84 SIE DANIEL WILSON 



Mr. Sellers had known Catliu in his youth, while he was still an expert worker in 

 wood and ivory in the service of the elder Catlin, a musical instrument maker in Phila- 

 delphia, and from him he learned much relative to the modes of operation and the sources 

 of material of the Indian workers in stone. " He considered making flakes much 

 more of an art than the shaping them into arrow or spear-points, for a thorough 

 knowledge of the nature of the stone to be flaked was essential ; as a slight difl^ereuce 

 in its quality necessitated a totally different mode of treatment. The principal source 

 of supply for what he termied home-made flakes was the coarse gravel bars of the 

 rivers, where large pebbles are found. Those most easily worked into flakes for 

 small arrow-points were chalcedony, jasper and agate. Most of the tribes had men 

 who were expert at flaking, and who could decide at sight the best mode of work- 

 ing. Some of these pebbles would split into tolerably good flakes by quick and 

 sharp blows, striking on the same point. Others would break by a cross fracture into two 

 or more pieces. These were preferred, as good flakes could be split from their clean frac- 

 tured surface, by what Mr. Catlin called ' impulsive pressure,' the tool used being a shaft 

 or stick of between two and three inches in diameter, varying in length from thirty 

 inches to four feet, according to the manner of using them. These were pointed with 

 bone or buckhorn." It is thus apparent that among rude tribes of modern centuries, 

 as in the prehistoric dawn, exceptional aptitude and skill found recognition as readily as 

 in any civilized community. There were the quarriers and the skilled workmen, on 

 whose joint labors the whole community largely depended for the indispensable supply 

 of all needful tools. 



In the summer of 1854, when civilization had made very slight inroads on the western 

 wilderness, I visited a group of Chippewa lodges on the south-west shore of Lake Superior, 

 where they still maintained many of their genuine habits. Their aged chief Buffalo, was 

 a fine specimen of the uncorrupted savage, dressed in native attire, and wearing the col- 

 lar of grizzly bear's claws as proof of his triumph over the fiercest object of the chase. 

 Their weapons were partly of iron, derived from the traders. But they had also their 

 stone-tipped arrows ; and one Indian was an object of an interest to a group of Indian boys 

 as he busied himself in fashioning a water- worn pebble into an edged tool. He held an 

 oval pebble between the finger and thumb, and used it with quick strokes as a hammer. 

 But he was only engaged on the first rough process, and I did not see the completion of 

 his work. No doubt, the leisure of all was turned more or less to account in supplying 

 themselves with their ordinary weapons and missiles. But Catliu's free intercourse with 

 the wild western tribes familiarized him with the regular sources of general supply. 

 "The best flakes," he said, " outside of the home-made, were a subject of commerce, and 

 came from certain localities where the chert of the best quality was quarried in sheets or 

 blocks, as it occurs in almost continuous seams in the intercalated limestones of the coal 

 measures. These seams are mostly cracked or broken into blocks that show the nature of 

 the cross fracture, which is taken advantage of by the operators, who seemed to have 

 reduced the art of flaking to almost an absolute science, with division of labour; one set 

 of men being expert in quarrying and selecting the stone, others in preparing the blocks 

 for the flakers." ' But suitable and specially prized material were sometimes sought on 



' Smithsonian Report, part i., 1885, p. 874. 



