deer's 

 horn. To those accordingly he applies the name of flaking tools, or fabricators. But 

 whether fashioned by means of flint or horn fabricator, it is to be noted that the material 

 to be operated upon has to be held in one hand, while the tool is dexterously mani- 



