MANUFACTURE OF STONE IMPLEMENTS. 17 



interesting narrative of how the much more difficult and complicated chipped 

 weapons are fabricated by the Indians of California, we are indebted to Sir Charles 

 Lyell, to whom it was recently communicated by Mr. Cabot, who had it from an 

 eye-witness. The communication is entitled, "An Account, by an Actual 

 Observer in California, of the Process of making Stone Arrow-heads, by the 

 Shasta Indians, who still commonly use them." 



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

 knee, with one blow of his agate chisel he separated the obsidian pebble into 

 two parts ; then, giving a blow to the fractured side, he split off a slab a quarter 

 of an inch in thickness. Holding the piece against his anvil with the thumb 

 and finger of his left hand, he commenced a series of continuous blows, every one 

 of which chipped off fragments of the brittle substance. It gradually seemed 

 to acquire shape. After finishing the base of the arrow-head (the whole being 

 little over an inch in length), he began striking gentle blows, every one of which 

 I expected would break it in pieces. Yet such was his adroit application, his 

 skill and dexterity, that in- little over an hour he produced a perfect obsidian 

 arrow-head. 



" I then requested him to carve one from the remains of a broken bottle, which, 

 after two failures, he succeeded in doing. 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 distinct profession, in which few attain excellence. In a moment all I had 

 read of the hardening of copper for the working of flint axes, etc., vanished before 

 this simplest mechanical process." 



In the ' Transactions of the Ethnological Society,' New Series, vol. i. part 2 

 (1861), p. 138, Captain Sir E. Belcher gives an account of the methods used by 



when there was no such abundance as now of the necessary instruments, and people who gained their 

 livelihood by practising this occupation. But I conclude by saying it is an admirable thing to see them 

 made, and no small argument for the capacity of men who found out such an invention.' Vetancurt 

 (' Teatro Mejicano ') gives an account, taken from the above. Hernandez (' Rerum Med. Nov. Hisp. Thes.' 

 Rome, 1651) gives a similar account of the process. He compares the wooden instrument used to a cross- 

 bow. It was evidently a J-shaped implement ; and the workman held the cross-piece with his two hands 

 against his breast, while the end of the straight stick rested on the stone. He furthermore gives a description 

 of the making of the well-known ' maquahuitl,' or Aztec war-club, which was armed on both sides with a row 

 of obsidian knives, or teeth, stuck into holes with a kind of gum. With this instrument, he says, a man could 

 be cut in half at a blow an absurd statement, which has been repeated by more modern writers." 



